Original subtitles

I never thought that I could be someone who could participate

in the revolution here.

This is really important and amazing and I'm going to learn a lot,

and I don't regret it for a second.

In 2017, a young British woman went to Syria.

She was going to fight the Islamic State group.

I don't have any military background, so I have no conception

of what it is actually going to be like if we do end up facing them.

She joined the YPJ, an all-female Kurdish militia,

an important ally for the West in the war against terror.

A year later...

..she was killed.

On behalf of all in this house, our thoughts are very much

with Miss Campbell's family at this incredibly difficult time,

and a very inspirational young woman.

Although she died a hero for many, her death left unanswered questions

for her family.

She knew that her life was endangered and...

..I want to know that my daughter did not die for nothing.

Everybody's trying to figure out how could a person

from her background, her upbringing, her family, make that decision.

Now her father is trying to make sense of his daughter's decision.

I want to experience what it was like for Anna.

How was the world seen through her eyes?

The more I know about her, about her story,

the more I would feel close to her.

GUNSHOT

I feel a lot of guilt.

A lot of grief.

I obviously feel her loss all the time, every day.

I'm never going to see my daughter again.

I was looking forward to a future in which she would be a mature,

more rounded, more experienced woman, who would have lived

through all the fire of youthful idealism

and come out the other side.

Hi.

How's it going?

DIRK SIGHS

How about you? Yeah, I'm fine.

Everyone's going to feel guilt around death...

QUIET CHATTER

..and obviously, the situation, in this case,

is going to make people feel guilty because they're always going to be

like, "Oh, well, I could have prevented this."

QUIET CHATTER

We're all dealing with it in our own ways.

We've got each other and we're such a strong family.

It's pretty special, what we've got.

Yeah.

QUIET CHATTER

How are you, Dad?

Not feeling fantastically effusive. No, I'm not either.

I'm really trying hard to respect the decisions that she made.

To just say, "I'm proud of your choices and I'm proud of you."

I'm not there.

Yeah.

It's taking it out of you.

I feel robbed. I feel like...

..this could have been intercepted. This could have been avoided.

LAUGHTER

It's a bit too noisy for me.

I'm going to go into the garden.

I want to know what her world was like.

It's what I think about a lot.

I simply didn't know enough about what was going on for her.

Grandad! There's three frogs in the pond!

Wow. Show me.

It began when she went to Sheffield, when she went to university.

She fell in with a group of quite radical left-wing thinkers.

I know that before she went to Sheffield,

she hadn't developed a core direction.

After Sheffield, it began to emerge quite unmistakably.

She said she felt embarrassed telling people that she was an English student.

There were bad things happening in the world

and she wanted to be part of a change, or a solution.

After a year at university, Anna left and dedicated herself

to activist causes.

Anna decided to define herself by making some bold choices.

She believed in direct action and became increasingly involved

in the antifascist movement and hunt saboteuring.

She decided to be on the fringe of society

and question everything about society.

She thought that fascism was at the root of the success

of capitalism, which kept people poor, disempowered,

and was basically immoral.

That was her belief.

We used to have arguments about this.

I respected her need to impact directly on the world...

..but I never thought that that was the right way of going about things.

She would say to me, "Dad doesn't really understand.

"He thinks you just write a letter to your MP

"and something will be sorted, and he doesn't realise that people

"can't affect their difficult lives like that."

Anna, can I ask you a question?

Why do you never do up your pyjama jacket?

ANNA GIGGLES

Because I can't be bothered.

Oh, this is going to be a squash.

When she was at school, she defended a bumblebee in the playground.

Some kids were tormenting it, kicking it around,

and she furiously came to the defence of this little insect

against this group, who would have all been turning their torment

onto her.

She just steadfastly refused to be affected by that,

and she staunchly protected this little insect.

And that was, I think...her soul's calling was to protect something

and nurture it until the last possible moment.

It makes me think of her mum.

I was just thinking about her mum.

Mum was definitely an activist in her own way.

She was like, "So, guys. I'm staging this demo in Lewes.

