They Cut Her Braid, Not Her People

Rabar Khadir Omer – Activist

A braid is not merely a physical attribute; within Kurdish cultural and social tradition, it constitutes a visible embodiment of history, dignity, and collective belonging. It is shaped through intergenerational care—woven by mothers, honoured by grandmothers, and worn by daughters as an affirmation of identity and continuity. In this context, a braid functions as a repository of memory and a marker of communal existence.

The circulation of visual material depicting a man holding a severed braid as a display of domination carries an immediate and profound significance for Kurdish communities. Regardless of the extent to which external observers recognise its meaning, Kurds understand such imagery as a deliberate act of symbolic violence. The braid in question did not represent an individual alone; it stood for a Kurdish woman who refused enforced silence, who chose resistance over submission, and whose bodily integrity was targeted as a means of collective humiliation.

The act of cutting her braid was intended to degrade her, to undermine her dignity, and to project power through public desecration. It rested on the assumption that identity could be dismantled through physical violation and that resistance could be erased through spectacle. This assumption fundamentally misjudged the nature of Kurdish resilience.

Within Kurdish ethical and political consciousness, the braid is not revered because of the violence inflicted upon it, but because of the principle for which the woman stood. Kurdish women, particularly in Rojava, did not engage in armed resistance for recognition or symbolic prestige. Their struggle was grounded in the defence of civilian life, the protection of communities from systematic terror, and the preservation of human dignity in the face of extremist violence. They fought while others delayed, negotiated, or ultimately withdrew, leaving behind unfulfilled commitments of protection.

Many within the Kurdish collective memory identify the perpetrators of such acts with ISIS, a group that institutionalised the weaponisation of women’s bodies and sought to transform cultural symbols into instruments of fear. Whether her name is formally recorded in international documentation is secondary to the fact that her significance has already been inscribed in Kurdish collective consciousness.

What followed the act of humiliation, however, reveals its ultimate failure. The cutting of one braid did not result in erasure; it generated multiplication. Across Kurdistan and throughout the diaspora, families reaffirmed cultural continuity through renewed acts of care and resistance. Daughters’ hair was braided with greater intentionality, mothers infused each strand with resolve, and what was intended to shame one woman instead mobilised a shared sense of defiance.

Kurdish suffering is not experienced in isolation. It is collectively borne, transmitted across borders, and recognised instinctively within the community. Acts intended as victories of domination instead stand as evidence of moral and political failure.

The severed braid did not mark the conclusion of her story; it amplified it. It confronts the international community with an enduring ethical question—one that history will continue to pose: how can those who protected others be so readily abandoned, and who bears responsibility for protecting the protectors?

Her hair was cut, but Kurdish women remain standing.
Her braid was taken, but Kurdish dignity endures.
And as long as her story is known, remembered, and transmitted, defeat was never hers.