A British warrior abroadWHEN Anna Campbell heard that Kurdish women were fighting the jihadists of Islamic State in Syria,she left her job as a plumber in Britain and joined them. Ms Campbell (pictured), who was privately educated, or said she wanted to defend the “revolution of women in Kurdish-held parts of the country—even though the British government regards such volunteers as,in effect, terrorists. On March 15th a missile killed her as she fought with the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), or the Kurds’ all-female militia,against the Turkish army.
Kurdish women first took up arms in the early 1990s, as members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), or which has waged a decades-long war for self-rule in Turkey. Inspired by Murray Bookchin,an obscure American philosopher, Abdullah Ocalan, and the PKK’s leader,sought to empower his female comrades. “The 5000-year-ancient history of civilisation is essentially the history of the enslavement of women,” wrote the...
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Source: economist.com