(theme music plays) MUSCATINE: I'm Lissa Muscatine, co-owner of Politics and Prose.

And on behalf of my husband and co-owner, Brad Graham and our entire staff, we welcome you to this edition of "P&P Live".

Tonight you will be hearing from two amazing women about a truly amazing book.

The book is called "The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage and Justice" by best selling author Gayle Tzemach Lemmon.

Awesome cover.

Gayle is currently an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and her writing reflects a career long interest in the intersection of national security, entrepreneurship, politics and women's rights.

Her protagonists are Kurdish women in Syria, many very, very young, who join and lead the military campaign to defeat ISIS in the years after the terrorist organization established a foothold.

They called it a caliphate in that region.

It's an extraordinary testimonial to the strength, courage and persistence of women, challenging history and challenging the odds.

Chronicling their journey, Gayle draws readers into the heart of the conflict, the sights, smells and sounds of war, along with the range of emotions that accompany these women on their crusade for justice.

It's an incredible book.

It's really an untold slice of history.

We're so lucky that in conversation with Gayle tonight is none other than my former boss, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

I should add my best boss ever.

Secretary Clinton is best known for having served as our nation's first lady, a two term US senator from New York, the first woman presidential nominee of a major political party and winner of the popular vote in the presidential election of 2016.

She also is herself a best-selling author of nearly a dozen works of nonfiction for adults and children.

She recently announced, I think just yesterday, that she and mystery writer Louise Penny are teaming up to write a novel, a political thriller, due out in the fall.

And lastly, and most relevant to tonight's event, Secretary Clinton and her daughter Chelsea recently launched a global production company called Hidden Light.

And the very first book they have option to turn into a film is "Kobani".

So we are just so thrilled to have you both with us tonight.

Thank you for coming.

And to all of you watching and watching, please join me now in welcoming, welcoming Gayle Lemmon and Hillary Rodham Clinton to "P&P Live".

CLINTON: Thank you so much, Lissa.

MUSCATINE: Oh, it's so great to have you.

Secretary Clinton, you're becoming a regular here.

We love it.

We've already gotten a pledge to have you back for your, for your political thriller with Louise Penny, which will be a lot of fun.

So, you know, we'll see how you translate all this real life experience to fiction that that's going to be great.

So congratulations on that.

And Gayle, congratulations on your book.

All I can say is you have done it again.

You are bringing to your readers another just incredible, almost mythical kind of tale here, inspiring, as I said earlier, an untold slice of history.

And I just wanted to start by asking you a really general question, which is what's the main thing you want readers to take away from this book?

LEMMON: First of all, thank you to all for having me, to Lissa, of course, to the Secretary for joining us this evening.

And I also want to note that Sinam Mohamad of the Syrian Democratic Council is here, so thrilled.

I want people to be inspired.

I want people to feel what I feel.

I think, you know, there's always this is not my language, but we read to know we're not alone and we write to make the personal universal.

And I the first time I went to northeastern Syria and saw these women on the ground and spent time with them and saw what they were up against and the spirit and the humanity that they brought to that fight against real inhumanity.

Right?

This really David versus Goliath story of the women who fought to hand the first defeat to the men of the Islamic State.

Only David's also a woman in the book.

And in reality, and I hope people are inspired by this moment in which women rewrote the rules governing their lives and just felt that possibility amid the real inhumanity of war.

MUSCATINE: Well, and these women's experiences really and their desire for rights, for their own rights really fueled the motivation there, which I want to talk about a little bit later.

But Secretary Clinton, I wanted to ask you, because you and Chelsea have started this exciting company and have announced the filming of "The Daughters of Kobani", a) why did you start the company and b) why was this the first book you optioned?

And I gather there was some competition to get it.

CLINTON: Absolutely.

Lissa, you know, Chelsea and I started this company with our partner, Sam Branson, and an incredible team of people to tell stories like the story that Gayle brings to us in "The Daughters of Kobani".

I want to be inspired.

Of course I want to be entertained.

I want to be, you know, taken out of my everyday life.

But I also really want to be inspired.

And I think there needs to be more inspirational work.

Like The Daughters of Kobani.

I had known Gayle for a number of years.

She was a journalist who covered me back in the day and I had read her-her other books, along with many of her writings as a journalist.

And I loved the way she could take very complicated and... and difficult situations populated by people, particularly women who were the protagonists, whether they were a dressmaker in Kabul or an American soldier who was working with, you know, special forces and others to try to expand understanding on the ground in the wars that we were involved in.

