A regular trickle of westerners, including Britons, have travelled out to the Middle East to join the YPG, the Syrian Kurdish militia that has shot to worldwide fame for its defence and ultimate victory in the border town of Kobane.
Few, if any, have ended up in Kobane itself. Most have been sent to the north-east of Syria, defending the self-styled Kurdish enclave of Rojava, a patch of territory squeezed between the deserts of eastern Syria, the far east of Turkey and Iraqi Kurdistan.
As our efforts to fight ISIL ramp up, we probably will see this decline if it hurts ISIL in Syria enough.
But it should be no shock that Westerners will step up as individuals if they believe our governments aren't doing enough to fight jihadis.
I predicted it. And that it could get organized, too, if it went on long enough.
Which was easy, actually, given that Americans went to China and Britain before we fought in World War II and that Westerners volunteered to fight the Soviets in Finland and to fight Nazis and Fascists in Spain when Western governments stayed out.
I even said we should exploit this urge to defend the West for our own recruiting.
It is wrong to think that if Western governments don't fight jihadis that there will be no warfare between the jihadis and the West.
Just as vigilante justice rises to fill the vacuum when government fails to provide it, if we try to responsibly end the war on terror while our jihadi terrorist enemies keep trying to kill us, we will find that our government doesn't have the final say on whether war is waged.
It will just be a different, definitely longer, and likely more brutal affair with worse side effects if waged by sub- and trans-national entities on both sides.
UPDATE: Christian militias inside Iraq are drawing some Westerners, too.
