If revenge is a dish best served cold, then the fresh-faced recruits of the Peshmerga Force for Women cannot wait for the Kurdish winter to set in. That’s when they believe a United States attack on Iraq will happen allowing them to put into practice all they’ve learned at the training camp.

April 11 2002. About 10.20am. A coach full of German tourists is bumping down the road that leads to the ancient El Ghriba synagogue on the Tunisian island of Djerba. Around the corner, in a narrow, cobbled lane that runs alongside, an old Iveco tanker truck is waiting, driver inside.