Power Trip
The Groin Kick, and Other Essential Moves
After escaping ISIS, young Yazidi women are learning to fight, thanks to a retired Green Beret
DUHOK, IRAQ — Rojin* closes her eyes. She knows it’s coming. Suddenly, she’s shoved sideways. She responds with force, laying down powerful punches with her palms out as her attacker absorbs the blows. She numbers the strikes in Kurmanji: “Yek, du, sê, çar!” she shouts. Thwack, thwack, thwack, thwack.
“Good,” says her instructor, 37-year-old Cassie Rhodes, moving down the line to the next student.
It’s late August, and we’re in a refugee camp in Northern Iraq that we will not name for security reasons. Rojin, 17, is learning Krav Maga, a self-defense system developed by Jewish athlete Imre Lichtenfeld, in 1930s Czechoslovakia as a way to help his neighbors protect themselves amid widespread anti-Semitic riots. Today, the Israeli Defense Forces trains all of its soldiers in the discipline.
“They were beating me, raping me, doing everything bad.”
Rojin, an ethnic Yazidi, also knows what it’s like to be targeted for her religion. At 14, she was abducted, along with seven of her sisters, by ISIS fighters who had laid siege to her hometown of…
