Fighting Evil:The Ordinary Man Who Went To War Against ISIS & Why Shamima Begum Should Stay in Syria

Steve Wraith Interviews Macer Gifford about his fight against ISIS and the decision to allow Shamima Begum Back Into The UK.

I⁣n the summer of 2014 the world watched in horror as the black flag of ISIS swept all before it. Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq fell, ISIS proclaimed the caliphate and the horror mounted: from the mass murder, rape and enslavement of the Yazidis to the public beheading of journalists by British jihadis. For Macer Gifford it wasn't enough to ask why more wasn't being done, he knew hehad to act. So, he left his job in the city, split from his girlfriend and a few weeks later found himself illegally crossing the border into Syria to join the Kurdish YPG in their fight against the savagery of ISIS.

Macer Gifford became one of longest serving British International Volunteers and one of the only few to be promoted to be a Commander in the YPG. He fought alongside the Kurds (and their Syrian Allies) for three long tours of duty from the dawn of the caliphate all the way to its military defeat in the ruins of Raqqa in 2017, sniping at the final deadly wave of suicide bombers as they burst from the rubble. Along the way, he made - and lost - many friends.

This is the only complete account of the war against the Caliphate by the Kurds and the remarkable and often eccentric band of international volunteers who fought alongside them.