Dohuk, Iraq (CNN)"Our hearts were broken, we were separated, and now we live with no hope," the lyrics ring out plaintively as singer Xate Shingali performs against a backdrop of rolling hills.
But
the folk star could have little idea just how prescient her words,
reflecting on the troubled history of the Yazidi people, would be.
Just
a year after this song was uploaded to YouTube, ISIS fighters stormed
Iraq's Sinjar province, home to the country's small Yazidi minority, and
sparking terror across the region.
Now, instead of singing songs of love and loss, Shingali is issuing a battle cry.
She
has laid down her instruments and taken up arms to fight those accused
of committing genocide against her people, as the head of the Sun
Brigade, an all-women unit of the Peshmerga, the Kurdish armed forces.
Shingali
says she would not normally condone violence, but that the Islamic
militants' brutality has left her and her comrades with little choice.
"There
should be no killing in the world," she says. "In the Yazidi book, it
says to have a clean heart. Every person must do this.
"But what do you do when you need to fight, when there is no one to defend you and your family?"
5 photos: The women's battalion fighting ISIS
ISIS
considers the Yazidi -- monotheists who believe the Earth has been left
in the care of a peacock angel -- to be devil-worshippers, and has
subjected them to large-scale persecution.
In
August 2014, thousands of Yazidis fled their homes after militants
raided Sinjar and ordered them to convert to Islam or leave; hundreds of
men were killed, and many women and girls were abducted and sold into slavery.
The stories of those women who managed to escape, bringing with them terrifying tales of their ordeals at the hands of ISIS, sparked fury in those lucky enough to be spared.
That
fury -- and a determination to take action, to defend the Yazidi people
-- helped inspire Shingali to create the Sun Brigade.
Its
newest recruits, young Yazidi women, standing proud in their starched,
spotless uniforms and still-shiny boots, have defiant messages for ISIS.
"We
are Yazidi. We are women. And we will destroy you and anyone who
touches our women and dirties our lands," one of them tells CNN.
"We are Peshmerga and we will take the eyes of anyone who touches our girls."
Yazidi women raped and sold by ISIS 03:39
"You will never be able to take away our honour," insists another. "We will liberate our homeland."
The Sun Brigade's members say they never thought they would become soldiers.
"But
after Daesh came to Sinjar, we left our jobs, our schools, we left
everything," explains one of the recruits, using the pejorative Arabic
name for ISIS. "This is not about money or power. It's about protecting
our body as women."
The
Sun Brigade is currently undergoing basic training. It won't be posted
on the frontline just yet -- that decision rests with the Kurdish
government -- but the plan is for it to support Kurdish forces hoping to
regain territory lost to ISIS.
"Daesh
will be scared of us," says one of the women, using an alternative name
for the terror group. "Because we are going in as Peshmerga and fighting
them directly."
The women are not battle-tested; most had never held a gun before they signed up. But there is no shortage of volunteers.
"A
lot of women and girls have contacted us, wanting to join up," says
Shingali. "You have to go to their father or mother [to get their
permission], and they say, 'That's my girl, you can take them to fight
anywhere.'
Yazidis 'killing themselves in ISIS slavery' 03:38
"All the families are proud to have their child in the Peshmerga."
The
trainee soldiers say they joined up "to save our family, our city, our
body -- to save ourselves. People want to kill us, and we want to save
ourselves."
They
say they have been profoundly changed by what ISIS did to their
homeland, and their people -- and that they are determined to make the
militants pay.
"I am the sister of the
girls you captured, the daughter of the mothers you hold," one says, in a
message for ISIS and its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
"I
am not the same person I was the day Daesh entered Sinjar. I am
Peshmerga. I wait to fight, and to liberate our sisters and mothers from
your dirty hands."
And they insist
they are not afraid of what they may face on the battlefield: "We are
not scared," says one. "We will be very happy to wear the Peshmerga
uniform."
Shingali, too, insists she
doesn't think about the risk of dying or being injured; she has one aim
-- to bring those kidnapped by ISIS and subjected to brutal rape and
horrific abuse home safely.
"One day you will get back to your family," she vows to the missing. "We won't give up."
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