Know the Syrian warrior queen leading women's brigade against Assad

New Delhi: A Syrian mother of seven was so determined to help fight against Bashar Al Assad that she divorced her husband to lead a 40-strong women's brigade. Khowleh, the name she adopted after the uprising began, started the brigade in February 2012 and the women fought on the frontlines with guns.When the revolt broke out in Deraa, a few kilometres from her home village of Hirak, Khowleh supported the regime of Bashar Al Assad, and dismissed the stories of unarmed protesters being shot dead in the streets. It was a month after the rebellion started, at the funeral of a well-respected doctor who was killed while treating wounded civilians, that she realised the regime was gunning down innocent people for daring to question its right to rule. She was so incensed that she joined demonstrations to help the revolution. She was quickly adopted in Hirak as a talisman, marching at the head of demonstrations of hundreds of people. She led them in chants cursing Al Assad as a coward and traitor, and demanding freedom and democracy. But her new found politics did not please her husband, who she had married when she was 15 and lived with in Hirak, Khowleh. When he demanded that she pick him or the cause, she choose her brigade and the couple divorced. Khowleh used her gender to her advantage when helping to free local men as women were targeted less on visits to military bases and checkpoints - she helped free 15 men. By early 2012, the violence had increased. Khowleh had been at numerous protests in which civilians had been shot dead. Tanks entered her village, more than a dozen people from her extended family had been killed or wounded and Syria seemed to be at war. Convinced that peaceful protests would not work and that civilians had no choice but to defend themselves, she began smuggling weapons through checkpoints, and decided to start an armed brigade with 40 of her female friends. Her brigade, the Khowleh bint Al Azwar, named after a female Arab warrior from the 7th century, was born in February 2012. A video showing half a dozen women concealed by black headscarves and sunglasses and holding assault rifles was posted on YouTube to mark the occasion. The women fought alongside all male-brigades, but they disbanded after thousands of people fled and members became fewer. The Khowleh bint Al Azwar brigade broke down by mid-2012, its members scattered as the warfare intensified and thousands of civilians fled Deraa province. Khowleh was among those who crossed the border to safety in Jordan, arriving in the autumn of last year.