And now these young, brave women who have taken this enormous step to defeat an enemy who literally wanted to destroy their lives, their culture, their futures.

And so when I got a galley copy of Gayle's book, I immediately said, we've got to see if we can option this.

And it was really tough because, you know, Gayle's last book, "Ashley's War" about the Special Forces, American women soldiers who work with Special Forces is being turned into a major motion picture.

So people know that the stories Gayle writes are exactly the kind of stories that we want to bring to a broader public, to that universal audience that Gayle just referenced.

And I'm so proud that Hidden Light was able to option the book and we're so excited about moving forward with it.

MUSCATINE: You know, the book is so riveting.

I mean, from page one, it is riveting through all of its 212 pages.

And the characters are so present and you really do feel like you're with them through a lot of this.

And I'm just wondering how hard it was to get people to talk to you.

How did you find this particular women who choose to profile them?

Were they reluctant?

Were they enthusiastic?

I always wonder if you could tell us a little bit about that process?

LEMMON: I had the privilege of making seven trips to northeastern Syria.

My father is from the region and had always talked to me about and I really felt he had passed, but I felt like he was with me and I would have this dialog with him about how, you know, in my mind about how this story was so very unlikely and yet made so much sense the minute you saw it on the ground.

And so I wanted to capture for readers who would never meet these women what it was like to see 30 young women or 50 young women, right, with smiley face socks and hiking boots and fatigues and braids and flowers in their hair and AK-47's slung over their shoulders, going off to fight the Islamic State, and I wonder also because I think sometimes we see these people as superhuman and they're not, right.

These are ordinary people who meet extraordinary circumstances.

And in this case, these women said.

They will not allow a world in which men think it is OK to buy and sell women in which violence is perpetrated mercilessly against women without answer.

But I also want to show that they were daughters and friends and sisters.

And so I worked so hard to keep showing up.

And my first book, "Dressmaker of Khair Khana", you know, I used to joke with the young women who trusted me with their story that the reason why they trust me was because I would show up when all the other foreigners had gone home.

And I think with this, it was kind of the same, you know, by the end.

Rojda, who I'll tell you a little bit about she would say, Gayle, oh, my God, are you here again?

Do we have to sit down again?

Didn't you ask me everything?

When does this book come out?

And I said, no, no, I promise you that this is so important.

And she said, you know, we didn't do anything special.

And it was the same thing with Ashley's War, because what I find was so many women who've done extraordinary things is that they will never tell you what they did, but they will speak to you about what their friend did.

And they'll talk to you with grace and with heart and with real conviction about their friends valor and never their own.

So you're piecing together you know, you're showing up and showing up and showing up and then piecing together from everybody's stories, you know, what happened?

What did it look like?

What did it smell like?

What were you eating for lunch?

You know, all of those questions that really take you into our lives.

And just to go to final moment about earning trust and at the beginning, you're trying to decide, is this a book?

And so one of my very first interviews, I was with Rojda, who goes on to lead the with the Americans and with American Special Operations forces, the fight to retake the so-called capital of the Islamic State, Raqqa, from ISIS.

And this is for you and for me, for the US, for Europe, right?

To take away the terrain, allowed ISIS to plan attacks all around the world.

And so I said, listen, why did you start this all-women's force?

You know, you already had equality according to your ideology.

You already were fighting right alongside men with full rights.

So why?

And she looked at me and said, "Well, there are two things.

One is we were never going to let stand a world in which men treated women as property and in which they would coming to our towns trying to bring this.

And secondly, we just didn't want men taking credit for our work.

So we had to form the all-women's force."

And I thought, oh, my gosh, that's when you know that it transcends any barriers, right?

Because this really is about the universal quest for human dignity and the quest to have your rights, your culture and really personal liberties, personal freedoms that are so important, right?

And I think I wanted to capture for the world what these women had done.

This was not about any internationals or any foreigners coming in.

These were young women and women of all ages are just up and said this will not stand.

MUSCATINE: No, it's they are ordinary, as you say, but they are extraordinary.

I mean, I don't know, a lot of people in our country would be off doing what they do.

But Secretary Clinton, you know, you-you obviously were one of the people in the national security establishment when you were secretary who said she was very concerned about the rise of ISIS and the threats posed by ISIS and the degradation of people of all kinds, especially women under ISIS.

And then things really shifted, actually, I think after you-you left being secretary of state.

But I'm just wondering, when did you become aware that these women in Kobani and elsewhere in northeastern Syria were taking on ISIS?

Were you aware of it when you were at state or was it afterward?

