SINJAR, Iraq — As Kurdish fighters, exhausted from battling the Islamic State terrorist group, gathered around a fire in this damp, frigid mountain town in northwestern Iraq, a surprising recruit wearing a tactical vest with the words “Christ Is Lord” scribbled on it joined them.
The fighter is 28-year-old Jordan Matson from Sturtevant, Wis., a former U.S. Army soldier who joined the Kurds to fight the terrorist group now holding a third of Iraq and neighboring Syria.
“I’m not going back until the fight is finished and (the Islamic State) is crippled,” Matson said. “I decided that if my government wasn’t going to do anything to help this country, especially Kurdish people who stood by us for 10 years and helped us out while we were in this country, then I was going to do something.”
Matson and dozens of Westerners fight with the Kurds, spurred on by Kurdish social media campaigners and a sense of duty rooted in the 2003-11 U.S.-led military intervention in Iraq.
While the U.S. and its coalition allies bomb the terrorists from the air, Kurds say they hope more Westerners will join them on the ground to fight.
Foreigners joining other people’s wars is nothing new, from the French Foreign Legion to the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. The Kurds, however, have turned to the Internet to find warriors, creating a Facebook page called “The Lions of Rojava” with the stated aim being to send “terrorists to hell and save humanity.”
Matson, three other Americans and an Australian who spoke to The Associated Press all said they arranged to join Kurdish forces through the Facebook page, run by the People’s Protection Units, or YPG, the main Syrian Kurdish militia fighting in northern Syria and Iraq.
They crossed from Turkey into Syria, now in its fourth year of civil war, before later joining a Kurdish offensive sweeping into Iraq last month. They are based in Sinjar, where stone homes painted green, pink and yellow have been damaged in fighting and are surrounded by sandbags and rubble. Thousands of Yazidi residents fled into the surrounding mountains last year during the Islamic State offensive.
Foreigners such as Matson say they are drawn to helping Kurds, Yazidis and other minority ethnic groups caught up in the battle, facing possible destruction at the hand of terrorists.
“How many people were sold into slavery or killed just for being part of a different ethnic group or religion?” Matson said. “That’s something I am willing to die to defend.”
The other Westerners spoke to AP on condition of anonymity, fearing the reaction of their families, who didn’t know where they were, or possible legal troubles if they make it back home.
So far, the U.S. hasn’t banned Americans from fighting with militias against the Islamic State, although it considers the Turkey-based Kurdish Workers’ Party, commonly known as the PKK, a terrorist organization. The PKK has been fighting alongside the Iraqi Kurds in Sinjar and in the Syrian town of Kobani.
Australians are forbidden by law from fighting with any force outside of the Australian national army. Australia also was one of the first countries to criminalize travel to Syria’s al-Raqqa province, where the Islamic State group has established the de facto capital of its self-styled caliphate.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad had no immediate response to a query about Americans fighting with the Kurds.
It’s unclear how many foreigners total are fighting with the YPG and other Kurdish forces, although both foreigners and Kurds say there are “dozens.” There’s a camaraderie among the foreign fighters in Sinjar, who mostly travel in pairs.
One fighter, 21-year-old Khalil Oysal from Syria, spends much of his time with the foreigners because he can speak English. “We learn from them, and they learn from us,” said Oysal, nicknamed Bucky by American and Australian fighters. “They speak with us, and they like to joke. They share with us many things.”
