A 23-year-old blonde European co-ed who dropped out of school to fight against the Islamic State says the jihadist militants "are very easy to kill."
According to the
website Broadly, Joanna Palani, of Copenhagen, left college in the fall of 2014 to fight, first for the People's Protection Unit in Syria, known as the YPG, and then for the Peshmerga, the Western-trained and backed army of the Kurdish Regional Government.
"ISIS fighters are very easy to kill," she tells the site, adding that Syrian-trained fighters are a different story. "ISIS fighters are very good at sacrificing their own lives, but Assad’s soldiers are very well trained and they are specialist killing machines."
She tells the website she was used as a trainer mainly for younger, Kurdish fighters.
"The young girls are amazing — they are exhilarated after coming back from the front lines," she tells Broadly. "They are very brave, more brave than I could ever have been at their age."
Born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, Palani moved to Copenhagen as a toddler; Broadly reports the Danish government refused to renew her passport when she returned on leave last year.
She subsequently returned to her studies in Denmark, where the government pays for her university education, but
uses her Facebook page to recall her bond with Kurd fighters,
and says she's disappointed she can't go back to the anti-ISIS fight.
"I am a European Kurdish girl," she tells the website. "Most of my beliefs and morals are European. I couldn't live in Kurdistan for more than one or two years — it is not very comfortable there as a woman for me. I would rather choose public justice than personal happiness. I would give my life for Europe, for democracy, for freedom and for women's rights. I feel like I have been betrayed by those who I was ready to sacrifice my life for."
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