Meet Joanna Palani the Iranian-Kurdish YPG fighter with a $1 Million bounty on her head

[timmy]

“There’s a $1 million reward on my head. It is possible for me to be captured and killed in these circumstances that I find myself in here in Denmark”

[timmy]

Joanna Palani was still a teenager when, in 2014, she dropped out of college and left Copenhagen to go and fight in Syria

[timmy]

She wrote on Facebook that she was inspired “to fight for women’s rights, for democracy”

[timmy]

She is thought to have killed over 100 ISIS militants while fighting alongside the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and Syria

[timmy]

She also helped to liberate Yazidi girls who were imprisoned as sex slaves

[timmy]

“When we were preparing to liberate houses of ISIS sex slaves, we had this saying one fighter goes to rescue but many fighters will come back out”

[timmy]

“As a sniper I could be on the front line for nine days at a time. You have to be very patient. You have to focus. You cannot lose concentration for one moment”

[timmy]

Her actions came to the attention of the Danish authorities, who banned her from traveling to the region when she returned from fighting in September 2015

[timmy]

Unable to leave her comrades to fight alone, she broke her ban and flew back to Iraq. She walked for seven hours through the night to cross the border into Syria

[timmy]

When she returned she was imprisoned for 3 weeks in Vestre Fængsel, Denmark’s largest prison

[timmy]

She believes she’s seen as a terrorist in her own country, and she lives in hiding and changes her location constantly from fear of reprisal

[timmy]

“I am for breaking the law but I had no choice in my mind at the time,” she said

[timmy]

“Those I risked my life for, are now taking away my freedom. I did not expect to lose almost everything for fighting for our freedom and our safety”

[timmy]

 

http://i.imgur.com/EaMAf1q.mp4

 

The YPG, a dominant partner in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF)are, however, considered a terrorist group by Turkey. Both the the YPG and the YPJ are linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which is officially designated as a terrorist organisation in Europe and the US. The YPJ played a central role in the battle for Kobani, and Palani recalled the two weeks she spent there at the very start of the Isis offensive in 2014 as “the longest of my life”. She described enduring starvation-like conditions as the city was besieged by Isis fighters and supplies were cut, and said she lost “many friends” before being sent away from the front due to injury.

[samaja_varagamana]

Good post baa