"Do you want to come?" I was like, "OK, Mum. What is it?"

She was like, "We're all going to sit in the doorway of Boots

"because they've got their whole offshore tax thing going on,

"and we're just going to sit there

"and we're just going to drink tea and we're not going to move.

"We're staging a sit-in."

And then the next thing I know, she's been arrested.

I think she was on the front page of the Sussex Express or something,

being handcuffed, and the headline was like, "OAP Gets Arrested,"

which she found hilarious. She was like, "I'm bloody 50 years old."

Anna had Adrienne's bravery and Adrienne's idealism,

and Adrienne's example.

She went on demonstrations with her mother.

So, she regarded her mother as her model.

Adrienne was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008.

She was only 48.

She had all the treatment, the chemotherapy, the radiotherapy.

It appeared that there was no cancer in the lymph gland,

so we thought everything was all right.

But then in 2012,

she found that she couldn't read because the letters

all danced around on the page.

Anna's mother discovered the cancer had spread to her brain

and could not be treated.

She spent her last months at home.

My body is failing. My kidneys have virtually given up.

My blood pressure's very high,

and, you know, I can feel my body closing down.

It is one of the most painful things I've ever had to go

through in my life.

Sorry. I'll just have a moment.

SHE SNIFFS

In November 2012,

Adrienne died, leaving behind Dirk and their four children.

Anna kept her feelings to herself. She was a private person.

She probably felt that she had to take on her mother's role

as a kind of pioneer activist,

which she might not have done to the same extent

if her mother hadn't died.

Two days after Adrienne had died,

she said, "Dad, come to the Anarchist Bookfair,"

and there was a meeting going on about Rojava.

I didn't actually know a lot about the ins and outs

of the situation in the Middle East.

In 2012, as civil war swept through Syria, the Kurds in Rojava

in the north-east of the country took control of their territories

for the first time in 100 years.

After generations of oppression, they seized the opportunity

to establish an autonomous region...

..a radical new society based on the principles

of cooperation and feminism.

The Kurds say they will not be silenced again.

They're calling for autonomy in a democratic Syria.

But by 2013,

they were under threat from IS, known in the region as Daesh.

"in northern Syria decided to roll out this inclusive socio-political

"experiment, which is going really well, but they're under attack

"from Daesh and they really need our help."

She never engaged me in that conversation

and I really wish she had because I would have loved

to have been that close to her and that involved

in her decisions.

Like Anna, hundreds of people from around the world travelled

to Syria to fight for the Kurds

and almost fifty have died in the past four years.

But for Anna, it was the Kurds' belief in creating a different type

of society that inspired her.

She wanted to join what became known as the Rojava revolution.

Hi, Jamie. Hi, how are you doing?

Good to see you. Yeah.

Welcome to the Kurdish Community Centre in Harringay. Thank you, yes.

I haven't been here for a few months, but I came last summer

and then I did see all the pictures on the walls.

It was a bit like, "Too soon.

"I can't see all these faces again so soon."

Because it's taken so much out of you, I imagine.

Yeah.

Coffee?

JAMIE SPEAKS KURDISH

My Kurdish is so terrible now.

In 2018,

Jamie Janson returned from fighting in Syria with the YPG.

He was detained for taking part in foreign fighting

and is still under investigation.

How did you first get interested in the Rojava situation?

What drew you to it?

I'd been doing a lot of activist work in the UK.

I didn't feel like we made any progress.

We dangle a few banners off buildings and nothing really changes

and I'd kind of kept Rojava in the back of my mind

for a long time, but I'd always put off going there,

partly because I didn't want to pick up a gun and try to hurt people.

I was always a non-violent direct activist and just came

to the conclusion that I needed to step across that line and join

a real revolution to try and make a better place.

That's a big decision.

You joined the militia of Rojava. It's called the YPG, right?

Yes. They knew they had to defend themselves by force.

The YPG is the People's Protection Units, that was set up for the men,

Did you get involved in any fighting?

Yes, there was...

We were sent to Raqqa for the last five weeks

of the fight against Isis.

