Kurdish-American pop singer Helly Luv travelled to northern Iraq where she donned a Peshmerga uniform and visited the frontline against ISIS to gyrate before the cameras in a video for a song dubbed "Revolution," offering encouragement to the Kurdish fighters: "Stand up, we are united; together we can survive it… Brothers and sisters we all come from one; Different religions we share the same blood." This has of course won her death threats from ISIS—we can imagine how upset the jihadists must be by a video combining Luv's unabashed sexuality with glorification of the anti-ISIS fighters. She also issued an appeal to President Obama to directly arm the Peshmerga—something he still hasn't done, although various European leaders have. "If we can give the Peshmerga the weapons, they can destroy the enemy. Even right now, they don't have strong weapons, but they're still winning," Helly said.
Unfortunately, things have become rather messy since the Turkish intervention in Iraq of the past two weeks. The leadership of Iraq's Kurdistan Regional Government is acquiescing in Turkey's bombing of PKK fighters within the KRG's own territory—a terrible blow to Kurdish solidarity and the anti-ISIS struggle. We hope that Luv will voice some dissent over this.
