In 2014, now 23-year-old Joanna Palani dropped out of a university in Copenhagen, Denmark, where she was studying political science. The reason? She felt called to rejoin the Kurdish Peshmerga in Iraq and Syria, where military forces continue to fight against ISIS.
Palani was inspired to do so because of her background and heritage. An Iranian-Kurdish descendant, she was born in a refugee camp in Ramadi, Iraq, and fired her first gun at age 9. According to a Facebook post, she felt propelled “to fight for women’s rights, for democracy – for the European values I learned as a Danish girl.”
