Former Liverpool student quit studies to fight ISIS

A Liverpool woman, Kimberley Taylor, has explained why she quit her studies at uni to go and fight ISIS.

The Echo reported that Kimberley Taylor, 27, has spoken about leaving her Maths course at the University of Liverpool to join the Kurdish Women’s Protecting Unit – the female arm of the YPG unit in Syria.

Taylor’s family moved from Blackburn to Merseyside in her teens, she studies maths at the University of Liverpool then going on to travel in her early 20s.

Her promise to commit her life to helping the cause began 18 months ago when she was reporting for a friends humanitarian website on the Sinjar massacre. This involved ISIS kidnapping and enslaving 5,000 Yazidi women and children as well as slaughtering as many men and boys.

Former Liverpool University student Kimberley Taylor, 27, is fighting ISIS on the frontline

She returned to England for a few months before moving to Sweden to study political science at Stockholm University.

The ex student believes that alongside attacking terrorists physically, the fact she is a woman is a symbolic stand against the group too. She told the Daily Star “By us women being at the front line, it is also a symbolic action against the mindset of Daesh.”

“This is why they attack us so ferociously. They want nothing but oppression. This is why they do not accept that we are on the front line fighting against them.”

Kimberley, who also goes under the local name of Zilan Dilmar, has spent 12 months on the frontline learning how to fire a gun, Kurdish and other soldiering skills at the YPJ’s military college. The Mirror reported that she has stated she was prepared to die fighting the terror network.

She has also been inspired to remain on the frontline by a friend whose sister was murdered by ISIS.

Recalling the heartbreaking story of a friend, an Arab YPJ fighter from Syria, whose village was ransacked by ISIS last year, she said: “She was from a pro-Assad family and her eight-year-old sister wrote on a wall: ‘Without our leader, there is no life’. She did it as a protest against ISIS.

“So they took her to a tall building and ran her over and over again with a car. Then, with the last one pushed her off the building. My friend ran away to join the YPJ.”

The ex student is involved in the attack on ISIS’s stronghold of Raqqa. Syrian Democratic Forces, alongside US special forces and Kurdish fighters, are attempting to get into Raqqa as Iraqi troops attack Mosul in Northern Iraq. Kimberley said “I’m willing to give my life for this.”

“It’s for the whole world, for humanity and all oppressed people, everywhere. It’s not just [Isis’s] killing and raping. It’s its systematic mental and physical torture on a scale we can’t imagine.”