To discuss the highest proportion of female soldiers among all ethnic groups in the world, not Israel, nor Russia or the United States, but belongs to a group that has long been "people have no country" - the Kurds.
As early as 2014, in a "siege battle" in Kobani, a major Syria-Turkey border town, the main ground force fighting the Islamic State terrorist organization is Kurdish armed in Syria .
In this extremely cruel "Kobani defense battle", one-third of the Kurds were female warriors. In the end, the Kurds defeated the Islamic State's attack with extremely strong combat power.
In fact, if arranged in proportion, the proportion of female soldiers in Kurdish armed forces has reached 40%, which can be regarded as the NO.1 of all ethnic groups in the world.
What is more puzzling is that compared with the open-minded United States, Russia or Israel, the Kurds belong to the Muslim group of Middle East , and sing a scripture with the conservative neighbors around them.
Everyone knows that many countries in the Middle East that believe in Islam have set many taboos for women. Like Afghanistan during the Taliban era, women's education was regarded as "criminal"; there is also the rich country Saudi , which requires women to cover their faces with black robes, and not to go out of the door. Everything is built like a public toilet. It includes men and women, including schools, hospital entrances, elevators, park open areas, etc., which are used by men and women, let alone with weapons and go to the battlefield side by side with men.
So, in the extremely conservative Middle East, why do Kurdish people, who are also Muslims, not take into account those "clear rules and regulations"?
It depends on the reasons and we must briefly talk about it from the following aspects - lack of manpower, secular doctrines and national life traditions.
In fact, for any nation, no one will take the initiative to push women to the frontline of war until it is critical.
However, for the Kurds, their living conditions have been worrying for nearly a century and are full of crises. The high proportion of female warriors belongs to the Kurds who faced powerful opponents and suffered a helpless move after a series of catastrophes.
As early as the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when the independence movements of various ethnic groups in the Middle East were in turmoil, Kurdish nationalism, Turkish nationalism, Persian nationalism and Zionism made a high-profile appearance on the historical stage almost at the same time.
Unexpectedly, after World War II, these "isms" except Kurd, all achieved national independence and founding one after another. However, the Kurds have been repeatedly betrayed and betrayed. Not only has the great cause of "founding the country" not been completed, but the nation was also forcibly divided and divided into four countries - Turkey, Iraq , Syria and Iran .
And these countries, except for Iran and Iraq in the "post-Saddam era" that are relatively moderate to the Kurds, the other countries have long imposed suppression, restriction and assimilation policies on the Kurds, who are also "Muslim brothers and sisters" due to historical issues and various real contradictions. For example, one of the main crimes in which the Iraqi Special Court prosecuted Saddam was to use chemical weapons to massacre Iraqi Kurds in the early 1990s.
During the Gulf War in 1991, the Iraqi Kurds "armed uprising" under the fooling of the CIA and were bloody revenge from Saddam. The United States was eating the whole process. Obviously, wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, and the consequences of resistance are to be suppressed more cruelly. If we continue to get along like this, the two sides hated each other and even reached a point where incompatible with each other, and entered a vicious cycle of "using violence to fight violence".
The most typical example is, like last year, when the United States withdrew its troops from some parts of Syria, Türkiye was eager to cross the border to "strangle" the Kurds. To be honest, how much hatred is this, making Türkiye hold the obsession that it seems to be about "killing all the Kurds" from beginning to end.
What's even more tragic is that over the past half century, the Kurds have tried many times to rely on the power of Britain, the United States or the Soviet Union to establish the country - Kurdistan.
Every time, they are used by a great power and then killed the donkey. Not only is their own "country" not built, but they are also defined as "separatists" by their host country and are subject to large-scale revenge and blows.
fresh history proves that the Kurds scattered in the four Middle East countries are the targets of transactions by major powers, and no one cares about the "country" they want to build.
The Kurdish nation who survives in adversity is always extremely insecure. As they themselves said, the Kurds only have mountains and no friends.
For a long time, in order to deal with large and small harassment and attacks, almost all the Kurds have been soldiers, and the military-civilian ratio has reached 20:1. That is to say, one in every 20 Kurds is in the army.
looks like this, and there is nothing to be surprised about. But you have to consider that in real life, the "denominator" of these 20 people includes a large number of children, the elderly, the weak, the sick and the disabled (the birth rate of the Kurds is particularly high). In addition, some laborers have to be left to engage in specialized production and trade activities. In addition, after long-term fighting and killing, the young and middle-aged men among the Kurds also lost a lot. Therefore, after this calculation, the personnel allocation of the Kurdish armed forces is still quite tight. If we want to replenish the military resources, young and middle-aged women are naturally a very ideal choice.
