The first time Safia Halifa fired a gun, she aimed it straight at a camp of Islamic State soldiers. The AK-47 in her hands was well worn – rust lined the length of the barrel, and wrinkled duct-tape was bound tight around the fore grip.

Until now, she’d never been allowed to touch it. But if the rifle was old, Safia was even older; and by the age of 80, she’d had enough of caring about what men thought she should and shouldn’t do.

Isil soldiers had already attacked her village twice in the past year, kidnapping younger women and children in the middle of the night. She wasn’t going to sit around drinking tea and twisting her prayer beads in wait for it to happen again. As she pulled back the trigger and fired towards the black flag fluttering on the horizon, her son stood by her side. “She didn’t even flinch,” he recalls now, with pride.