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Female Kurdish fighters are the hidden face of Syria's armed rebellion against Bashar al-Assad/ The YPG, which recently joined forces with Syrian opposition rebels, is the armed wing of the Democratic Union Party (PYD), widely considered the Syrian offshoot of Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)..Unlike their Arab counterparts, Kurdish women have a long tradition of combat roles. The PKK's fierce women fighters grabbed worldwide attention in the mid-1990s with their frightening zeal in launching suicide bombings..But women combatants, no matter what their ethnicity, still stand out as a striking anomaly in Syria's male-dominated rebellion..Some media reports indicate that women are part of both pro- and anti-regime armed forces, but their presence is far less visible on the front lines compared to Kurdish fighters.. (KEYSTONE/NOOR/Stanley Greene)