It felt very strange to be holding a gun and thinking,

"I could actually have to kill someone with this at any moment."

I was hesitating, thinking,

"I'm actually going to fire at human beings. Am I going to do it?"

And then I did it.

It's hard to even talk to you about it because I really feel like people

suffer more at home not knowing what's going on.

That's one of the things I feel worst about,

that I had to lie to my family, to betray their trust.

They thought I was visiting a girl in Serbia and then I rang

up from the academy and said,

"Sorry, Mum. It's going to upset you, but I'm in Syria."

She was trying not to cry.

She was very much like, "I'm coming to get you."

I'm like, "Mum, I'm sorry. You just can't.

"For the first time in my life, you can't do anything

"for me right now. This is my decision and it's...

"..it's shitty for you, but this is what I want to do as a man."

My conscious choice with my children was to encourage them

and accept them in whatever they chose to be or to do...

..because I can remember with my own parents, particularly my mother,

that her expectations of me were quite difficult to match up to.

I think she thought that she was doing me a service by giving me

the message that, basically, I wasn't good enough.

She always placed goals in front of me that I had to achieve.

I grew up thinking that I would never...

..I would never amount to anything.

My mother would say to me things like,

"When you performed, I was so embarrassed I felt sick."

That went right in.

So I didn't want to do that to my children

because I carry all my own baggage from the parenting that I had.

I always encouraged them in the way that they were...

..their characters were emerging and just allow them to feel safe

in the family.

Anna? Hm? What are you doing?

Are you?

Her mother was worried about her being bookish.

I said, "It's fine.

"If she wants to go and read books all day,

"what's the problem? That's who she wants to be,

"but if you tell her she shouldn't be doing it,

"then that's going to cause her a problem."

That's how we brought them up.

We trusted them and I trusted Anna. I've always trusted her.

This is Mrs Rabbit.

This is Mrs Duck.

She's obviously a duck.

How many are there? That's all. 30. Wow.

This is Mrs Fox, and the reason why she's holding a flag

is they're going to have a Barbie war.

They're always having wars against the Barbies. Even the women fight?

Sadly, the women and children do usually fight. Really?

In May 2017,

Anna had an announcement to make.

She just said to me, "Dad, you know, I'm going to Rojava."

I didn't question her about it because I knew from experience

that if I did, unless it was wholly supportive, it would be seen

as an attempt by me to undermine her decisions.

I said, "I accept what you have decided, but you may be killed."

And she said, "Dad, there's nothing I can do to reassure you,

"and I understand that you're worried and alarmed,

"but this is more important to me than that."

All I could say was, "Well, it's been nice knowing you."

Because there was no conversation.

Mentally, I had to let go of her.

Seven months after Anna's death,

Dirk has decided to make the trip to Rojava.

I want to experience what it was like for Anna.

I would have preferred to have participated in her life more.

I'd love to have an insight into her reality.

How was the world seen through her eyes?

The more I know about her, the more I would feel close to her.

Dirk is following in Anna's footsteps, flying to Iraq

and travelling across land to the Tigris River

that borders Syria.

It's amazing to be travelling

through this extraordinary landscape.

Anna had to cross the Tigris secretly

and she had to cross at night.

By joining a foreign militia, Anna ran the risk of being prosecuted

as a terrorist upon her return to the UK.

The journey was dangerous.

She crossed the border in a small boat with other internationals.

International volunteers usually bring far too much stuff,

particularly American volunteers,

who all turn up with all sorts of stuff

that they try and get through customs.

Telescopic sights and thermal scopes,

and body armour and whatnot.

The European ones find it harder to get a hold of military kit,

so we just turn up with unnecessary camping gear.

Whereas the Kurdish fighters

are running around with a piece of naan and a grenade.

You know, very fast guerrilla fighters.

When Anna arrived in Rojava, she was placed in a YPJ commune

to learn Kurdish and begin her training.

Whilst there, she was filmed by a documentary maker.

This is the first time this footage has been seen.

I suppose...

Yeah, maybe I'll say a bit about why I decided to come here.