CLINTON: Well, I had been aware for some time that the Kurds in both northern Iraq and in Syria had formed defense forces called Peshmerga's, in Iraq that included women's forces, as well as part of the larger Kurdish defense force.

And it was one of the reasons why I was frankly appalled when the former president pulled our troops so abruptly out of Syria, because there had been, as Gayle just said, these longstanding relationships of coordination and support between Peshmerga forces, men and women and American special forces in not only defending their territory against the Islamic State when ISIS fighters crossed from Syria into Iraq, but trying to take back territory.

So I was well aware that there were women who were respected as fighters.

In fact, you can go back, you know, some years before the takeover of Raqqa and Mosul by and other parts of Iraq, northern Iraq and Syria by ISIS.

And you can read stories and hear about women who were essential to the efforts to protect Kurdish neighborhoods and towns, as well as other minorities like the Yazidis and others.

So what was so exciting about what Gayle did is that much of the coverage was snapshot coverage.

You know, there'd be a picture of a couple of young women with AK- 47's, you know, dressed in fatigues, but with ribbons in their hair.

You know, you would see the interesting way that these women were portrayed in the international press, but you wouldn't learn much about them, which is why I was so deeply moved by Gayle's work, because what she did was to say, OK, there has been a commitment, at least verbally and on paper, for women's equality in some of these communities that are predominantly, not exclusively, but predominantly Kurdish.

And how does that translate?

And what does that mean to a young girl who thinks she wants to be a hairdresser or wants to start a small business or wants to get married and really have a family?

What does that mean?

And if you are faced with the existential threat that the Islamic State posed to so many of these communities, what do you do?

And so what Gayle was able to accomplish by going time and time again and building those relationships and that trust was to really give us the story of some of these women, which has been important because too often we just don't understand what they're up against and how difficult their circumstances are and what they have to do to survive and to try to carve out a life for themselves.

MUSCATINE: You know, it's such a it's so true.

I mean, reading about these women and Gayle, I just, you know, you profile, I guess six or seven or eight of them.

I can't remember the exact number in greater depth than some others.

But there are thousands who end up joining these forces, inspired in part by the fact that these women have been successful and they do command respect.

Um, but I'm just wondering, are they, are the ones you profiled, are they the exception or the rule?

And what I mean by that is it seems that a common denominator from the way you describe their lives and what led them to these roles was a real visceral reaction to being told they couldn't do something, whether it was playing soccer, whether it was who they were going to marry, whether it was wanting to be a doctor and not being allowed to.

They all had that common experience of rejection and invalidation, was that, is that just so commonplace that that was true of everyone, or are they a particular cases that inspired that kind of leadership?

LEMMON: It's a great question.

And, I think, just to take a step back, you couldn't really understand what happened with the Syrian Kurdish women without understanding 2004 in Qamishil and the fact that their war, as soccer match in which unarmed protesters were injured and this group of young women, they really all in different ways.

And I really wanted readers to go into their world and to see the different reasons.

It wasn't simply a family, because quite honestly, many of you and you're in the audience also have had family members say, you know what, this isn't what women do.

This is what you should do, not this right.

It's so universal that sentiment is a little more pronounced for certain.

But I faced it and I would imagine many of you know, you can't you can go to this school, but not this school.

You can marry this person, but not that person.

And they first organized in order to protect Kurdish neighborhoods, in order to make sure that this self-rule that they had established right at the start of the civil war, which allowed their communities to publish in their language, to speak their language without challenges, to educate children in their language, to really protect this pretty fragile but real experiment in grassroots participatory democracy with women and at the center would survive.

And then comes ISIS and they get thrust onto the global stage in one of the most unlikely series of events that readers will see that I couldn't understand how it happened.

And so that's really why I wrote the book.

I really believe that every great story starts with the question you can't answer.

And I couldn't figure out how in the world did one of the most far-reaching experiments in women's equality happen on the ashes of the fight against men who bought and sold women and built by women who fought the Islamic State room by room and house by house and town by town for a half decade?

And the thing that was really funny to me is that in the middle of this and I say funny because there's also so much light and so much humor when you spend time with these women, you know, I think from the outside we think, oh, my gosh, it must just be all war.

And it is true that what they see and endure so that the world does not have to live with an Islamic state, with territory is extreme.

But they're also just so darn funny.

You know, Rojda told me the story one day about in the middle of the battle for Kobani.

And those of you who are from traditional cultures will appreciate this story in the middle of the battle for Kobani.

She's trying to figure out what's happening there.

Absolutely, they are not having a day in which they're advancing.

