Syria: Sharaa-Linked Jihadis Display Hair Cut Off of Murdered Kurdish Woman

A video began circulating on social media on Wednesday, published by the Kurdish news organization Rudaw, of a man identified as a “Damascus-affiliated armed group” member holding hair allegedly cut off the dead body of a Kurdish soldier.

The man in the video claims that he found the soldier, presumably a member of the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), already dead and took the hair as a trophy.

The context of the harrowing image is a brewing conflict between the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) — the Kurdish-led armed forces that led the effort to destroy the Islamic State “caliphate” in 2017 — and the government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, the leader of the al-Qaeda offshoot jihadist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). HTS took