Brit joins female fight against Isis

SYRIA: A self-styled revolutionary who turned down a place at Sandhurst is believed to be the first British woman to travel to Syria and take up arms against Islamic State.

Kimberley Taylor, 27, went last March to join the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ), an all-female affiliate army of the People’s Protection Units ( YPG) of Syrian Kurdistan. She is part of the ‘‘Rojava revolution’’, a Left-wing Kurdish movement in northern Syria.

‘‘I’m doing this to get people to listen to Rojava and the revolution and ideology,’’ she said while camped a few kilometres from the Raqqa front.

Many of her close relatives, including her mother and 85-yearold grandmother, did not know she was in Syria. Her sister said she did not expect Taylor to come home alive.

Her mother, Mary Lang, 57, said her daughter used to be shy but now ‘‘just wants to help the world’’.

Her father, Phil, 57, a former teacher, said: ‘‘I was upset in the first instance upon learning of Kimmie’s intentions to join the YPJ and worry about her safety. But to ask her not to follow her beliefs would be like asking her to cut her arm off.’’

Friends described Taylor, who is also known as Zilan Dilmar, as brave, inspirational, selfless and kind, and said she did not tell them she was travelling to Syria until the last minute.

She returned from the front line on Christmas Day to call home and reassure family she was safe.

Relatives said that several years ago she won a place at Sandhurst military academy after completing her Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, but declined after her political views changed. She no longer ‘‘believed in what the army was fighting for’’, a relative said.

For the past 11 months she has been learning Kurdish and studying regional politics, weaponry and battlefield tactics at the YPJ’s military academy. She travelled to the front line in October and is involved in the push towards Raqqa, Isis’s de facto capital.

‘‘I’m willing to give my life for this,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s for the whole world, for humanity and all oppressed people everywhere. It’s not just [Isis’s] killing and raping. It’s systematic mental and physical torture on a scale we can’t imagine.’’

She said the trigger for her joining the frontline fight was the experience of a friend, an Arab YPJ fighter who had her village ransacked by Isis last year. Her friend’s 8-year-old sister was repeatedly run over with a car before being pushed off a building. Her friend ran away to join the YPJ.

Taylor grew up near Blackburn before moving to Merseyside in her teens. She studied maths at Liverpool University and spent her early 20s travelling the world and hitch-hiking alone. She also studied business and politics at Stockholm University. – The Times