GEORGE, MARGARET

(?-1966)

   Margaret George (Malik) was a female Assyrian peshmerga in the 1960s who became famous as the leader of an all-male unit. Other peshmergas began to carry her portrait into battle as a kind of talisman, and she became a sort of Kurdish Joan of Arc. Her ultimate fate is uncertain, although some claim that Mulla Mustafa Barzani had her executed after she began to demand a position in the leadership.