There is a new weapon being used against the brutal ISIS forces terrorizing Iraq and Syria. Kurdish women are fighting the Islamic State terrorists and are demonstrating that they are formidable in battle. They also bear a significant psychological advantage – dying at the hand of a woman supposedly means the jihadist won’t get his automatic 70 virgins and go to heaven. Aw.

Battle strategy 101 teaches, “First, know thine enemy.” The Kurdish forces obviously do. ISIS jihadists have clearly demonstrated a collective mentality of an intense devaluation of women. Recent actions have reduced women in their world to little more than sexual slaves. To die at the hand of a woman is the ultimate humiliation for the men who apparently feel no shame for any other reason.

Kurdish women, according to Syria Deeply, are no stranger to fighting in battle, and are “regarded as some of the most liberal in the region.” Because of the violence that women in the area have been suffering at the hands of the Islamic State militants, female Kurdish soldiers have been signing up in increasing numbers to fight back, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The 2nd Peshmerga Battalion is a battalion of fighters – all women – who fight with the Turkish PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). “Peshmerga” means “those who confront death.” The PKK is based in Turkey, but Kurds are spread throughout the region in parts of Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq.

The PKK has long been classified by United States Intelligence as a terror group due to its actions against the government of Turkey. They do not work together in an official capacity. But the extreme violence of ISIS is making allies out of enemies in an effort to stop a common threat. According to The Mirror, Iraqi terror expert Nasser Kataw notes: “There has been a re-drawing of battlefield alliances as people who were once enemies have joined together to try and defeat the scourge that is the Islamic State.”

These women of the 2nd Peshmerga Battalion are pushing into Iraq in a seek and destroy mission of the ISIS forces “who have captured 3,000 non-Muslim girls and women who will be forced into marriage with IS soldiers, sold as sex slaves [redundancy?] or shot if they refuse to convert to Islam.” The capture of the women and girls follows the decree by the ISIS jihadists that all non-Muslims, primarily Christians and Yazidis, must “convert or die,” as previously reported by The Inquisitr. Most fled. Many have been buried alive or executed. The ones who have survived are now being sought by the Kurdish fighting women.

According to CDN, “Hundreds of heavily armed female Turkish PKK fighters have moved into Northern Iraq to force IS fighters out.”

These warrior women have already proven successful in helping to retake a crucial strategic site earlier in the week, the Mosul dam, in what The Wire is calling “the biggest blow to the radical Sunni group yet.” The Kurdish women are intimidating and fierce. And they hate what ISIS is doing to their people.

Another female soldier, Ruwayda [name changed], fights for a different Kurdish organization, but, like the women of the 2nd Peshmera Battalion, she and other of these Kurdish women are angry about the “jihadists’ repression of women.” She tells Syria Deeply: “I believe in a greater cause, which is protecting our families and our cities from the extremists’ brutality and dark ideas.”

It is the very fact that they are women that they are able to do what no army of military men will ever be able to do, a fact that is somehow reminiscent of Lady Eowyn in The Lord of the Rings, when she defeated the seemingly unstoppable Nazgul who calls her a fool, saying, “No man can kill me.” Her immortal words ring true in this battle against ISIS: “I am no man.” In the words of one Kurdish female PKK soldier, writes the Conservative Tribune:

“The jihadists don’t like fighting women, because if they’re killed by a female, they think they won’t go to heaven.”

A writer for CDN adds: “(note to ISIS fighters: you are not going to heaven anyway.)”

Reaction on Twitter has largely been in praise of these Kurdish women, who are being hailed as heroes:

There’s something particularly satisfying about an all-Kurdish women battalion fighting #ISIS. pic.twitter.com/EP4YmMlyS4 — Hend (@LibyaLiberty) August 18, 2014

Kurdish women fighting #ISIS, not Sandra Fluke and Wendy Davis, should be heroes to all other women – #TwitterKurds pic.twitter.com/bMBI5jKTAz — Cameron Gray (@Cameron_Gray) August 22, 2014

Perhaps these brave Kurdish warrior women will be able to accomplish, through skill and utter humiliation of their enemy, what others have not: stop the Islamic State.

[images via AP/Daily Mail, Roj Women, and Addicting Info]