Syria's defiant Kurds vow to 'fight until last breath' despite government push

There's a lot of terrible failure to intervene stories in Syria and the broader Middle East, but I will always be deeply saddened by the West's collective failure to help the Kurds. They were/are everything our governments purported to be fighting for: Western inclined, educated, relatively secular, in favour of equality of the genders (Kurdish women formed a significant part of their defence forces!), and happy to trade their oil with the West for support. But because they had no independent state we apparently forgot all about self determination and largely left them to die, even after they showed themselves to be by far the most effective fighting force in the chaos of Syria and Iraq. I hope they can maintain some safety and independence at least in the years to come.

When challenged about the fact that they themselves came to join IS, her friend jumped in. "Firstly, I didn't join the organisation," she said. "My husband forced me to come here. He died, and my children and I are paying the price. Our children think the entire world is a camp behind a fence."

I have difficulty feeling any sympathy for this position. It’s not like they walked from Britain to Syria. There were many points along the way that they could have changed this path, like at the airport surrounded by security.

Edit: the specific people making those statements were from North Africa. My position still stands for the 40 Britons in the following paragraph:

Forty Britons remain trapped behind that fence – 25 children among them. We came across one of them – a polite boy speaking good English who we cannot identify. He shook hands with one of my BBC's colleagues, and asked, "How are you?"