Gayle Tzemach Lemmon:

Yes.

Malika is from the Arab community. And here is a young woman, Nitha, who I met, who is from this Bethnahrain Women's Protection Force, which was a group of Christian young women who had formed early in the ISIS fight and joined alongside the Kurds, and then later the other Arabs who were part of the SDF, the U.S.-backed forces.

And she talked to me about how, when she first joined this all-women's force, her mother and father had been very against it. They thought it was shameful. And then, when they realized that her unit was part of protecting Christian communities from the Islamic State, Christian communities who had been besieged by ISIS fighters, kidnapped and worse, they were really proud.

And they had come to really accept her decision and be very proud of it when they went to church on the weekends. And so she was talking to me about how she is in law school now, and was recruiting the next generation of young women who are going to be part of protecting their futures.

And she said to me: "You know, Gayle, our generation is very different. We're educated. The young women are educated. And all we want is for stability and security in our area."