They're losing terrain.

It's a really difficult fight.

And her phone rings and it's her mother and literally they're getting shot.

Then the bullets are flying by.

They're in the middle of this fight with ISIS.

And she's saying, I couldn't not pick up the phone when my mother called.

She said, you know, I picked it up and some days and you just, you know, I wanted to tell her, you know, I couldn't talk.

but I couldn't because I know she'd think I was dead or something was wrong if I didn't answer.

So she just picks up the phone and holds it up so that her mother can hear the bullets going by.

And her mother, who never wanted her to join.

Right, who thinks that Azeema, who's also someone we spent time with, an amazing leader in the women's protective force that thinks that her friend got her into it and caused all this trouble for her daughter, starts wailing so loudly on the phone because all she hears is the bullet.

And I think it's that-that I wanted readers to see, that I wanted readers to live those moments of your mom's calling.

You have to answer.

And yet you're responsible for all these people.

And the world now is watching as this David versus Goliath fight is unfolding at a time when ISIS has never had one battlefield defeat.

MUSCATINE: Yeah, you know it's so interesting, Secretary Clinton, you have spent so much of your career supporting women all over the world trying to assert their voices, claim power in places where women are constantly under assault in all sorts of ways, where they don't have a decision making role.

And I thought it's interesting that Gayle writes that post-conflict states sometimes afford women the opportunity to rewrite the rules that govern their lives.

Uh, I think, Secretary Clinton.

You've seen that.

You've documented it and seen it and talked about it in Northern Ireland, Rwanda, Liberia, Kuwait.

And I'm sure I'm forgetting some countries.

But I'm just wondering, asking both of you, why is it that either from conflict and civil strife or violent conflict sometimes comes the leadership role for women?

CLINTON: That's a great question, Lissa, and it's one that, you know, people are writing books about and doing academic studies because it can go either way.

You know, you can see how in a post-conflict setting, there's a there's a retrenchment where people, you know, turn inward and they want things to go back the way they were before any of it happened, which often, you know, is very difficult to accomplish and causes all kinds of social strains.

But there's also, as you rightly point out, enough examples where we've seen women who were in the forefront of trying to end conflicts or in the case of the Daughters of Kobani, actually win conflicts so that they then could be ended.

And those women have literally put themselves on the front lines.

And you can't, though, take any of it for granted just because you end the conflict and women have been at the table or been on the battlefield or, you know, assumed leadership roles in trying to bring back some sense of stability, that doesn't mean that that's clear sailing.

And so one of the challenges for these young women who literally helped to defeat the Islamic State is what happens now.

And I'd love to hear Gayle talk about that, because, you know, there are still all kinds of crosscurrents and pressures in northeastern Syria, across Syria, obviously into northern Iraq.

There's all kinds of problems with what the Kurdish people themselves are going to be able to achieve.

So, you know, I'd love for Gayle to chime in about the specifics of what's happening with these women now.

LEMMON: What is so moving is that they are pushing forward with this experiment truly in women's equality and Norwuz, who's the commander of the Women's Protection Unit, and I spent a lot of time with her.

And there was this moment in the book where they are low on ammunition, low on weapons, low on food, low on people.

But what they have a spirit.

And she gets on the radio to Rojda on Asema and her other field commanders and says, this is a moment when the world is watching and they think you're worth nothing.

Show them what you're made of.

Show them who you are and show them what women are capable of.

And when I asked her later said it's so cinematic, you know, she would tell me and I made lots of people repeat it in different ways as I was working on it.

And she said, you know, we did this not because we choose war, but so we can govern in peace because no one will question women's ability to lead if we can lead in battle.

And it really was about that quest to make sure that women were at the center of the political process.

That was so fascinating to me.

Faisal Yousef who's one of the political leaders, who's mentioned in "The Daughters of Kobani", who also gave me a hard time for coming back for the seventh time for our interviews.

She said to me, we're building a lake in the desert.

We know how hard this is.

We're not going to change things overnight.

But their founding compact has women mentioned more than 13 times.

Right.

Women have a right to equality, no to dowry, no to child marriage, yes to girls' education, yes to having the ability of the to go to have economic rights, women judges for cases that relate to women, women political representation.

I mean, it goes very far.

And so you realize that actually the military piece was about the governing piece and it continues today.

And I remember going in December of 2019 I had the privilege of going in and my colleague Mustafa who was also in the book.

I kept saying, "Well did this change?

Did this change?"

And they said, "No, it's all there."

Even in Raqqa, which is nominally controlled by the Russians, right.

