[cunning_fish]

The women have already been deployed on the streets, and though their duties seem confined to checkpoint control, the frequency of rebel attacks against government checkpoints effectively puts them on the frontline. A blurry video posted by activists shows female soldiers at a checkpoint in Homs, and activists in the city say they are often to be seen guarding pro-regime neighborhoods, focusing their attention on women wearing headscarves.

“They force women out of cars with deliberate roughness, rip off their veils and scream insults at them,” said Majd Amer, the pseudonym of an activist in Homs interviewed by Skype. “They treat them like they are female terrorists. They call them al-Qaeda … and say, ‘the veil won’t protect you.’”

Assad’s regime repeatedly emphasizes its secular roots in the battle against an increasingly Sunni Islamist rebellion, helping sustain the support of minorities such as the Christians and his own Alawite sect, but also further accentuating the country’s sectarian divide. A woman wearing a headscarf would be assumed to be Sunni, and therefore fall under suspicion as a possible supporter of the revolution. Likewise, said Amer, “It is impossible that a lady wearing the veil would join this militia.”

The Independent likens the “Lionesses” to the female bodyguards maintained by the late Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gaddafi, who was as notoriously fond of surrounding himself with women as he was of persecuting Islamists.

It is not, however, the first time Syrian women have served in the military. A bizarre video dating back to the 1980s shows a platoon of female soldiers biting the heads off live snakes at a military parade in front of Assad’s father and predecessor, President Hafez al-Assad. The women then don aprons, barbecue the snakes and eat them.

The video surfaced last year after former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reportedly posted it on his Web site, saying it had been given to him by the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein – a sworn foe of Assad – during a secret visit he made to Baghdad in 1983 as Mideast envoy.

[bmwcyle]

Guilty

[Hugin]

“They force women out of cars with deliberate roughness, rip off their veils and scream insults at them,” said Majd Amer, the pseudonym of an activist in Homs interviewed by Skype. “They treat them like they are female terrorists. They call them al-Qaeda … and say, ‘the veil won’t protect you.’”

And that’s a bad thing?

[Navy Patriot]

Interesting. To bad there aren't any scorecards to keep tabs on all the ME sects and seculars, whatta mess.

[dynachrome]

Didn’t khadaffy have the same sort of women amazon death squads, just before teh end?

[Argus]

Now we know why our dictator’s doing the same thing.

[Zhang Fei]

A bizarre video dating back to the 1980s shows a platoon of female soldiers biting the heads off live snakes at a military parade in front of Assad’s father and predecessor, President Hafez al-Assad. The women then don aprons, barbecue the snakes and eat them.

Muslims are forbidden to eat snakes. Along with a pantheon of Alawite saints that includes Plato and Aristotle, along with the Alawite profession of faith (there is no God but Ali*) I'd say this dietary practice suggests Alawites are fringe Muslims, if they're Muslims at all.

* Muslims worship Allah, not Ali. Imagine someone who called himself a Christian because he worshiped Joseph Smith.

[Sivad]

“Stand up, Asshat!”

[JoeProBono]