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The opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the participants, not of Reuters News. There is a general belief, at least amongst the Islamic State militants, that if you're killed by a woman, you're not going to go to paradise.

So this makes them particularly a threat.

Islamic State has many enemies,

Islamic State has many enemies, around the world and in the Middle East, but there's one group of fighters that the men of Islamic State fear more than others, because to be killed by them doesn't lead to martyrdom but to an eternity in hell. These fearsome

warriors are members of the Kurdish women's protection units and in this week's

war college we look at the role they and other women are playing in the war against

Islamic State.

You're listening to War College, a weekly discussion of a world in conflict focusing on the stories behind the

front lines.

Here's your host, Jason Fields.

Hello and welcome to War college. I'm Reuters opinion editor Jason Fields and I am

Matthew Galt contributing editor at Wars Boren. Today we're speaking with

journalist Benedetta Argentina.

She spent the last few years covering the wars in Iraq and Syria, and she does it from the

female perspective, which can't make life life easy I'm going to guess.

Benedetta thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for having me. So in the West

there's this narrative that Kurdish forces deploy women onto the battlefield in combat roles and that women are

equally in the fray and I just wondered how true that was. I think that first we need to make a clarification because we

...