Kimmie Taylor on a tea break with YPJ Credit: Kimmie Taylor
It is 4am, just before dawn, in a god-forsaken spot ten kilometres away from Raqqa, when a band of Daesh fighters start shooting from a small building outside the Kurdish defence base at the building where the YPJ, the Women’s Defence Force, are based. Kimmie Taylor, a 27-year-old woman from Blackburn, who I met in Rojava, now known as the Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria, in March 2016 is attached to this unit as their ‘media officer’. She is sleeping in this building full of women soldiers when the attack takes place. Although she received military training (for a mere 10 days), her job is to shoot a camera, not a gun. She is not sent to where the fighting is fiercest, much to her chagrin. But this morning before she can reach for her camera, Kimmie reaches for her gun.
After an hour and a half of exchanging fire, one Daesh creeps out, manages to break across the 3mx3m deep trench surrounding the base and blow himself up metres away from Kimmie, his blood and guts splattering her and leaving her feeling sick for days and unable to eat. Another Daesh emerges and is shot before he can blow himself up. The coalition planes arrive and bomb the building. But the fighting continues until one lone sniper who was not in the building at the time is shot. Kimmie says, "We put up an incredible fight for three hours. Just two friends slightly injured. One woman was shot in the right arm at first but continued fighting with the same arm. Only when the Daesh blew himself up and a piece of shrapnel lodged in her head did she stop fighting. I'm so proud to call these people my comrades. We fight with unconditional resistance."
