Umma Aman said she wanted to die for her God. She was sitting on a pile of sandbags, pressing wet rags to her eyes in an attempt to ease the effects of the clouds of tear gas billowing through her madrasah. Outside, gunfire echoed through the deserted streets of Islamabad as the Pakistani military battled militants holed up in the mosque next door. Aman, just 22, had wanted to fight alongside her brothers, as she called them, in defense of the Red Mosque and Jamia Hafsa madrasah complex that had been the conservative heartbeat of Pakistan's capital for decades....
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