I never thought that I could be someone who could participate

in the revolution here.

I want to know that it's real.

As anarchists, we're always told,

"Oh, you're just idealists, you know, you're naive.

"That could never happen.

"That could never work."

Yeah, I feel like this is...

..this is really important and amazing,

and I'm going to learn a lot.

And I don't regret it for a second.

Around 36 million Kurds live in the Middle East

across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran.

They share a language, but have never had their own state.

Syria's two-and-a-half million Kurds faced brutal oppression

under the Assad regime.

Even their language was banned and their leaders imprisoned.

I'm trying to learn as much as I can,

find out what life is like for the locals,

just get a sense of this whole place,

the dynamics going on here.

The lives of the Kurds in Syria today have been transformed.

But in 2014, they faced a monumental battle for survival,

when IS threatened a city in the heart of Rojava.

NEWSREADER: The Syrian border town of Kobane has become engulfed

in the fiercest fighting yet between Kurdish forces

and the so-called Islamic State jihadists

who are trying to seize it.

The fighting raged all day.

Plenty of explosions as the IS guns target the centre of Kobane.

The fighting focused on Kobane near the border with Turkey.

During a three-month siege,

the population of 45,000 fled,

leaving the YPG and YPJ to face IS.

They're very trusting, the owners of these vehicles.

It's like the whole thing could come falling down on top

of them any time.

This devastation is horrendous.

We haven't seen anything like this in our country

since the Second World War.

REPORTER: The fight for Kobane is far from over.

Officially, Turkey was an ally of America in the fight against IS,

but now the Kurds accuse the Turks of helping the jihadists.

REPORTER: As the fighting continues, Turkey looks on.

They claim that Turkey wanted to destroy Rojava,

something that Turkey denied.

REPORTER: These Turkish tanks have been in position

for about a week now.

Kurds are infuriated that while Kobane suffers,

they've remained still.

We don't need their weapons.

We don't need their support.

They just stop supporting Isis.

Turkey has had a long-running internal conflict

with its own Kurdish population.

Many of the 14 million Kurds in Turkey support the idea

of a Kurdish state.

But their efforts towards independence

have been brutally repressed by the government.

REPORTER: A potent sign of looming defeat.

A large Islamic State flag flying, where, yesterday,

there was only fighting.

The city's defenders, filmed here by their own cameras,

say they relish the challenge of taking on the militants

in their own streets.

But in recent days, the fighting has seemed more and more desperate.

The video put out by the attackers shows IS fighters advancing

to a hill overlooking Kobane.

After three months, the British and the Americans

declared their support for the Kurds

and air strikes began to turn the tide against IS.

REPORTER: Air strikes, not the first,

but by far the most concentrated.

Again and again, throughout the day,

coalition warplanes hit jihadi targets.

IS was defeated in Kobane,

but the city was reduced to rubble by the air strikes.

And 1,000 Kurdish fighters lost their lives in the battle.

When you see the reality of this huge area of graves,

it's like the First World War.

You know, there are so many people, you can't take it in.

Some of them that I've seen were as young as 16, even 15.

The Kobane fight was hugely significant

because it showed to the world, and to the Turks,

that it couldn't be defeated that easily.

These people are so hospitable.

So friendly.

They don't need a reason to offer you a sweet

when they pass you in the graveyard.

They're very open-hearted.

That's how we brought our kids up,

to be connected, to be generous.

So she would have been among her own kind here,

no doubt about that.

We've lost one person.

They're losing family members all the time.

It's not just us which are experiencing this loss.

You know, we can't even imagine what they're experiencing.

They're losing everything they have, you know?

We've still got all this and we've got each other, so...

The Kurdish struggle in Kobane reignited a decades-long campaign

for Kurdish independence in Turkey.

REPORTER: The moment bombs go off

outside a football stadium in Istanbul,

killing 38 people.

Kurdish militants say they were responsible.

The most prominent Kurdish armed separatist group in Turkey

is the PKK, a classified terrorist organisation in the West.

REPORTER: Once again, terror has hit Turkey.

