In the past few days reports have come out about British citizens, some of whom are of Kurdish extraction, others not, travelling to Syria explicitly to fight ISIS. They make it clear they are not being paid, in part for legal reasons, but their decision to take on ISIS directly, and bravely, has confused the Home Office.
One report involves two British men who have allegedly gone to defend the Syrian town of Kobani from ISIS, another involves a teenage girl of Kurdish descent and yet another of a group of retired soldiers who have gone to fight.
The reason for the confusion is the moral equivalency that has been granted between ISIS and its Kurdish opponents, although David Cameron has confidence that the UK Border Agency can tell the difference.
I don't share his confidence, particularly when it comes to Kurds who wish to fight, who may be assumed to be aligned to the Marxist-Leninist PKK separatist group based in Turkey. Given there has been absolutely no terrorist activity in the UK aligned to Kurds, they ought to simply be left alone.
In New Zealand of course, you can't go off as a mercenary to fight ISIS, because the Clark Government, encouraged by the Greens, and also supported by Jim Anderton and Peter Dunne. National and NZ First opposed the legislation and you can read here the banal background as to why it was supported, though it is telling that the only member of the Select Committee who is still an MP is Peter Dunne.
