GIRL ON FIRE
Women Freedom Fighters Take on ISIS
By Valerry Mannarino
(Editor’s Note: Please join us in welcoming guest blogger and author Valerry Mannarino.)
In many ways, the actions of the women of Yazidi – who have taken up arms to enact revenge on ISIS for the kidnapping, rape, and murder of thousands of Yazidis – mirror challenges I am managing in my own life. Having survived several toxic relationships, including one with my father, I vividly recall the time when I made the decision to reclaim my life.
When I was asked to write an article about these women freedom fighters in Iraq I, at first, said, “Mayb
e.” Not because I couldn’t connect, but because I knew I’d connect at such a deep level that I wasn’t sure I could remain impartial. I did a number of searches, watched videos about the plight of the Yazidis, and then I saw the image to the right. Now it really did become very personal. The young girl in this photo resembles my own daughter. I couldn’t help but think to myself that while my daughter is at cheerleading camp, this child, this beautiful blue eyed angel is running for her life. I suspect it’s images like these that haunt the Yazidi women and give them the fuel – the platform based in justice and revenge – to fight back.
Who are these women? They are the daughters, the sisters, the cousins, the nieces, and the mothers’ of the thousands of Kurdish people being targeted by ISIS jihadists. The Yazidis are regarded by some as “devil worshipers” on account of some of their unusual beliefs. One part of their religious background includes an ancient faith called Zoroastrianism, one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions. Zoroastrians believe that the elements are pure and that fire represents God‘s light or wisdom. Fire is seen as the supreme symbol of purity, and sacred fires are maintained in “Fire Temples”. This sect believes in dualism, cosmic dualism, and moral dualism. Dualism in Zoroastrianism is the existence, yet complete separation, of good and evil. Cosmic dualism refers to the ongoing battle between good and evil in the universe. Moral dualism refers to the ongoing battle between good and evil in the mind of man. As the people of Yazidi watch their men executed, their women kidnapped and sold as sex slaves, and their children left to die of starvation and thirst – from an objective point of view – I can’t help but ask, are the Yazidi people wrong?
In the summer of 2014 ISIS stormed into the northern Iraqi community of the Yazidi people, killing thousands and sending thousands more into the Sinjar Mountains seeking refuge. The brutality of the IS militants, whose organization is founded on incredibly corrupt ideology, prompted many to take up arms and to fight back, including many women. Today the PKK, (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) which is actively engaged against ISIS, is made up of over 40% women who prepare, train, and fight alongside their male comrades. Many of the women are survivors of captivity by ISIS and have now joined forces to drive ISIS out of Sinjar and surrounding areas. In many cases, they are volunteers who simply have the foresight to sacrifice the now for the liberation of the future. [Editor’s Note: The PKK (Kurdistan Worker’s Party) has been directly implicated in continued civil unrest and an attempted military coup in Turkey. The Sinjar Resistance Units, to which this article refers, are “a non-political Yazidi militia formed in Iraq in 2007 to protect the Yazidi community in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan in the wake of attacks by Iraqi insurgents.”]
To the Islamic State, women are nothing more than objects to be used for a man’s pleasure. Many videos can be found showing IS fighters sitting around discussing the buying and selling of Yazidi women (for a price as little as a pack of cigarettes), the brutal murder of women who refuse to have sex with ISIS fighters, and Yazidi women and children being burned alive by their ISIS captors. Blonde haired Yazidi girls, from a minority group of Aryan decent, are especially hated by Daesh (ISIS Arabic acronym). To ISIS these women must be impregnated, to smash this bloodline. How does the mind of man reach such a place where human life is to be bartered and so brutally destroyed? The answer to this question is so simple, yet so complex. It has been studied by the world’s leading psychological experts and scientists for centuries, the answer lies in the belief system of the mind.
