Pro-Kurd European volunteers urged to think twice
COPENHAGEN, Denmark – Would-be volunteers in Europe who want to join Kurdish Peshmerga confronting Islamic State have been advised to think twice before they travel to the region.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has repeatedly stressed that it does not need any more Peshmerga, Dellawar Ajgeiy, the KRG representative to the European Union in Brussels told Rudaw.
"I can understand that some who have family will travel to help them in some way, but it must be in accordance with the law in the countries they are traveling from,” Ajgeiy said.
The warning comes after some headline-grabbing announcements about volunteers – Kurds and non-Kurds – heading off to join the fight against ISIS.
Three men from a Dutch biker fraternity have gone to northern Iraq and are believed to have joined the Peshmerga, according to NOS, the Dutch Broadcast Foundation. The three men, all said to be former soldiers, are members of the motorcycle club “No Surrender”, whose president, Klaas Otto, said they were already in action. They had both been in Syria, and were now in the KRG.
A note of caution was also sounded by Ozlem Cekic, an ethnically Kurdish parliamentarian in Denmark. She said she had talked to a "handful" of Danish Kurds who want to go and fight in Kobane and the KRG.
“I tell them not to go there, because it is very dangerous and the risk of being killed as a civilian is very high,” she told Rudaw.
The Dutch biker volunteers are not the only Dutch citizens who have headed for the battlefield. Some 120 Dutch Muslims are also fighting, but in the ranks of ISIS.
That highlights a potential legal minefield over the rights of European citizens to join the war. European governments are already taking action against potential volunteers for ISIS, while Britain is even contemplating reviving an ancient and little used law against treason for anyone who swears allegiance to its self-declared Caliphate.
Under Dutch law, volunteers fighting for ISIS are also punishable, because it is deemed a terrorist organization. The biker-Peshmergas, however, face no such sanctions.
"Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it's no longer forbidden," Wim de Bruin, the public prosecutor’s spokesman told the French news agency AFP.
He cautioned, however, that Dutch citizens could not join Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), because it is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union.
The PKK’s affiliate, the Syrian Kurdish PYD, has been at the forefront of defending the Syrian border town of Kobane against an ISIS onslaught, a struggle that may have inspired some of the latest volunteers from Europe.
The United States meanwhile, which also regards the PKK as terrorists, has broken a taboo by talking to the PYD after deploying air strikes to aid Kobane’s defence.
John Riber Nordby, a legal expert at the Danish Defence Academy, believes that European authorities can be quite comfortable with the Kurds fighting in the ranks of the KRG Peshmergas.
"KRG is run largely by western standards and is far better than many other places in the Middle East. KRG Peshmerga are friends with America and it is not on any terrorist lists," Nordby told Rudaw.
"As long as the European Kurds fight for the KRG and stick to conventions and do not commit war crimes, there is no problem," he added.
The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) has repeatedly stressed that it does not need any more Peshmerga, Dellawar Ajgeiy, the KRG representative to the European Union in Brussels told Rudaw.
"I can understand that some who have family will travel to help them in some way, but it must be in accordance with the law in the countries they are traveling from,” Ajgeiy said.
The warning comes after some headline-grabbing announcements about volunteers – Kurds and non-Kurds – heading off to join the fight against ISIS.
Three men from a Dutch biker fraternity have gone to northern Iraq and are believed to have joined the Peshmerga, according to NOS, the Dutch Broadcast Foundation. The three men, all said to be former soldiers, are members of the motorcycle club “No Surrender”, whose president, Klaas Otto, said they were already in action. They had both been in Syria, and were now in the KRG.
A note of caution was also sounded by Ozlem Cekic, an ethnically Kurdish parliamentarian in Denmark. She said she had talked to a "handful" of Danish Kurds who want to go and fight in Kobane and the KRG.
“I tell them not to go there, because it is very dangerous and the risk of being killed as a civilian is very high,” she told Rudaw.
The Dutch biker volunteers are not the only Dutch citizens who have headed for the battlefield. Some 120 Dutch Muslims are also fighting, but in the ranks of ISIS.
That highlights a potential legal minefield over the rights of European citizens to join the war. European governments are already taking action against potential volunteers for ISIS, while Britain is even contemplating reviving an ancient and little used law against treason for anyone who swears allegiance to its self-declared Caliphate.
Under Dutch law, volunteers fighting for ISIS are also punishable, because it is deemed a terrorist organization. The biker-Peshmergas, however, face no such sanctions.
"Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it's no longer forbidden," Wim de Bruin, the public prosecutor’s spokesman told the French news agency AFP.
He cautioned, however, that Dutch citizens could not join Turkey’s banned Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), because it is designated as a terrorist organization by the European Union.
The PKK’s affiliate, the Syrian Kurdish PYD, has been at the forefront of defending the Syrian border town of Kobane against an ISIS onslaught, a struggle that may have inspired some of the latest volunteers from Europe.
The United States meanwhile, which also regards the PKK as terrorists, has broken a taboo by talking to the PYD after deploying air strikes to aid Kobane’s defence.
John Riber Nordby, a legal expert at the Danish Defence Academy, believes that European authorities can be quite comfortable with the Kurds fighting in the ranks of the KRG Peshmergas.
"KRG is run largely by western standards and is far better than many other places in the Middle East. KRG Peshmerga are friends with America and it is not on any terrorist lists," Nordby told Rudaw.
"As long as the European Kurds fight for the KRG and stick to conventions and do not commit war crimes, there is no problem," he added.