Hanna Bohman

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Hanna Bohman is a Canadian former model who decided to travel to Syria to become a fighter with the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ).

She decided to join the Kurdish forces in Syria after watching a propaganda video of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) featuring Canadian John Maguire. [1] [2] He had gone to fight for the militant group and appeared in propaganda videos to incite Canadians to launch attacks in their own country. [3] Bohman told Vice that she also wanted to do something useful with her life after surviving a near fatal motorcycle accident. She told them that "I had wasted so much of my life trying to make a living, that I hadn't actually started to live. Fighting the Satanic State and being part of the revolution in Rojava is a dream come true. Not that I dreamed of killing people, but that I am now truly useful." [4]

A former model with A.B.C., she told the channel CTV Vancouver that "I needed to do something with my life. I was bored. I didn't feel like I had done anything that I felt was really important". She was smuggled into the country and decided to join the YPJ because she felt they were fighting for women's rights in the region. [5]

Bohman's nom de guerre is Tiger Sun. She worked for a defensive unit of the YPJ in 2015 before returning to Canada after suffering from malnutrition. But she soon decided to return to Rojava. [6]

Bohman took part in the battle of Tel Abyad, Tel Tamir and Suluk in 2015. [2]

In an interview of June 2017, she told the BBC that her intention was to help fight for women's rights in the Middle East. [7] In 2017, a documentary called Fear Us Women [8] was released telling the story of her experiences with the YPJ. [9]

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References

  1. "The Canadian model fighting ISIS in Syria tells us that they're easier to defeat than you'd think". Business Insider. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  2. 1 2 "Canadian fighting ISIS shares harsh realities of war". National Observer. 2016-01-14. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  3. "John Maguire, Ottawa man fighting for ISIS, urges attacks on Canadian targets in video". CBC. Retrieved 2 May 2020.
  4. "We Spoke to the Former Model Who Joined the Kurdish Fight Against ISIS". Vice (in Swedish). 2015-10-29. Retrieved 2017-11-07.
  5. "'This is where I want to be': Canadian woman on fighting ISIS in Syria". CTVNews. 2017-04-23. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  6. Smith, Allan. "The Canadian model fighting ISIS in Syria tells us that they're easier to defeat than you'd think". Business Insider. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  7. "The ex-model fighting IS". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  8. "Fear Us Women - Official Film Site". Fear Us Women. Retrieved 2021-06-06.
  9. O'Malley, Katie (2017-12-20). "Meet The Canadian Who Fights ISIS Alongside 10,000 Women". ELLE. Retrieved 2020-05-02.