Too many of us wander around our lives going from one activity to the next, having one conversation after another, but giving little thought to what is actually happening around us. We’ve been trained to unreservedly trust everything that comes through our sensory filters. If it looks right, sounds right, smells right, tastes right, and feels right, then it must be right. Until. Until you have that moment in your life when something happens. That moment that clearly reveals evidence your sensory filters are corrupt and that you’ve been lying to yourself all this time. That moment that you realize your mind is in fact being controlled by something or someone other than yourself.
What many don’t understand is that there are actually two minds in operation within every human body. The subconscious mind, otherwise referred to as our unconscious mind is responsible for the automated functions we engage in every day. This part of our mind is being downloaded with information about our identity, our family, our cultural and moral values, and our place in the world from conception to around the age of seven because during this time our brains are operating mostly in the theta wave brain state. Much research has been completed and published on the theta state, also known as the hypnotic state. It enables every word, every action, every event, and every person that is operating within our reality to implant suggestions that will take root and by which 95% of every decision or choice we make from that point on in our lives to be directly controlled from this “place”. If our subconscious mind has been filled with hate, bigotry, emotional neglect, and a myriad of other dysfunctions, as in the case of many terrorists, we will likely go into the world providing it for others and looking for it for ourselves. We will cause pain, even if it’s unintentional. No matter how much logic we attempt to engage when making decisions and choices, the subconscious mind will dictate how we experience that choice.
The importance of this understanding is, quite simply, that the jihadists are asleep. They are walking, talking, breathing manifestations of a horribly immoral belief system that was downloaded into their subconscious minds, probably since birth, by the very people they call family and friends. They lack the awareness, ability, or even desire to engage in objective consideration of their own actions. This begs the questions: What would it take to “make the unconscious conscious”? Would it be possible to “armor them with awareness?” What would happen if an Islamic terrorist called up his higher mind – the conscious mind – and asked it a question like; if my religion is the righteous one and founded on a God of compassion and mercy, what sense does it make for me to engage in the slaughter and exploitation of innocent people?
The women of Kurdistan have come to realize that psychological warfare is on their side. To an ISIS fighter, being killed by a woman negates their ever being able to enter heaven. Simply seeing women in battle fatigues and carrying assault weapons approaching, has them retreating like frightened dogs with tails between legs. These women know they are fighting the walking dead. Empty shells of empty bodies whose souls have been destroyed by runaway egos, a very long time ago.
The nearly incomprehensible tragedy is that there are still thousands of women being held captive by Daesh fighters and the money to locate and rescue them is running out. Non-profit NGOs (non-governmental organizations) from all over the world are attempting to aid the refugees. We live during a time in history and human evolution where it is now more important than ever for people to wake-up and join the fight. While there is much being done through organizations like USAID, UNHCR, and UNICEF, there is so much more that ordinary people can do to support victims of oppression in our World. The big charity groups are well-known: Medicines Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent, and Save the Children, just to name a few.
I remember the exact moment I woke up. It was a watershed moment that suddenly, clearly showed me that I had been living in a matrix. A matrix designed to keep me scared, small, and silent. Once I saw the truth of life, of how our society operates in a similar matrix, only on a collective plane, I learned that what my captors truly wanted was my true nature. My nurturing, my compassion, my generous spirit, and the unscripted goodness within me. When I realized those attributes were my keys to liberation, I was boggled that it took me well over two decades to solve the puzzle. I didn’t have to launch a counter attack. I already had the power to unlock my cage. I just had to start being me. The Yazidi women are the most effective weapon, just themselves.
Darkness cannot exist where there is light. I imagine the women of Yazidi had a similar awakening. It’s simply being a woman that scares the militants. It’s time for society to hang up the neurotic naiveté and when trying to decide which side you belong to, ask yourself, which side feels better? I’m with the women of fire and my hope is that they continue to send evil back to its rightful place in this universe, the burning depths of hell.
For more information about the plight of the Yazidi, the ongoing fight being waged against tyranny by the Yazidi Women, and humanitarian and educational projects to support the Yazidi People, visit Yazda – A Global Yazidi Organization.
