Kimberley Taylor (born 1989), also known as Zilan Dilmar, is an English fighter with the Kurdish Women's Protection Units (YPJ) and the first British woman to join a female militia in Syria. She is a member of the YPJ's combat media team and was present at the Battle of Raqqa in 2017.

Early life

Kimberley Taylor was born in 1989. Her father Phil is a former teacher. She was raised in

Darwen Darwen is a market town and civil parish in the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The residents of the town are known as "Darreners". The A666 road passes through Darwen towards Blackburn to the north, Bolton to the sout ...

, near

Blackburn Blackburn () is an industrial town and the administrative centre of the Blackburn with Darwen borough in Lancashire, England. The town is north of the West Pennine Moors on the southern edge of the Ribble Valley, east of Preston and north-n ...

, Lancashire. The family moved to the

Merseyside Merseyside ( ) is a metropolitan county, metropolitan and ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in North West England, with a population of List of ceremonial counties of England, 1.38 million. It encompasses both banks of the Merse ...

area when she was a teenager. She studied mathematics at the

University of Liverpool , mottoeng = These days of peace foster learning , established = 1881 – University College Liverpool1884 – affiliated to the federal Victoria Universityhttp://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukla/2004/4 University of Manchester Act 200 ...

. In her early 20s, Taylor travelled alone in Africa, South America, and Europe, and became active in left-wing politics as a writer for magazines and websites.From the Raqqa front line: Only British woman fighting Isis in Syria says she can never return home.
Bethan McKernan, ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...

'', 15 October 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2017.Blackburn activist becomes first British woman to join fight against Isis in Syria.
Matt Blake, ''The Guardian'', 9 February 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2017.

Syria

In mid 2015, Taylor travelled to Syria to report on the first anniversary of the

Sinjar massacre The Sinjar massacre () marked the beginning of the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL, the killing and abduction of thousands of Yazidi men, women and children. It took place in August 2014 in Sinjar city and Sinjar District in Iraq's Nineveh Governora ...

of August 2014 for a friend's website. She was so affected by the plight of the refugees she encountered that she resolved to do whatever she could in the fight against

Islamic State An Islamic state is a State (polity), state that has a form of government based on sharia, Islamic law (sharia). As a term, it has been used to describe various historical Polity, polities and theories of governance in the Islamic world. As a t ...

(ISIS). She returned to England for a short time and then began to study for a master's degree in political theory at

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, so ...

, but in March 2016 travelled to

Rojava The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), also known as Rojava, is a de facto autonomous region in northeastern Syria. It consists of self-governing Regions of North and East Syria, sub-regions in the areas of Afrin Region ...

in northern Syria to cover the beginnings of the Kurdish women's movement there for a Swedish newspaper. She embraced the

anti-capitalist Anti-capitalism is a political ideology and Political movement, movement encompassing a variety of attitudes and ideas that oppose capitalism. In this sense, anti-capitalists are those who wish to replace capitalism with another type of economi ...

and

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

ideology that she found in the area and decided to abandon her studies and join the Women's Protection Units (YPJ). She is the first British woman to do so.Kimmie Taylor: the first British woman to travel to Syria to fight so-called Islamic State.
5 News, YouTube, 10 February 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2017. She told ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' in February 2017 that her motivations for joining the fight against ISIS were "for the whole world, for humanity and all oppressed people, everywhere." Since joining the YPJ, Taylor has learned the

Kurdish language Kurdish (, ) is a language or a group of languages spoken by Kurds in the geo-cultural region of Kurdistan and the Kurdish diaspora. Kurdish constitutes a dialect continuum, belonging to Western Iranian languages in the Indo-European language ...

and trained in weapons and battlefield tactics at their military academy, as well as studying the politics of the region. She has become a member of the YPJ's combat media team, producing photographs and video of YPJ actions, but says: "Actually most of the time I'm not doing any videos at all, but fighting with the unit when we come under attack". She was present at the Battle of Raqqa and after the defeat of ISIS fighters there, has expressed a wish to visit family in the United Kingdom although she risks arrest if she does.British fighter: 'I can't go back to my own country'.
Emma Vardy, BBC News, 17 October 2017. Retrieved 21 October 2017.

References

External links

* (kimmieslife) {{DEFAULTSORT:Taylor, Kimmie Living people 1989 births Alumni of the University of Liverpool People from Blackburn Military personnel of the Syrian civil war English journalists British women journalists Women soldiers 21st-century women 21st-century English women 21st-century English people