The internal conflict has led to

tens of thousands of deaths on both sides.

After Kobane, the PKK unleashed a series of bombings,

killing scores of civilians.

REPORTER: As the bombs hit, a local TV channel was on air.

EXPLOSION

Turkey sees little difference between the PKK

and the YPG in Syria.

It believes the link between them

means the YPG also poses a threat to their national security.

Britain has a different view.

The United Kingdom recognises some similarities in terms of ideology

between PKK and YPG,

but not the direct link that is claimed

by Turkey, which is why we proscribe PKK but not YPG.

In 2015, the Turkish president declared he would take action

against the PKK and the YPG.

REPORTER: The government has vowed revenge.

"My country and my people can rest assured," said President Erdogan,

"we will fight the scourge of terrorism to the end."

Anna arrived in Syria two years after the battle for Kobane.

The YPG and YPJ were still rebuilding their militia,

and it opened a training academy for international fighters

where Anna was posted.

We're on our way to

the Internationalists Academy of the YPJ,

which is where the young women from foreign countries

receive their initial training.

Anna spent a lot of time there.

It's quite a wrench to see these young women

dressed in military fatigues...

..with their Kalashnikovs. They all look like versions of Anna.

KNOCKS ON DOOR

Rojbin, hello!

Anna's friend Rojbin is still living in the academy where Anna trained.

Good to see you.

What is this place?

This is the shared space that everybody uses.

Right.

And this is a sleeping room?

Do you have private space?

No private space?

Yeah.

A month after Anna arrived,

the battle against IS intensified,

and international volunteers were being sent to the front line.

REPORTER: In Syria, US-backed Kurdish forces are now thought

to have gained control of nearly half the city of Raqqa,

the last remaining stronghold of so-called Islamic State.

Attacks were launched by the YPG and the YPJ.

GUNFIRE

As a strategic partner of the US and Britain,

the Kurds were supported by air strikes

while they fought on the ground.

Suddenly, they just said, "Who wants to go to Raqqa?"

And we're like, "Oh, shit, that's...that's...that's the war.

"OK, let's do it."

And a group of us were just driven straight in

on the back of a pick-up truck

with our guns, waving at all these children,

feeling like, "Yeah, we're the business. We're hardcore."

This is life and death.

This is not buggering around getting annoyed

that the Tube's late,

this is what being alive is really like.

Anna had only completed a month's training,

so wasn't allowed to join the fighting in Raqqa.

Being here, it doesn't really seem real that they exist,

so I have no conception of what it's actually going to be like

if we do end up facing them.

Maybe it will be different after my training,

but I think I'd probably be pretty useless

because I've never had that experience or training.

Um...

Hmm.

That's an interesting question.

With the international volunteers, there was two main groups.

There was the kind of ex-Army people.

They just wanted to fight Isis.

And then there was the other people like me and Anna

who were there because of what they'd heard about this revolution

and wanted to fight for a left-wing cause.

Alongside the military training,

Anna engaged in discussions of ideology and politics.

She was given a new Kurdish name, Helin Qerecox.

Can you tell me what the education consists of?

What is the enemy?

So what is the aim of the education?

What do you hope to achieve?

I think that's why Anna loved being here,

because the new movement was creating the ideal society

which was involving everybody.

Despite the risk of being arrested

if they return to their own countries,

hundreds of international volunteers have made their way

to Syria to join the militia over the past four years.

Sorry, your name?

Avesta. Avesta? Yes.

Is that a Kurdish name? Yeah. Yeah.

Meeting the YPJ internationals was a powerful experience.

Their commitment came through absolutely strongly.

They all have names of martyrs who have died in the course

of the Rojava revolution, which feels a bit morbid.

There's too much emphasis on these martyrs.

But if you look at it from the other perspective,

what it does is it keeps the seriousness

of the whole project, that they are going to face death.

Eleftheria arrived from Germany four months ago.

In the beginning, I wanted to come here more to understand, to learn.

But of course, I came here to fight.

It is so hard to understand, especially for parents.

I want my parents, actually, to understand.

