Posted on 01/25/2013 6:27:49 PM PST by cunning_fish
BEIRUT The Syrian regime is arming and training Syrian women to fight for President Bashar al-Assad, putting it out in front of the Pentagon when it comes to sending women to the front lines.
A video posted on Russia Todays Arabic channel from the central city of Homs shows dozens of women in combat fatigues marching around a training ground carrying Kalashnikovs, performing drills and chanting slogans in support of Assad. Be prepared Syria. Stand up Assad, they shout. With our blood and our soul we protect you Bashar. The trainer explains that the women are trained to use Kalashnikovs, heavy machine guns and grenades, and taught to storm and control checkpoints. Im an employee, but I think its good to learn how to carry weapons and protect my country, one of the recruits tells the camera.
The formation of the force comes amid speculation that the regular Syrian army, depleted by defections, desertions and thousands of casualties, is becoming stretched by the effort to suppress Syrias 22-month-old uprising. According to a report in Britains Independent newspaper, the all-female force, named the Lionesses for National Defence, is part of an effort to supplement the army with a National Defense Force militia made up of civilian volunteers.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
They force women out of cars with deliberate roughness, rip off their veils and scream insults at them, said Majd Amer, the pseudonym of an activist in Homs interviewed by Skype. They treat them like they are female terrorists. They call them al-Qaeda and say, the veil wont protect you.
Assads regime repeatedly emphasizes its secular roots in the battle against an increasingly Sunni Islamist rebellion, helping sustain the support of minorities such as the Christians and his own Alawite sect, but also further accentuating the countrys sectarian divide. A woman wearing a headscarf would be assumed to be Sunni, and therefore fall under suspicion as a possible supporter of the revolution. Likewise, said Amer, It is impossible that a lady wearing the veil would join this militia.
The Independent likens the Lionesses to the female bodyguards maintained by the late Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi, who was as notoriously fond of surrounding himself with women as he was of persecuting Islamists.
It is not, however, the first time Syrian women have served in the military. A bizarre video dating back to the 1980s shows a platoon of female soldiers biting the heads off live snakes at a military parade in front of Assads father and predecessor, President Hafez al-Assad. The women then don aprons, barbecue the snakes and eat them.
The video surfaced last year after former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly posted it on his Web site, saying it had been given to him by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein a sworn foe of Assad during a secret visit he made to Baghdad in 1983 as Mideast envoy.
Guilty
They force women out of cars with deliberate roughness, rip off their veils and scream insults at them, said Majd Amer, the pseudonym of an activist in Homs interviewed by Skype. They treat them like they are female terrorists. They call them al-Qaeda and say, the veil wont protect you.
And that’s a bad thing?
It's no wonder so many Syrian men look angry all the time. Now Israeli women are different . . .
Not that much divercity actually.
Didn’t khadaffy have the same sort of women amazon death squads, just before teh end?
Now we know why our dictator’s doing the same thing.
Muslims are forbidden to eat snakes. Along with a pantheon of Alawite saints that includes Plato and Aristotle, along with the Alawite profession of faith (there is no God but Ali*) I'd say this dietary practice suggests Alawites are fringe Muslims, if they're Muslims at all.
* Muslims worship Allah, not Ali. Imagine someone who called himself a Christian because he worshiped Joseph Smith.
I don’t think if both Assad and his dad are about to give a rat’s ass about islam and that is forbidden there.
They are Baathists. Aren’t they?
“Stand up, Asshat!”
The formation of the force comes amid speculation that the regular Syrian army, depleted by defections, desertions and thousands of casualties, is becoming stretched by the effort to suppress Syrias 22-month-old uprising.IOW, more PR, more photo-op offensives from the dictatorship. Instead of having female bodyguards for decades like Ghadafy, Assad Jr is bringing them on now, when he no longer has a choice, and needs to drum up support worldwide from "progressives".
Assads regime repeatedly emphasizes its secular roots in the battle against an increasingly Sunni Islamist rebellion, helping sustain the support of minorities such as the Christians and his own Alawite sect, but also further accentuating the countrys sectarian divide. A woman wearing a headscarf would be assumed to be Sunni...
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