In the wake of the US movement of forces there, say the civil council still has a male head and a female head.

So in every town they took over from ISIS, a man and a woman co-lead it.

And there was a women's council in every town.

And there's a moment in the book where I go very cynically to the opening of the Roko Women's Council thinking this is going to be a show for foreigners.

And actually there are no other foreigners except for (inaudible) is a local reporter who's amazing and a few folks who were very accustomed to being there, but no Americans and all the security folks were local people, were local forces.

And so it really was something that looked different.

And my final note on this is that nowhere in the world have I met women who were more comfortable with power and less apologetic about being in charge.

And it looks different.

It just looks different when women lead in that way.

And I remember being at the end of a very long day of reporting, our car broke down and actually three young women drove us back in their pickup truck with the AK's on the side in the back in front of Mustafa.

And we said, 'we better not move the wrong way.'

And they drove us back and the three of them are across the front.

And we're air fresheners are in this country.

By hanging from the rearview mirror is a picture of their friend, a young woman who was lost in that fight against ISIS.

And as they're driving us back, they're going through these checkpoints and they're high-fiving their friends, and you just think either you're in another realm.

Or it does look different when women lead in a way that remembers women.

MUSCATINE: It's such a fascinating point, I want to ask you both this question, because mainstream national security and foreign policy strategy still, I would think I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, overlooks the possibilities and capabilities of women, overlooks giving women opportunities for leadership.

And so women have to constantly go through these hoops.

What is it going to take?

I mean, Gayle, you you talk in the book.

You meet a very a variety of Americans on the ground there who've been there forever.

And they sort of finally realize, oh, my God, these women are unbelievable.

They have they seem to be skeptical and have doubts.

And they are fairly quickly, it seems, disabused of those doubts.

So there are individuals who, by seeing it and being there like you were really understand what women represent and how it's different and their leadership capabilities and how talented they are and dedicated and all the rest courageous.

But from, from both of your perspectives, you as someone reporting on this, and Secretary Clinton as someone who has been a maker of policy and has tried in every conceivable way to have women and their issues integrated into the strategies, the paradigm for foreign policy, what has to be done?

I mean, this is a great example of success.

And yet, you know, what should the US do in response in Syria?

What needs to happen elsewhere in the world?

CLINTON: I want Gayle to go first because she has the particulars, I mean, one of the things that was so striking as we were talking about optioning this for a future production is the number of American military personnel officers, civilian attachments to the military who saw what she saw.

And we're, I think it's fair to say, gradually won over.

But I'd love for Gayle to talk about that.

LEMMON: Thank you.

I would say.

These are America's elite forces, US special operations folks who have deployed 12, 13, 14 times, who have lived the post 9/11 wars in a way that almost no one else in this country has.

As less than 1% of this country has fought 100% of its wars for two decades.

And they were the first people to say how whatever you need, whatever time you need.

I want people to know what these women did in the fight against the Islamic State and what they did not just for their region, but for the US and for the world.

And I will say, even in the last three days, I have gotten just beautiful notes from folks in special operations who said to me, thank you both for them and for me for sharing this.

And there's one moment in the book, just on a slightly lighter note that I want to share, which was I sat for a long time with-with some service members who had really spent a lot of time in the region, their entire adult lives, more or less.

And one of them told me this story about right after Kobani, the first Americans go in and they're on this porch after a long day of figuring out what the Americans might do with this partner force, the people's protection units and the women's protection units.

And they are in a sort of beautiful verandah, kind of enjoying a moment of quiet after the war and after a very long day.

And this young woman comes up to a very tested US special operations service member and says, "Hey, I bet I killed more ISIS than you did."

He took a step back and stood, you know, wait a minute, you know, and he and he told this story multiple times because for him it was like this, you know, he said, I really thought about it.

And she was right, because you have to remember that this was the ground force, especially in Kobani.

And then certainly for the next four to five years till March of 2019 And even today that did the on the ground room to room fighting against ISIS.

Rojda has this story about putting her AK-47 through a wall and actually brushing up against the leg of an ISIS fighter.

That's how close they were.

And so I just want to make it really clear that the-the soldiers who were part of the story from the US side were deeply both committed to making sure that the valor of these women was captured.

And also told me, you know, at the beginning, I wasn't sure what it would be like to work with a woman in the partner force.

And really, you realize immediately that the warrior ethos is the same.

And he went on to say that, you know, he hopes that his daughter has a lot of the same characteristics that these women do and always pass greetings through me when I was going to the region.

