In an interview with Ben Wedeman of CNN, 39 year-old Wahida Mohamed, or Umm Hanadi (Mother of Hanadi) as she’s more familiarly known, sits for her interview dressed in black fatigues and adorning black headscarf. She’s surrounded by armed men who would be more than willing to follow her through the gates of hell.
Umm Hanadi commands a force of approximately 70 men in the town of Shirqat, which is 50 miles south of Mosul – a town that is now freed from ISIS due to her and her men assisting the local government in driving these terrorists out.
Umm Hanadi has been fighting terrorists a little over 12 years now and as a result she has attracted the attention of ISIS and its infamous leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi – al-Baghdadi has even went so far to put a price on her head.
“I began fighting the terrorists in 2004, working with Iraqi security forces and the coalition. I received threats from the top leadership of ISIS, including from Abu Bakr (al-Baghdadi) himself, but I refused. I’m at the top of their most wanted list; even more than the Prime Minister.”
ISIS has tried in vain to kill Umm Hanadi many times. She has had numerous car bombs placed outside her home and has had six assassination attempts on her life. As she pulled her headscarf back to show her scars, she said,
“Six times they tried to assassinate me. I have shrapnel in my head and legs, and my ribs were broken. But all that didn’t stop me from fighting.”
She’s had both of her husbands killed (one in action, the other assassinated by ISIS), her father and three brothers were killed and ISIS even went so far to kill all of her sheep, dogs, and birds.
Umm Hanadi goes on to state that she led her men into multiple battles with ISIS with the commander of ground forces in her native Salahuddin province, General Jamaa Anad, providing her and her men with weapons and vehicles. General Anad said,
“She lost her brothers and husbands as martyrs.”
After the laundry list of attacks against her and family by ISIS, Umm Hanadi had this to say about ISIS:
“I fought them. I beheaded them. I cooked their heads, I burned their bodies. This is all documented [and] you can see it on my Facebook page.“
Her Facebook page contains pictures of her handiwork against ISIS with her posing in pictures next to a recently decapitated head, severed heads cooking in a pot, and burned corpses. She also has pictures of herself with her dead husbands, fighters and generals.
Umm Hanadi is a self-proclaimed “rabat manzal” – a housewife, who has two daughters who are trained to fight like their mother; a mother who truly does not care what ISIS tries to do to her.
[revad2]
