I wonder how many Kurds will actually leave Europe to help their fellow Kurds defeat ISIS.
Kurds in Europe take up arms against IS group
Sep 17th 2014
BY JAN M. OLSEN AND KARL RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KOEGE, Denmark (AP) -- Shaho Pirani says he's just a phone call away from leaving his quiet life in Denmark and joining Kurdish forces battling against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
The 30-year-old Kurd, who fled from Iran with his older brother in 1991, says he feels a moral duty to help the peshmerga, the armed forces of the Kurdish regional government, to fight the "psychopaths" of the Islamic State group.
"I feel so helpless here," Pirani told The Associated Press in an interview in his home in Koege, a tranquil Copenhagen suburb with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges. "I am ready to die for the Kurdish cause."
While more than 2,000 Europeans are believed to have joined the Islamic State organization and other jihadist groups as foreign fighters, a smaller number has left Europe in recent months to fight against the Islamic militants, primarily with peshmerga forces in Iraq's Kurdish north, Kurdish diaspora leaders and security officials say.
Unlike with Islamic State fighters, however, European governments don't show any intention to stop the Kurdish volunteers from getting involved in the conflict. Though they, too, stand to get weapons training and combat experience and could return traumatized by the horrors of war, the Kurdish fighters are not seen as a threat to the West.
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AOL.com Article - Kurds in Europe take up arms against IS group
Kurds in Europe take up arms against IS group
Sep 17th 2014
BY JAN M. OLSEN AND KARL RITTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
KOEGE, Denmark (AP) -- Shaho Pirani says he's just a phone call away from leaving his quiet life in Denmark and joining Kurdish forces battling against Islamic State militants in Iraq.
The 30-year-old Kurd, who fled from Iran with his older brother in 1991, says he feels a moral duty to help the peshmerga, the armed forces of the Kurdish regional government, to fight the "psychopaths" of the Islamic State group.
"I feel so helpless here," Pirani told The Associated Press in an interview in his home in Koege, a tranquil Copenhagen suburb with neatly trimmed lawns and hedges. "I am ready to die for the Kurdish cause."
While more than 2,000 Europeans are believed to have joined the Islamic State organization and other jihadist groups as foreign fighters, a smaller number has left Europe in recent months to fight against the Islamic militants, primarily with peshmerga forces in Iraq's Kurdish north, Kurdish diaspora leaders and security officials say.
Unlike with Islamic State fighters, however, European governments don't show any intention to stop the Kurdish volunteers from getting involved in the conflict. Though they, too, stand to get weapons training and combat experience and could return traumatized by the horrors of war, the Kurdish fighters are not seen as a threat to the West.
Continue reading at:
AOL.com Article - Kurds in Europe take up arms against IS group