They say, for example,

"It's good that you do this, but don't go to war, don't fight."

They still make a difference between me and other people.

I don't think you could expect them not to say that.

Yeah, of course. DIRK LAUGHS

They love you, they don't want you to be in danger.

I'm ready for this, as so many people are.

It's not just fighting,

it's building up a really beautiful world.

Of hope, of freedom.

There is a part of my mind which would like to say to them,

"Have you really thought about what would happen when you got killed?

"How it would affect your family?"

But I haven't had the courage, actually.

Yeah, these are notes that she made during the education course.

Ooh, this is so small.

I need a microscope to read this.

"In the Middle East, religion killed the freedom of the individual."

Quite a lot of this is the ideas of the revolution.

We have some photos.

This is the whole family, when we were...

..when Anna was really quite small.

Silly smiles. That's Anna.

That's Rose, doing a funny face.

Anna was born prematurely. Six weeks premature.

She was in an incubator, being fed breast milk through the nose.

She looked like a little bird.

So she was quite slow to develop, physically.

In fact, I was concerned about her,

so I took her on forced marches to try and strengthen her legs up.

Which she protested at, quite vehemently.

I explained to her, "It's for your own good, Anna.

"You've got to strengthen your legs and get strong."

Eventually, she was in such anguish that,

instead of doing what any normal child would do

and kind of screaming or ranting or biting me, she bit her own knuckles.

As she grew older, she didn't really express her feelings any more.

I think they were too powerful, and she got the message, at least

from me, that powerful feelings were, in some way, unacceptable.

Or the expression of them was unacceptable.

Is this everything? You said there was a notebook.

All the notebooks are in here. Uh-huh.

You said there was one particular notebook?

Anna wrote a diary of her time in Syria,

which was kept safe to give to her family.

June.

Now everyone is sleeping and the house is very calm.

With endless cans of Pepsi and AK-47s lining the rooms.

It seems so real here,

but I expected it to feel a bit intangible.

But of course, I'm here, how could I be anywhere else?

Eva gave me a new name.

It was the name of a friend who was martyred.

She said that it was a big responsibility

to be named after a martyr,

and Eva said I'm big, so I can carry it.

Part of me is terrified that I'll never go back.

I suppose I don't have to decide now,

I can wait until my year is up then figure it out.

I think I have a lot of introspection and reading to do

before I become a fighter.

It starts from a month after she arrived in Rojava

and goes all the way through till just before she was killed.

Now that I've started reading it,

seen her handwriting on the page, the lovely thing for me

is that we're having a conversation, although it's just a one-way

conversation, but I'm listening to her talk.

In a way that she didn't feel she could talk to me.

She was so happy.

She was, like, content, and she was where she wanted to be.

She was learning. She was meeting all these amazing people,

she was doing something, she was really doing something.

It looked like she was in this circle of women that were enriching

her life, this was part of her life journey and her life story.

And she also sent us photos

of the friends that she was making.

And then, whenever we spoke, it was always very relaxed.

Always in the back of my head, thinking,

"OK, when is this going to get dangerous?"

August.

We're finally in military education.

Two women came and showed us how to take apart the AK-47.

I was nervous that I would cock it up,

but at least I remembered to take the ammunition out first,

which a couple of students forgot, to a chorus of tutting.

One by one, the students took a turn firing at a stack of rocks.

When it was my turn, I walked over and took a deep breath

and fired two shots.

Sounds of appreciation erupted behind me.

It turned out I'd hit the 60m target both times.

I was pretty chuffed with myself, and in the minibus

on the way back, Amara said that I should become a sniper.

I could easily stay here and help with the building up

and the movement of the academy.

But my aim is to fight, and I will do so.

Dirk, if you'd known that she'd wanted to go to the front line,

what would you have said?

I would have said, "I'm really devastated to hear that you're going

"to fight and I'm desperately worried and please don't do it."

But then I think that's what she knew I would have said,

which is why she didn't tell me.

By the end of 2017, the fight for Raqqa was over.

But for the Syrian Kurds, this was not the end of the war.

