Women in Iraqi Kurdistan and beyond have taken to the streets and social media to braid their hair in a show of solidarity after a Syrian soldier bragged in a video about cutting off a Kurdish fighter's braid in Raqa.Syrian government troops have recently been retaking parts of the country held by the Kurds' de facto autonomous administration, which has long touted the participation of women in its armed forces.
The video "was a threat to us as Kurds, but also as Kurdish women", said university lecturer Vienna Salam, 31, one of dozens of women who gathered Friday to braid each other's hair at a protest in Erbil, the capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
Salam said they wanted to show "the world our way of resilience and... power".
Braiding is "our way of fighting back and of representing our identity as Kurdish women."
In recent days, a viral video has circulated showing a Syrian soldier boasting as he displays a braid he said he had cut from the head of a Kurdish woman fighter in the northern Syrian city of Raqa, which the army recently retook from Kurdish-led forces.
It was unclear whether the claims were true, or if any woman was harmed, but in a second video released after an online backlash, the soldier said the braid was fake and that he found it lying on a table at a restaurant.
Many Kurdish women in Iraq and elsewhere in the region have since taken to social media in response to share posts of themselves braiding their hair.
In one widely shared clip, several women stand in line, braiding each other's hair while chanting "Women, Life, Freedom" -- the slogan of the 2022 anti-government protests in Iran sparked by the death in custody of Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini.
In Kurdish culture, braids are considered a symbol of beauty, but also resistance and strength, sometimes featuring in famous Kurdish ballads.
More specifically, they have also become an emblem of Kurdish women fighters, whose images have filled front pages for years during their many battles against the Islamic State group in Syria.
Braids can also be used to express sorrow, with widows sometimes cutting their braids to mark the death of their husbands.
Thirty-year-old protester Darin Masoum, whose family is in northeastern Syria, said braids symbolise "courage, beauty, strength and dignity".
