Hanna Bohman, aka Tiger Sun, says IS are ‘knuckle-dragging pigs’

MEET the kick-arse former model, named Tiger Sun, fighting Islamic State and dismissing them as a bunch of weak “mouth-breathers”.

THEY are arguably the most feared terror group in the world but model-turned-soldier Hanna Bohman says Islamic State are nothing but “knuckle-dragging” cowards.

The 46-year-old Canadian, who also goes by the name Tiger Sun, has spent several months this year on the frontline in northern Syria fighting against the ruthless militants as part of the Kurdish women’s defence force, YPJ.

She says while IS might have managed to generate this image of a brutal, domineering force that is impervious to defeat, she claims it couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Their numbers don’t seem that big and they’re eager to run away,” Bohman said in an interview with Business Insider. “I suspect most of the experienced fighters have been consolidated in Mosul and Raqqa, and that’s where the big fights will be.

“They’re not some giant, holy juggernaut of ultimate damnation for unbelievers.

“They’re just a bunch of filthy, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging pigs who run away at the first sign of resistance. Really nothing more than a thorn in the side.”

Bohman left her life as a sales clerk in Vancouver in February to join the YPJ (the Women’s Protection Unit), the female branch of the volunteer Kurdish resistance army that formed in 2012 to defend the Kurdish people from attacks by IS, al-Nusra Front and the Turkish State.

She says before she joined she had spent months feeling frustrated by the what she claims was inaction by Western governments.

Hanna Bohman with fellow soldier Jesper Soder. Picture: Facebook.

“There was no one event that motivated me,” Bohman told Canada’sNational Post. “Seeing evil beyond evil, the video of the Canadian guy [John Maguire] joining [Islamic State], the fact that governments weren’t doing anything about it. And then I learned about what the Kurds were doing, and I flew to Iraq.

“I had considered joining the Canadian Army, but what I was looking for was exactly what I was doing in Rojava. I didn’t want to sit around for years in Edmonton or Ottawa.”

After she completed training, she boarded a plane to Iraq in March where she spent 10 days trying to cross into Syria.

Once she arrived, she was taken to a safe house before being smuggled out again for combat training. A few hours later she was sent to the front line.

Bohman says she spent her first month as a lookout before she was moved to a mobile unit where she saw fighting almost daily.

“That’s where I was first shot at by a sniper while walking from the outhouse to our quarters,” she told Business Insider. “We were a mobile [unit], so we moved around quite a bit and were part of a large offensive south of Til Temir.”

The bullet-ridden hummer Hanna Bohman and Joe Akerman travelled in. Picture: Facebook

But the most intense battle she was involved in took place in June.

Bohman was the only woman among six Westerners who went “rogue” and ended up in IS territory.

“All of us, including the commander, were itching for a fight, so we went a bit rogue,” she said. “We became lost trying to find the front and thought we had accidentally pushed into Daesh country [another name for ISIS] when we started seeing dead people lying on the roads. The drivers were frantically calling for help on their phones and radios, and the tension was the highest I’ve ever felt as we had no idea where Daesh was.”

The group quickly retreated back but the next morning they were told to take the city of Til Abyad, a city near the Turkish border that was under Islamic State control.

They did with the help of a unit of 12 Kurds who were stationed at a nearby bridge.

“We spent the rest of the day fighting for that bridge, which was also the last time a sniper would take a shot at me, the bullet passing so close over my head I felt it,” she said. “We held the bridge overnight while reinforcements arrived, and the next day they took the city, which by now had mostly been abandoned by Daesh.”

After the battle Bohman was forced to return to Canada due to malnutrition. However she returned to Rojava in September and continues to post details of her endeavours on Facebook.