I remember our commander saying,

"We know Turkey's going to invade at some point,

"they're not going to tolerate the Rojava revolution continuing.

"They're going to come for us."

But they didn't think it was going to be yet.

At that point, the whole focus was on defeating Isis.

RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN:

NEWSREADER: Turkish troops have crossed the border

into northern Syria in a significant escalation of their battle

against a Kurdish militia.

The Kurdish YPG militia is backed by the United States,

but viewed by Turkey as a terrorist organisation.

REPORTER: From the air, Turkish F-16s struck yesterday.

Their target, the Syrian-Kurdish militia known as the YPG.

And it wants them pushed back from the border town of Afrin.

In January, we were in the Deir ez-Zor region.

Suddenly, we were all just told to pull out one day and go back

to our main base and then we were told that Turkey had invaded Afrin.

They sat down with us and asked, "Who wants to go and defend Afrin

"and who wants to go back to fighting against Isis?"

And that was the point where I thought, who's the main threat now?

And it was Turkey.

Turkey has air power and artillery on its side,

and it's pounding the Kurdish positions.

We knew when we came back to our countries,

that no-one's going to be particularly upset that we've

been off fighting Isis, but Turkey's a whole different matter.

Turkish jets are pounding a target at a checkpoint.

Emily Thornberry. Mr Speaker, we on this

side of the House unequivocally condemn Turkey

for their disgraceful assault on Afrin.

If the Foreign Secretary is unable to join me in condemning Turkey

today, will the Minister of State at least explain why he believes,

"in securing its own border" gives them

the right to brutally attack the innocent Kurdish community in Afrin?

I don't think it's exactly as the right honourable lady says.

I think that we need to recognise

Turkey's legitimate interest.

Of course, we condemn any kind of attacks on civilians

and we wish to see a de-escalation of this,

but the legitimate rights of Turkey, I believe, should be recognised.

January.

Today is the eighth day of Turkey's attempted war on Afrin.

Friends are always saying, "Afrin will be like Kobani,"

which I find a bit scary,

since so many of our friends died there.

On the news, it said internationalists had arrived

in Afrin, and I felt jealous.

I want to go so much.

If I'm honest with myself, for selfish reasons,

as well as altruistic.

I want to be a part of the fighting.

I want to feel my own strength,

to defend myself and my friends.

I watch and read all the news every day,

see the martyrs' photos and the funerals.

Maybe that's why I want to go to Afrin so much,

so I can feel closer to the struggle.

The decision to send Anna to Afrin

was made by the senior commanders of the YPJ.

SHE SPEAKS IN OWN LANGUAGE

You are Nisrin? Yes.

THEY SPEAK IN HER LANGUAGE

You knew Anna, my daughter.

What was your relationship?

When did Anna first talk to you about fighting?

So what changed that you allowed Helin to go and fight?

Nisrin said she did everything in her power to dissuade Anna,

so it was quite clear that her strength of purpose

was too strong even for one of the top commanders of the YPJ

to do anything about.

She was desperate to be of some practical use

and to measure herself against her comrades.

Do you feel that that will make your grieving easier, in some way,

knowing that she really was so determined? Yeah.

I have to accept, and we all have to accept,

that it was her choice, very much her choice.

There was no doubt in her mind

that she wanted to be the person she became.

You really have to send us to Afrin after this.

An exodus.

The seemingly endless stream of civilians leaving Afrin.

TRANSLATION: We have no money.

We have nothing and we have kids.

All of us left our houses.

Where can we go?

This is what they are escaping.

Turkey is bombarding the mainly Kurdish town,

trying to force out fighters from the YPG.

The Turkish state is calling it a clearing operation

to get rid of terrorists.

But what they really dread is Kurdish unity - a kind

of independent Kurdish autonomous region.

Kurdish people see it as their kind of heartland.

If Afrin goes, then Rojava could fall next.

We heard a lot of Isis fighters

had managed to get through the desert into Turkey

and had been recruited into the militias, the proxy forces,

that Turkey was using to invade Afrin.

Despite these claims, Turkey has denied using IS fighters in Afrin.