CLINTON: I just want to underscore what Gayle said, because it's-it's such an important lesson and let's remind ourselves at how much territory the Islamic State was seizing and holding, what a magnet it became for people who wanted to be fighters with the Islamic State, leaving Europe, the United States elsewhere to come there.

And it-it is truly important for the world.

But I want to underscore for us here in our country that they were defeated and we have to stay watchful.

And obviously you know, terrorism, domestic or foreign, is still with us.

But the fact that these women played such an instrumental role in defeating the Islamic State should be something that American military personnel study at the war colleges.

You know, they should be looking at what these battles were like because, as Gayle said, these were, you know, hand-to-hand combat.

These were people who were looking at the enemy and having to take-take action to protect themselves, their forces, and to kill the enemy.

And and so I want to you know, in working with Gayle and bringing this story to a global audience, I hope, you know, to really underscore the service that these women provided to the world, because now we live in a fast-moving world.

Now we're obsessed with other stuff.

We're still dealing with Covid.

But we really faced a very serious threat because of the Syrian civil war, because of the rise of the Islamic State and all of the consequences of that.

This was you know, this was not by any way preordained, that it was going to turn out like this.

And so the world owes a debt to these women as well.

LEMMON: And just one note on that, just one, is that you know, is that I think even while US air strikes were happening, there was no sense that anybody felt that this town still would not fall.

And there's this moment in the book where people are really worried that they're going to lose, they're down to, like, a block or two at most.

That's all they had left.

Right, and it really is the spirit of Zema who ends up being shot by ISIS, is grazed by a bullet by ISIS and gets out of her hospital bed with a bullet from ISIS still in her heart to go to the press conference when they finally emerge victorious and say women were a part of this defeat for the Islamic State.

And we want the world to know that.

And that's why it's so exciting to think about creators from the region and just telling the story so that everyone gets to meet these women and everyone gets to spend time seeing their humor, their heart, their courage, and really the fact that they were not just fighting for the girls and the boys born in the next generation, but really fighting for a world in which it was much harder for ISIS to launch attacks against the US, against Europe and certainly against the region.

MUSCATINE: You know, Gayle, there's a, there's a, but not funny but sort of poignant scene in the book where one of the men, one of the male soldiers under and I forget which woman commander it is, wants permission to shoot an ISIS woman.

There's a spot, a woman, and they don't know if she's really ISIS or not.

But then she's blonde, which is weird.

But anyway, they have to get the permission of the female commander to go ahead and shoot her and then they do.

But it's-it's this disorienting scene in the book that's just fascinating.

I do want to ask you, having written Ashley's War, also, if there is if there are similarities and if there are discrepancies between the experiences of the American warrior women and the Syrian warrior women.

LEMMON: I have the privilege and Secretary Clinton and I talked about this of writing stories about communities of women underestimated from the outside who rise to the moment in service to causes greater than themselves.

And I never set out to write about women.

I think it very much, though, is a theme that that has fascinated me because I grew up in P.G.

County, not very far from where you are, in a community of single moms, you know, none of whom had graduated from college.

Certainly nobody knew, I grew up with had graduate degrees or things like that.

And yet this spirit and this force of you move forward and you move through obstacles and you never let them get to you.

As my mother always said, on a scale of major world tragedies, yours is not a three that I think infused.

There's very few.

And it drew me immediately to "Ashley's War".

And it's actually one of the soldiers in "Ashley's War" who's responsible for this.

And I got a call her from Syria saying, oh, my gosh, you know, this is all because of you.

I had she would write me saying, what's going on?

What's going on there?

Because she's so missed being in northeastern Syria.

And she said she called me in 2016 and said, "Gayle, you have to come.

You have got to come see what's happening.

We're working with women in this partner force who are leading the battle and they have the respect of men and they are also fighting for equality."

And I just thought, you know, especially understanding what that would mean in the region, right from my own childhood and many debates my father and I had about women's rights and the whole notion of equality, I had just a fraction of an inkling of an idea of what that would mean to take a journey from that discussion in your family to taking up arms, because in this country, too, it would be dramatic to see, right.

This is not that there's not huge differences in mind set.

Right.

In terms of what women are facing matters of degree.

So I think that was what I really wanted to capture was the connectivity between those two stories and also that it was indeed one of the women who had been a part of the groundbreaking team captured in "Ashley's War" who called me and said, you must tell this.

MUSCATINE: Yeah, no, I mean, the connections are amazing, so I want to just switch to an audience question.

Here's a question that asks.

It says, "The supposition is that peace deals are not sustainable unless women participate."

I assume you have both thought about that.