At the same time, in the battle, the Kurdish female warrior also showed strong combat effectiveness and will to resist, thus forming a national custom of women joining the army.
In addition, there is a secular branch of Sunni Muslims that the Kurds believe in - a secular branch of the Sunni Muslims - the "Sophical".
corresponds to the Sufis and is another branch of the Sunnis, mostly popular in Saudi Arabia's "Wahabi". The faction is conservative and old-fashioned. It uses scriptures that came out of the desert more than a thousand years ago to "explain everything" and "regulate everything". As long as it is in public, women in their country must cover their faces and wear them like a black tent. Before 2018, even cars are not allowed to drive.
The Sufis advocated by the Kurds advocated secularism and advocated an inclusive lifestyle. Religion, as a pure belief, does not interfere with the daily life, food, clothing, housing and transportation of believers. Therefore, relatively speaking, the Kurds are more likely to accept some progressive ideas.
The Sufi school also has a small number of "specialized practice" priests. Their prayers are in the form of this unique "dervive dance circle dance"
Based on the above human environment, the female equal rights movement in the reservoir area was earlier than other parts of the Middle East. In the early 1970s, when the Turkish Workers' Party of Kurdish was established, it added gender equality and the improvement of women's status to its party's ideological system, and also specifically emphasized that "if women are free, the nation will not be free", allowing everyone to call each other "comrades". The subsequently born Syrian Kurdish Democratic League Party was also deeply influenced by Okaran's thoughts. In its autonomous region, it advocated women's education and attached great importance to mobilizing women to join the army and engage in political and economic activities to reflect democratic decision-making and social equity.
Of course, this is also relative.
In this regard, the Sufi faction is similar to the Alaveite faction to which Syrian President Bashar Assad belongs. The Alavians do not restrict smoking and drinking, and are tolerant of Christianity. They even celebrate Christmas and Zoroastrian New Year. They have always been suspected by some conservatives as "fake Muslims" and have been regarded as "heretic" with the Sufis.
Basal couple who visit the monastery and spend Christmas with Christians
However, the brain-burning thing is that although the Alawites advocate worldly like the Sufis, they belong to a niche under the Shiites.
So, in this hot land of the Middle East, Muslims who believe in the same God and sing the same scriptures have a very complex sect and branches, with various contradictions, hostility, old sorrow and new grievances, almost as long as the history of this religion. I won't go into details about this, otherwise I can write a monograph directly, or I can still write a book in three volumes.
The last thing to talk about is the influence of the traditions of the Kurdish people.
In the early years, some Kurdish tribes still left several matriarchal social traditions, and the leaders of the tribe or family were all held by women.
Later, the Kurds could not resist the temptation and coercion of the Ottoman Turkish Empire and converted to Islam. However, because of the harsh environment of long-term suppression, the entire ethnic group did not have much energy to take into account the rules and regulations related to doctrines or the "men and women are not allowed to teach and receive each other" and finally chose the Sufis with a very flexible nature. For centuries, women have participated in labor like men and protected villages. Over time, they have established relatively equal social status. Therefore, women widely participate in or even lead political and military activities, which belongs to the traditional custom of the Kurdish nation.
Kurdian nobles in the Ottoman Empire
In addition, there is an explanation, not particularly well-founded, just listen to it.
It is said that based on their "understanding" of the doctrine, extremists often believe that once they are killed by women, they will not be recognized by Allah and enter the "Jiha Martyrs" sequence, and therefore cannot go to heaven to enjoy the "rewards" after the "ascension". Even if death is in vain.
In this way, the existence of Kurdish female soldiers always makes extremists very scared and poses a huge psychological threat to them. The Kurds were greatly encouraged, and the morale of the female soldiers rose greatly, so they naturally joined the army and participated in the war very enthusiastically.
However, on the other hand, once the extremists find that the target of the firefight is a woman, they will often fight to the death. If the Kurdish female soldier unfortunately falls into the opponent, the one waiting for her will be an extremely tragic and humiliating ending. Not only did extremists do this, but also a similar tragedy of torture and killing female soldiers occurred during the cross-border strangulation activity in Turkey last year.
For various unknown risks on the battlefield, in the documentary "Goddess in the Fire of War" reflecting the Syrian Kurdish female soldiers, the female warrior Arian once calmly said to the camera that she will never be captured, tortured or enslaved by the enemy, because she has already left a bullet for herself...
