Kurdish women battle ISIS

Brandishing Kalashnikov assault rifles and wearing military fatigues, the women perform military parade drills at a memorial ceremony for slain fighters in a dusty lot in northern Syria.
"Our martyrs do not die. They live on in memory!" their Kurdish commander, dressed in green camouflage and wearing a pistol on her belt, declares as the scores of uniformed female militants stand at attention.

Kurdish fighters from the People's Protection Units (YPG), they have fought the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) on the ground for more than a year.

Female Peshmerga on the front lines Kurdish reporter on women fighting ISIS Kurdish fighters make gains against ISIS ISIS in line of sight of Turkey.

They are fighting and bleeding on the front lines of the battle to keep the terror group out of Kurdish-controlled parts of northern Syria -- and to keep this Kurdish movement's ideology, which was founded partly on a pillar of gender equality, intact.

"We as women defend and protect our people," said Hadiye Yusuf, the female co-president of the largest of the three Kurdish enclaves in northern Syria, in an address at the memorial ceremony.

"We carry weapons to protect our homes and avoid becoming slaves of ISIS," she added.

The fiercely secular YPG stands in sharp contrast to its bitter enemy, which has kidnapped thousands of women and hid them from public life in the areas that they control -- a chilling reminder of what could await Kurdish women if the war against ISIS is lost.

It was only recently that the YPG started to receive help from the United States in the form of weapons drops and airstrikes designed to blunt the advance of ISIS, which now controls large parts of Syria and Iraq.

The much-needed aid was a surprising turn of events for the YPG -- a group that includes many fighters who have long battled Turkey, a key partner in the American-led NATO alliance.