Sporting a long blue dress and white headscarf, Umm Omar barely blinks as she whips out a pistol in her garden. For her, the gun is a necessary evil to protect her young family.
“I hate the sound of gunfire, but it is the terrorists who have forced me to learn to handle a gun to protect my children and my home,” the 27-year-old mother of three says almost matter-of-factly, while deftly handling the weapon.
Umm Omar lives with her family in Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar, one of Iraq’s most violent regions. She is among a growing number of young mothers who have learned to use a weapon to fend off insurgents targeting the families of civil servants and security personnel.
“A few months ago, a group of gunmen tried to burgle our home,” notes husband Ahmed Karim, a police sergeant whose work frequently keeps him away from home for days at a stretch.
“I was not there, but my wife’s screams alerted the neighbors,” the 32-year-old adds, noting that the gang fled before completing their mission. “After that, I decided to teach her how to use a pistol.”
Following the US-led invasion to oust Saddam Hussein in 2003, Anbar became the center of a vicious insurgency that was only put down after Sunni tribes and their militias sided with the US military against al-Qaeda.
Today, violence levels are dramatically lower in the province, where safety remains precarious despite major security improvements.
Many wives of civil servants, security personnel, elected provincial officials and journalists began arming themselves in June last year, when insurrectionists attacked the homes of notable residents or members of the police force.
In this largely desert province where the arid plain is interrupted by meadows and orchards on both banks of the Euphrates river, the foliage provides effective camouflage for gunmen, whose weapons of choice are handguns and the AK-47 assault rifle.
“As the wives of people responsible for maintaining security, we must protect our families when our men are protecting the country,” says Ghada Ahmed, 24.
“It is they [the wives] who defend the home in the evenings when their husbands are away, or when they return tired from work,” adds the robust mother of four, dressed in a colorful printed dress and pink Islamic headscarf.
“It was the continuous attacks that pushed us to react,” she says, referring to the 10,000 soldiers and police officers killed since 2003 by insurrectionists who consider them “henchmen of the [American] occupiers.”
In mid-June, a former member of the anti-al-Qaeda militia and five members of his family were killed in an armed night attack on his home close to Fallujah, another restive city in Anbar.
Paradoxically, in this religiously conservative region where women usually keep a low profile, the police and tribal chiefs, as well as religious dignitaries, take a positive view of women who are ready to defend themselves and their homes.
“This is an evolution toward modernity. We do not have any objection — quite the contrary,” assures General Bahaa al-Qaisi, head of the provincial police force.
“It is necessary that they [women] help us because we do not have enough police officers to protect everyone,” he adds about a province where a police force of 24,000 has to look after nearly 2 million inhabitants.
For Adnan Khamis, a leader of the al-Bualwan clan, the bravery of the women evokes memories of Islam’s glorious past.
“Seeing women carry arms is [a sign of] great nobility,” he says, adding that “women always took part in the wars alongside men and held their place in history.”
Even religious leaders approve of this.
“For a woman, learning how to handle a weapon to protect her children and home is inscribed in Islamic law and mentioned in the words of the Prophet [Mohammed],” said an imam of Ramadi, who did not want to give his name.
In late October of 1873 the government of Japan decided against sending a military expedition to Korea to force that nation to open trade relations. Across the government supporters of the expedition resigned immediately. The spectacle of revolt by disaffected samurai began to loom over Japanese politics. In January of 1874 disaffected samurai attacked a senior minister in Tokyo. A month later, a group of pro-Korea expedition and anti-foreign elements from Saga prefecture in Kyushu revolted, driven in part by high food prices stemming from poor harvests. Their leader, according to Edward Drea’s classic Japan’s Imperial Army, was a samurai
Located down a sideroad in old Wanhua District (萬華區), Waley Art (水谷藝術) has an established reputation for curating some of the more provocative indie art exhibitions in Taipei. And this month is no exception. Beyond the innocuous facade of a shophouse, the full three stories of the gallery space (including the basement) have been taken over by photographs, installation videos and abstract images courtesy of two creatives who hail from the opposite ends of the earth, Taiwan’s Hsu Yi-ting (許懿婷) and Germany’s Benjamin Janzen. “In 2019, I had an art residency in Europe,” Hsu says. “I met Benjamin in the lobby
April 22 to April 28 The true identity of the mastermind behind the Demon Gang (魔鬼黨) was undoubtedly on the minds of countless schoolchildren in late 1958. In the days leading up to the big reveal, more than 10,000 guesses were sent to Ta Hwa Publishing Co (大華文化社) for a chance to win prizes. The smash success of the comic series Great Battle Against the Demon Gang (大戰魔鬼黨) came as a surprise to author Yeh Hung-chia (葉宏甲), who had long given up on his dream after being jailed for 10 months in 1947 over political cartoons. Protagonist
A fossil jawbone found by a British girl and her father on a beach in Somerset, England belongs to a gigantic marine reptile dating to 202 million years ago that appears to have been among the largest animals ever on Earth. Researchers said on Wednesday the bone, called a surangular, was from a type of ocean-going reptile called an ichthyosaur. Based on its dimensions compared to the same bone in closely related ichthyosaurs, the researchers estimated that the Triassic Period creature, which they named Ichthyotitan severnensis, was between 22-26 meters long. That would make it perhaps the largest-known marine reptile and would