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Politics

Syria: Kurdish women soldiers against jihadists.

March 10, 2014

According to the United Nations, more than 100,000 people have died in the civil war in Syria so far. The real number of dead is probably much higher. Many "Free Armies" have formed in the country, and they all want one thing: to topple Bashar al-Assad.

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Syria's Kurds are campaigning for their own autonomous region in the northeast of the country. They've largely managed to drive out Assad's troops. A third of the members of militia now fighting against radical Islamists are women. The Kurdish People's Defense Units, the YPG, were founded in 2012 to keep the civil war out of the region as much as possible.