LONG SHOT: My Life as A Sniper in the Fight Against ISIS

The incredible inside story of a Kurdish sniper in the battle against ISIS. As Syria imploded in civil war in 2011, Kurdish volunteers in the north rose up to free their homeland from centuries of repression and create a progressive sanctuary of tolerance and democracy that they named Rojava. To the medievalists of ISIS, this was an afront, so they amassed 10,000 men, heavy artillery, tanks, mortars and ranks of suicide bombers to crush the uprising. Against them stood 2,500 volunteer fighters armed with 40 year old rifles, and they would have to kill the invaders one by one. A decade earlier, as a 19 year old Iranian army conscript, Azad had been forced to fight his own people. Instead he deserted and sought asylum in Britain. Now, as he returned to his homeland to help build a new Kurdistan, he found he would have to pick up a gun once more. In September 2014, Azad became one of 17 snipers deployed when ISIS besieged the norther city of Kobani. His book tells the inside story of how a group of activists and intellectuals built their own army and team of snipers, and then fought off a ferocious assault in nine months of bitter and bloody street battles. By turns searing, stirring, inspiring and poetic, this is an unique account of modern war and how, against all odds, a few thousand men and women achieved the impossible and kept their dream of freedom alive. Defending Kobani was the turning point against ISIS and this book provides a graphic account of its defence and eventual defeat of the terror group, directly supported by Turkey. 254 page large paperback with fairly large print and colour photos and maps.