ISIS has sold thousands of young women into sex slavery. This woman fought back—and won.
A female soldier, fighting ISIS. Image via YouTube.
It’s hard to see victories in the fight against ISIS, and the ones that do come are often powerfully bitter. But just this Saturday a woman, believed to have been captured by ISIS, stood up to the commander who sold her into sex slavery and fatally shot him. The woman, whose name has yet to be revealed, is one of thousands of women who’ve been recently captured by the militant group and sold into slavery.
According to The International Business Times, the woman appears to be a member of the Yazidi-Kurdish minority of Iraq. Kurdish Democratic Party spokesperson Saeed Mamouzini told the outlet that the woman, a member of a female fighting militia, was captured three months prior by ISIS. Shortly after her imprisonment, she was given to an ISIS commander’s followers as a sex slave and complimentary gift. It was a sick, if depressingly familiar, punishment for the organization.
Image via YouTube
After three months of slavery, the victim fatally shot her captor, known as Anas, near the Iraq city of Mosul. She is believed to have been a soldier in one of the all-female militias currently fighting ISIS in Iraq. And while anyone imprisoned by ISIS is often subject to historically vicious punishment, it’s a particular danger for young female fighters. Some ISIS fighters believe that if you’re killed by a woman, you go to hell—making female bodies all the more threatening, frightening, and vulnerable.
The victim’s retaliation may come as some small comfort to other women who’ve been terrorized by the organization. Still, it’s a powerful act of resilience in a movement, and a war, that needs so many of them.
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