No one is sure Joanna Palani will turn up for our interview. At the weekend I hear rumours that she has been arrested on suspicion of possessing guns; her phone goes dead and our meeting is cancelled. When she finally arrives at the agreed central Copenhagen hotel – small, lithe and watchful – she apologises both for her lateness and that beneath her black quilted jacket is a bulletproof vest.

As a sniper with the Kurdish women’s brigade, the YPJ, Palani fought on the front line against Islamic State, rescued enslaved Yazidi girls and survived the 2014 siege of Kobani in which most of her unit died, when Isis fighters were so close she could hear them change the magazines in their guns. But now