Today is the 37th day of the Afrin Resistance.

Nisrin called us in and said we could go to Afrin.

I happily and easily lied to Dad yesterday on the phone, saying

that I was pretty sure friends wouldn't let me go.

I'm ready to fight for this land and even die for it, if necessary,

although I'd rather not.

We can't eliminate risk

but, obviously, every parent entertains that fear.

If something happens to my child, it will be my fault.

That's why it's such a powerful fear.

Once they get older, as a parent, I can't...

..allow that fear to govern my relationship with them.

I still have to examine myself to ask myself whether

I was a...

..the right kind of parent for Anna.

If I wasn't, there isn't anything I can do about it now but, um...

Was I too laissez faire?

Was I too uninvolved?

Was I too lazy?

Was I too trusting?

As pro-Turkish troops began encircling the city,

Anna was given permission to travel to Afrin.

Before she left, she recorded a video.

My name is Helin Qerecox.

My name from before was Anna Campbell.

I'm very happy and proud to be going to Afrin.

The attacks of the Turkish state against the Kurdish people

are very shocking and heavy,

and I'm happy to join my friends

to defend ourselves.

With the memory of the friends that have followed Shaheed

in this operation, and in the whole war,

then I will fight even stronger.

We kind of all expected there was going to be a big last stand

in Afrin city.

We were going to dig in

and the Turkish forces were going to annihilate us.

This is the end. We've got a couple of weeks to live.

This is our last stand.

We're fighting and dying for Rojava.

This is what we came for.

One afternoon, artillery shells started dropping into the city...

..and they just started shelling the civilians.

Suddenly, the order came to pull out...

..and I was like, "But...but we're here to make our last stand.

"What are you talking about?"

They said, "No, it's better to get out and fight another day.

"There's no point just being exterminated here."

Jamie and his unit eventually evacuated the city

after 150,000 civilians had fled.

He relocated to a nearby Kurdish town on 15th March.

We were just in this town, and then this American guy came up and said,

"Some British girl's been killed."

My heart was just like, "That has to be Anna."

A friend of Anna's came up

and showed us on the map what had happened.

They'd been moved just, I think, just outside the city

knocked her into a forward position,

and then an air strike had just killed her.

REPORTER: A British woman has been killed in northern Syria

while fighting alongside Kurdish forces.

It's understood that Anna Campbell, who was 26 and from Lewes

in East Sussex, died in the town of Afrin, which has been the target

of a Turkish offensive.

It was a Sunday evening when the doorbell rang.

I said, "Who is it?"

And she said, "You don't know me. My name's Jo."

So I pressed the buzzer.

They came up and, as they came to the top of the stairs,

I can vividly remember this, you know, how...

..these moments are seared on your memory.

I said, "I fear the worst."

And Jo nodded.

At that moment, I just knew.

I said, "Come in and sit down."

And then I leant against the doorframe and I wept.

And, um...

..and I sat down in the chair and I wept for a long time.

I will always have loads of regret

and always have this... this haunting feeling

that...that I should have looked after my little sister...

..better.

Maybe then she would grow up to be an old lady.

Everyone was calling her a martyr and a hero.

You were already a hero.

I feel like there's this hole.

There's a massive hole that I keep,

like, coming across and almost tripping up on and falling into.

And it's this hole where she should be.

From that point on, I decided straight away

that the best thing I could do in Anna's memory was to thump her tub.

Doing that was and still is...

..the only thing I can do for her now.

When my daughter came here,

she found something precious.

The longer she stayed here,

the more precious it became...

..until she was willing to lay down her life...

..for these precious people that she had learned to love.

I know that she would be happy for her body

to be here with her friends,

because Rojava became my daughter's home.

I went through quite a lot of rage with her, I think.

I was like, "How could you willingly cause everyone you know

"so much pain?"

And it's just...it's just bigger than that. She was braver than that.

The world has so much going on in it

and it's bigger than our own tiny pieces of grief.

I think she probably weighed it up and she realised that, you know,

we could handle it and we'll be brave enough

and we've got each other.