“Ground truth…”
RTS Global Consulting LLC
INFO@RTSGlobalConsult.com
www.rtsglobalconsult.com
Source and Background Information
Yazidi Women
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQZR6xzDkjc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWkQ9JMIbWg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bO1r0s2mw1k
http://www.middleeasteye.net/in-depth/features/female-guerrilla-fighters-pkk-2044198184
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/sep/11/women-taking-on-isis
Biology of Beliefs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jjj0xVM4x1I
Theta Brain Waves/Hypnosis/Trance State
http://www.thetahealing.com/about-thetahealing/thetahealing-theta-state.html
http://www.finerminds.com/mind-power/brain-waves/
http://www.healyourlife.com/are-you-programmed-at-birth
Mind of a Terrorist Publication
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/inside-the-terrorist-mind/
Zoroastrianism
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/zoroastrian/
Islam
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/william-c-chittick-phd/islam-as-a-religion-of-lo_b_757352.html
AUTHOR’S COMMENTS
Several paragraphs were from material that wasn’t a singular publication or article. It was a compilation of many hours of research in studying how one becomes and remains captive, psychological slavery, even when logical and rational thought processing is engaged. Then on the flip side, what is the psychological and emotional composition of the perpetrator. I did a deep dive into the making of a victim, and conversely the making of a dangerous person by understanding the childhood environment, life events, cultural loading and other factors in which the person was raised. Knowing that children are in a theta (hypnotic) brain state in their early years, one can deduce the composition of the family of origin, their behaviors and personality characteristics, and come to a fairly accurate profile of the person that child becomes simply by understanding what was downloaded into them early on. This is to varying degrees, of course, and no one can properly diagnose a single person or an entire group of people as A, B, or C unless they have been observed by experts over a period of time.
Also, there will be exceptions. There will be people whose will to do what’s right, is stronger than their will to remain engaged in wrong-doing, for example. However, what can be determined by the overall actions of a “system” of people, is what the core beliefs of their leaders are. Leaders in any social system are known for their ability to charm, persuade and at times convince entire nations that something many or most other people would find appalling, is just and sensible. We only need read a history book to see this concept (Hitler, Stalin, etc.), repeated time and time again.
So the creative interpretation on the profile of a terrorist’s mind in this article is founded on knowing that psychologically and emotionally, there is a break in the psyche of the perpetrator. Do they actually have awareness of what they are doing? The short answer is yes, but not in the same way a neuro-typical individual has awareness. Do they feel guilty? Yes, it is likely that they do. However, and again, they do not enjoy a feeling of guilt in the same way a “normal”, healthy individual may feel it. Their guilt is being felt from a place of shame, and because that shame essentially makes them feel the guilt at a raw, visceral level, it actually causes them to act more atrociously. The thought process is “how dare you make me feel this and I don’t like it, you must be punished.” They are not able to understand that the victim they are experiencing reality with right now, is not the person responsible for perpetuating the feelings of guilt and shame that are causing them to act out. In this scenario, the terrorists have essentially dehumanized a sect of people based on religious views that they themselves hold in their paradigms as heretical and hold the Yazidis in contempt for it. When you are the target of contempt, you have essentially been dismissed. That is an extremely dangerous place to live in…
Referenced Field Experts
Author: Valerry Mannarino
Valerry Mannarino is a Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania freelance writer. She has a successful career in talent acquisition and is highly recognized in her field. In her spare time she enjoys life with her two children and is pursuing her dream of being a successful author. She has had to overcome and transcend tragedy in her life, and this is reflective in her writings. She hopes one day to use the knowledge and inspiration she has acquired to help others in overcoming trauma in larger capacities and forums. Her first formal publication will be available in early 2017. You can reach-out to Valerry at zenlife0510@gmail.com. In the near future you’ll be able to see her at http://www.wanderingwonderland.co.