Saeid Hussein, a commander of the YPJ, the women’s wing of the Kurdish YPG force that controls Syria’s Kurdish regions, announced the swap.
“We arrested two ISIS members; one of them was a woman. We exchanged this woman for 50 Yezidi women,” he said.
There was some controversy, however, about the details of the exchange. Some sources said the swap took place because the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) had paid to secure the women’s release – something it has been doing since ISIS attacked Yezidi Shingal and kidnapped thousands of women in August 2014.
Qasim Darbo, a Peshmerga commander in Shingal, told Rudaw that his forces had ordered the YPJ to go ahead with the swap.
“They had no choice but to rescue them (the Yezidi women),” he said. “We had a military order to fight them (YPG) if they had refused.”
