When Syrian president Assad withdrew his forces from the country’s north in 2012 amid the ongoing civil war, the task of fighting off ISIS in the region the Kurds call Rojava fell to the Kurdish Protection Units (YPG) and the affiliated Women’s Protection Units (YPJ),
As they drew international volunteers, "While many of the early Western volunteers were evangelical Christians , such as the members of the Sons of Liberty International, subsequently more and more of the volunteers were leftists, according to an anarchist internationalist in Rojava I managed to interview. In his opinion, most of the Turks are Marxist-Leninists or Maoists, but the Europeans are pretty evenly split between Marxists and anarchists. Regardless of their politics, however, he was adamant that Kurds and internationals alike consider both ISIS and Turkish president Erdogan to be fascist, and the defense of the Rojava Revolution to be an anti-fascist struggle."
