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When ISIS expanded last June, Omaya sent her sick husband and her four children — two boys, 12 and 8 years old, and two girls, 10 and 2 years old — to the safety of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region in the north. Omaya stayed behind to fight. “We urged her not to take part in the fight. But she insisted,” said her other brother Marwan al-Jbara, a 39-year-old who runs a TV channel.
Omaya was not known as a fighter. Despite the tragedies of losing her father and her brother, she was a happy and loving wife, mother and sister. In al-Alam, she worked as a history teacher. She also studied law and founded a women’s rights organization to promote the status of women in her community. “She was full of joy and very kind,” said Nagham Toshee, a friend of Omaya who worked as a member of the Nineveh Province Council. “She was very generous. She liked music and poetry. She also loved to travel.”
Omaya al-Jbara
For 13 days, Omaya fought with her brothers and cousins to defend her town from the ISIS invasion. They built barriers of sandbags at the southern entrance of the town and fought behind them for protection. In those two weeks, Omaya saw her share of violence.
On the morning of June 22, she was at her older brother’s house. I visited that house as a reporter while covering the Iraqi provincial election in 2009. I met her older brother, Sheikh Khamis, who told me the tragic story of his father's and brother’s deaths in 2007.
When she woke up that morning, Omaya heard of another attack by ISIS fighters that started at 6 am. This time they were attacking from nearby farms. She rushed to the scene. “She knew that our fighters lacked
ammunitions, so she took her AK 47 and another heavy machine-gun with ammunition and brought them to the fighters,” Nazal, the law student, said.
“She told us, ‘We will not let them in.’”
Related: How Yemen Is Making ISIS and al-Qaeda Even More Dangerous
Seven ISIS fighters were killed that morning. “She killed three of them personally,” Nazal confirmed. “After turning her back to the ISIS fighters for a second while trying to hand one of our fighters some ammunition, a sniper shot hit her in the heart. She was silent. She died immediately.”
After her death, the battle raged for another hour-and-a-half. Then ISIS kidnapped dozens of men, women and children from al-Alam while they were trying to flee. The leaders of the town negotiated with ISIS for their release. ISIS insisted on the surrender of the town as a condition, and he next day, al-Alam surrendered to ISIS. Omaya’s brothers fled.
Omaya’s courage inspired many people in Iraq. Her burial turned into a public demonstration against ISIS. Photos and videos went viral on social media sites in Iraq. Iraqi former Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in a statement that Omaya was one of “the women that made the terrorists astonished … with their rare bravery.”
Omaya’s actions came while full divisions of the Iraqi army fled the battlefield with almost no fight. “She was a true hero - way more brave than those filthy army generals who sold Iraq and fled the battle,” said Salama al-Sagban, who runs a women’s right organization in southern Iraq.
Her killing also took place when many people think there is no way back for Iraq anymore. “Unfortunately, the people are divided socially and ideologically. There is no way to restore the unity of the people. I think Iraq as a state has totally collapsed. It is divided in land, people and in the political system. These are the elements of the state,” said Shatha Al Musawi, a former member of parliament.
But Omaya’s brother Nazal thinks otherwise. He honors his sister’s conviction. “They (the al-Jubour tribe) have revolted in several places…. We will spare nothing in the fight against ISIS.”
Thats a true hero !!