CLINTON: The questioner asked exactly the right question.

There is a great deal of evidence that if women are left out of peacemaking, then the peace is less certain and secure than it would otherwise be.

In fact, there's a wonderful program that-that we know so well at Georgetown University that really focuses on women, peace and security.

That was started by Ambassador Melanne Verveer, because too often women are the unfortunate victims of the wars that happen around them.

They and their children often bear the biggest burden, and yet they're often in no way consulted.

They're not sitting at the table as negotiators.

And I'm so pleased that now people are starting to pay attention to the importance of having women participate to the fullest of their ability and their inclusion.

So, yeah, it's-it's important.

And the questioner could certainly look up some of the work that is being done at the Institute for Women Peace and Security.

They have a whole curriculum that really helps us understand why women involved in peacemaking is critical to having lasting peace.

MUSCATINE: You know, there have been a number of questions sort of along those lines which are asking what can women in the West, women in this country do to support, to-to convey solidarity with the women of Syria and other countries that are these post-conflict zones?

I'm just wondering, Gayle, if you're still close, I'm sure, to the women that you profile and spent so much time with, do they feel supported by women outside of their region?

Do they are we giving the right kind of support to them?

What should we be doing?

LEMMON: Paying attention and engaging is really the first step, and I know that, I'm sure Sinam Mohammed, who is from the Syrian Democratic Council, can also weigh in on the attack in this because they're working very hard to make sure that women's voices are heard.

They're working to help people understand what it is they're seeking and also what the sacrifices that were made.

And even one point I do want to make, too, is that the Syrian women in civil society, across communities, the Arab community, in the Christian community, have been so outspoken in wanting women's voices heard.

It's so important, it is not for the sake of women, it's for the sake of durability, of peace, that we have everybody's voices represented.

And I sometimes joked I had the privilege of spending a lot of time in Afghanistan.

And I remember somebody once said to me, well, you know, it's really hard to find women to do this.

And I said, well, you know, it seems to me sometimes the one thing that all sides can agree on is that they can live without women at the table.

And, you know, we don't want women don't want to give you that point of agreement anymore.

Right?

And I think Syria is a perfect example of women across communities working very hard with very little support to try to make sure that half the population does not become seen as a special interest group when it comes time to decide the fate of the future of their country.

And actually, I would tell one story, giving Secretary Clinton credit, which is in 2010, I was in Kabul working on I think I was finishing "Dressmaker".

Yeah.

And the night before the Kabul conference, there are tremendous community of Afghan young women who represent themselves in civil society.

And they did not have a speaking role.

And it was actually when Secretary Clinton arrived and said women must have a role, that they thought reinforcement.

And there were other women.

And certainly the Afghan women were front and center.

They were loud.

They were not anywhere where it was easy not to see them, but just, you know, nobody had bothered to make sure that they were represented.

MUSCATINE: I'm sure that happens over and over and over again.

CLINTON: It happens so many times that....

It still is maddening, however, to have to keep reminding people that women deserve a seat at the table, for heaven's sakes, when it comes to, you know, their lives and their livelihoods and the future of their countries, their societies, their communities.

MUSCATINE: I mean, I think, Gayle, you have a moment in the book where and I forget whether it was an American, I think was an American military person who comes in, is greeted by all these women commanders and some male soldiers and immediately goes to the men to shake hands as if they're the commander, which you know, and I'm God knows how many times women in all of these different positions have experienced that.

Which brings me to another question, Secretary Clinton, you wrote a really fabulous piece in "The Atlantic" last summer, and that was really helping people think about how we should reframe our thoughts about women's rights.

How should we be conceiving of the fight for women's rights?

This was 25 years after the Beijing conference.

And you-you-you kind of make the point that we should be moving from advocacy to the assumption of power to implement rights.

And I'm wondering if what Gayle has written about here is an example of that or is just a first step toward that?

And how does that happen?

How do we replicate this experience in Syria?

How do we create those stepping stones?

CLINTON: Well, it is certainly a book that exemplifies exactly what I hope people will be talking about.

I mean, it's one thing to talk about women's rights.

It's another thing to make sure women are empowered to actually possess and exercise those rights.

And so a book like "The Daughters of Kobani" gives a real boost to not just the women themselves who are in the mix of building a new society that is trying to deliver on this promise of equality.

But it serves as an example and really a call to action for people in so many other places.

So, yeah, I think that what you know, what Gayle has done is to provide another example of women taking power to exercise their rights in a way that is is unusual because their front line commanders there, their soldiers, they are in the midst of a battle.

