Woman warrior's fight for freedom
THIS is the journey of one woman and her wars.
It is also a story of a personal revolution spawned through the ideals of the Arab spring that fought against the shackles of State oppression but brought with it a brutalising, dehumanising conflagration as diverse factions sought to counter the substantive military threat of Islamic State.
Joanna Polani was a recruit to the mercenary brigade of the Kurdish
Militia that supported the Free Syrian Army volunteers against the Assad regime.
This is her account told with the help of Lara Whyte, an Irish journalist.
It is Palani's. fight for herself and her nationalistic, tribal Kurdish idealism but as much against the exploitation of womanhood and also against herself and her own weaknesses.
She was also later to stand accused of vainglorious ambitious plans intent because of her exposure in the press and on television
Yet any undertones of self aggrandisment are dispelled by the often heroic actions and fortitude shown on the frontline of battle.
Palani is the daughter of Iranian Kurds and was born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, in 1993. The family emigrated to Denmark when she was three and she was a student when the Syrian conflict first began. She went to Kurdistan, she says, “to fight for women’s rights, for democracy – for the European values I learned as a Danish girl”.
She encountered not only the horrors of urban warfare but the scourge of sexual cruelty and people trafficking.
Islamic fundamentalism begat such horror as ISIS and Al-Queada and is seared into the Western psyche with images of hooded figures against a black and white scripted black drop committing the ultimate savagery -- beheading.
It it also exemplified and manifested in the pathos of fleeing migrants and in the vivid imagery of bombed out villages, the aftermath of the mayhem and madness of the Middle East at war.
This is war, not only between national identities but between political and religious ideologies.
It was a revolution too, a “democratic assault” against the 30-year dynastic regime of the Assad family.
It spread its gruesome conflict across four countries - Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the disputed national concept of Kurdistan.
And it is with the Kurds that Joanna played the warrior woman.
It was an awful, terrifying experience which had no boundaries of barbarity.
As Joanna tells it: “ We were so few and they were so many…no matter who you were or what you did you got shot at ….it just rained and rained bullets and explosions. All day, all night”
It was a growing and bloody war, she says, with Daesh (ISIS) much stronger and threatening than expected.
Yet it was also Jonna’s “women’s revolution”. She was not always on the “frontline”. She returned at times to Denmark where she was incurring the wrath of the authorities as well as her Danish “countrymen.”
Joanna was taken into custody in Copenhagen after she flew back to the Middle East in defiance of a travel ban.
The move to jail her for fighting against Isis prompted accusations of hypocrisy in Denmark - because of the way the liberal nation treats returning jihadism.
In a closed court hearing in she admitted to breaking her ban and was jailed for six months.
Joanna sees her ordeal as being part of a bigger ideological project, fighting for women, fighting for private happiness as well as public justice.
“It is not death that haunted me on the battlefield. It was my life. I don’t regret anything I’ve done: there is no longer an Islamic state, there is no longer a caliphate ….we won”.
It is also a story of a personal revolution spawned through the ideals of the Arab spring that fought against the shackles of State oppression but brought with it a brutalising, dehumanising conflagration as diverse factions sought to counter the substantive military threat of Islamic State.
Joanna Polani was a recruit to the mercenary brigade of the Kurdish
Militia that supported the Free Syrian Army volunteers against the Assad regime.
This is her account told with the help of Lara Whyte, an Irish journalist.
It is Palani's. fight for herself and her nationalistic, tribal Kurdish idealism but as much against the exploitation of womanhood and also against herself and her own weaknesses.
She was also later to stand accused of vainglorious ambitious plans intent because of her exposure in the press and on television
Yet any undertones of self aggrandisment are dispelled by the often heroic actions and fortitude shown on the frontline of battle.
Palani is the daughter of Iranian Kurds and was born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, in 1993. The family emigrated to Denmark when she was three and she was a student when the Syrian conflict first began. She went to Kurdistan, she says, “to fight for women’s rights, for democracy – for the European values I learned as a Danish girl”.
She encountered not only the horrors of urban warfare but the scourge of sexual cruelty and people trafficking.
Islamic fundamentalism begat such horror as ISIS and Al-Queada and is seared into the Western psyche with images of hooded figures against a black and white scripted black drop committing the ultimate savagery -- beheading.
It it also exemplified and manifested in the pathos of fleeing migrants and in the vivid imagery of bombed out villages, the aftermath of the mayhem and madness of the Middle East at war.
This is war, not only between national identities but between political and religious ideologies.
It was a revolution too, a “democratic assault” against the 30-year dynastic regime of the Assad family.
It spread its gruesome conflict across four countries - Syria, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and the disputed national concept of Kurdistan.
And it is with the Kurds that Joanna played the warrior woman.
It was an awful, terrifying experience which had no boundaries of barbarity.
As Joanna tells it: “ We were so few and they were so many…no matter who you were or what you did you got shot at ….it just rained and rained bullets and explosions. All day, all night”
It was a growing and bloody war, she says, with Daesh (ISIS) much stronger and threatening than expected.
Yet it was also Jonna’s “women’s revolution”. She was not always on the “frontline”. She returned at times to Denmark where she was incurring the wrath of the authorities as well as her Danish “countrymen.”
Joanna was taken into custody in Copenhagen after she flew back to the Middle East in defiance of a travel ban.
The move to jail her for fighting against Isis prompted accusations of hypocrisy in Denmark - because of the way the liberal nation treats returning jihadism.
In a closed court hearing in she admitted to breaking her ban and was jailed for six months.
Joanna sees her ordeal as being part of a bigger ideological project, fighting for women, fighting for private happiness as well as public justice.
“It is not death that haunted me on the battlefield. It was my life. I don’t regret anything I’ve done: there is no longer an Islamic state, there is no longer a caliphate ….we won”.