But it has to be seen as part of the overall effort, the continuing struggle to ensure that all women have the power to make these decisions for themselves, to decide clearly what kind of society they want to be part of.

MUSCATINE: There's a lot of excitement in the questions about the film, understandably, people seem really excited about it... CLINTON: In my very short time, as you know, involved in this, it really takes a long, long time.

And, you know, one thing I want to say, though, is we're going to do everything we can to make it as authentic as possible to use people who have firsthand experience and helping to guide the creation of this production, because I want it to have that same feeling that Gayle's book has, that you're literally opening a door into a world that you want to know more about, populated by people that are so inspiring.

MUSCATINE: So I don't want to give a lot of the book away, but Gayle, you circle back to the family situations of some of your-your key characters.

And clearly things have taken a few steps in the right direction when it comes to understanding what women want and what they deserve in terms of their rights and opportunities.

Were there any cases where that you discovered where these women were ostracized or went back to situations that were-were not good?

LEMMON: So maybe one story about a young woman who was maybe one of the most courageous people I've ever met anywhere in the world, this young woman.

So at the end of the book where we're sitting with Rojda, as we meet a number of young women from the Arab community who all lived under ISIS in Raqqa.

And I mean, I could have been there for days just interviewing these young women so tough, so funny, so full of heart and love and humor.

And I asked one of them, You know, and I was going around the room.

One young woman had just read Egyptian poetry, read poetry from, Egyptian poets, her entire time at home under the Islamic State.

So she spoke in entire paragraphs when she talked, another young woman had been arrested by the Islamic State for having her wrists show.

And the only way she got out was to pledge that she would marry an ISIS fighter and then she escaped immediately with her father.

And then this young woman came up who his brother forced her to marry an ISIS fighter.

And she had this very long and very difficult story.

She told it with such grace.

And I said to her, how in the world do you have the courage to be here?

And she said, I wanted to make a stand.

I wanted to live in a world where this was not possible.

Where what happened to me couldn't happen again.

And Nowruz, who's the same as the woman's head of the women's protection unit, when I asked her, I said, did you ever want a family?

Did you ever want a different world?

And she said, I love children.

I never wanted this to be our world, but I wanted my nieces and nephews to grow up in a world that looked different for them, where they could practice their holidays and celebrate and also know that girls had value.

And I want a girl born 20 years from now to know that we did this for them.

That this happened.

MUSCATINE: Such a beautiful story.

So believe it or not, we are almost out of time, so I'm going to do a lightning round question to Gayle from the audience, which is: your dad was born in Iraq, in Baghdad, I believe.

Do you speak Arabic?

And did the family connection help you establish trust in that background, help you establish trust?

And then the worst question ever to ask somebody when they're starting a book tour, what's next?

LEMMON: Oh, so what's next?

Oh, no!

Whoever asked that, that's it!

So, yeah.

So my father was born in Baghdad, but his grandfather was from Kirkuk, so my father had played Kurdish music.

I don't you know, but my father never talked about it because he lost his country as a boy and really never spoke about it to me.

But yes, I mean, I think I very much felt the story and I felt very connected to him as I as I was traveling.

He had passed by then.

But I did I did have an appreciation both for what these women would have gone through on their journey and also just, I think, a deep love for a place in terms of what's next.

Oh, my gosh, please don't ask me that, because when people trust you with their stories, especially when they think they've done nothing extraordinary, you feel such a huge responsibility that you get up with in the morning and you go to bed with at night, that everybody should know them.

And then America should know the women who fought to make us safer.

And fought for girls and boys in the region in the process.

And so my job is I'm going to ask all of you to just continue to share the word about this story.

And you know that the women like Sinam Mohammed or (inaudible) and all of the women in this book, that they continue to be people we pay attention to and whose work we continue to follow very closely and support because it really matters.

MUSCATINE: It matters so much, Gayle, and congratulations again, the book, everyone, you've got to read it.

You really have brought these women to life.

You have told the world why they do matter and why they have helped keep us safe.

That's exactly right.

And I don't think most Americans really recognize that.

Certainly not the role of these particular women.

So congratulations.

The book is fantastic.

Secretary Clinton, I'm so glad you're going to be on the movie making front with-with the book.

We always love having you.

Thank you for-for being part of this wonderful event, the two of you.

And unfortunately, we're out of time.

But I will say to everyone, please stay safe and stay well and stay well read.

Goodnight, everybody.

ANNOUNCER: Books by tonight's authors are available at Politics and Prose bookstore locations, or online at politics-prose.com.

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