Meet the American Vigilantes Who Are Fighting ISIS, May was the beginning ages for the Syrian thistle. The blush active grew from the bits in a babyish apple south of the city-limits of Tel Tamer, in arctic Syria. A bounded Kurdish militia had absolved the apple from the Islamic State, or ISIS, in the night. Coalition airstrikes had set blaze to the grass and begrimed the earth. Accurate barrio and babyish mud-brick homes were broiled and gutted, riddled with ammo holes. The accouterments of association confettied the ground. At a ambit in the alley lay the physique of an ISIS fighter.
I begin a 26-year-old American noncombatant alleged Clay Lawton continuing alone, just alfresco the village. Square-jawed, with ample eyes and ablaze teeth, he was a advance abandon fighter with the bounded militia. ‘‘I’m from Rhode Island,’’ he said. ‘‘You apperceive it? A lot of humans abash it with Staten Island or Connected Island.’’
While we were talking, the assemblage he had accustomed with accumulating off. Now he was alone, apprehensive how he would acquisition a administrator and acknowledgment to the action. ‘‘I assumption you could say I’m free-floating,’’ he said.
Lawton aboriginal heard about ISIS on ‘‘The Daily Appearance With Jon Stewart.’’ At the time, he was lounging about Key West, active bout boats from island to island, traveling to parties, talking to girls. Three months later, he ran out of things to do and bought a admission home. He lived with his parents and took a job painting houses, cerebration he would alpha a career as a carpenter. Afterwards top school, he spent a brace of years in the Army but never deployed. He consistently admired he had. If a acquaintance from cossack affected beatific Lawton an email abounding of links to videos fabricated by the Islamic Accompaniment — the beheading of James Foley, clips from the day ISIS accomplished 250 Syrian soldiers in the arid — Lawton looked up ‘‘how to action ISIS’’ on his cafeteria break.
A Facebook page alleged the Lions of Rojava was recruiting adopted volunteers. It was affiliated with the People’s Protection Units, accepted by the Kurdish abridgement Y.P.G., the aggressive arm of a band that aback 2012 has controlled a ambit of acreage amid the Islamic State’s area in arctic Syria and Turkey. Rojava, as the Kurds alarm it, is a abode that didn’t abide until a few years ago, if noncombatant war in Syria opened up a foreground for Kurdish nationalism.
Lawton beatific the page a message, and aural a day a Y.P.G. adumbrative access him to accompany the fight. He had about $800 in savings. In February, he flew to Norway and afresh to Dubai, and from Dubai to Sulaimaniya, in Iraq. ‘‘From there I was absolutely nervous,’’ he said. As he spoke, Lawton sipped baptize from his CamelBak. ‘‘I anticipation anybody was ISIS. I anticipation I was traveling to get kidnapped.’’ A fighter best him up in a affected auto and took him to a safe abode area addition American who was afraid and absent was still blind out, because he was so atrocious to get to the front. Lawton told him to appear with him, and so they went together.
Lawton accustomed in Syria, was accustomed an M-16 and in just over two weeks was accommodating in the abhorrent at Tel Hamis. ‘‘Fighting ISIS wasn’t high-profile yet,’’ he said. ‘‘Wasn’t a big deal. Simple ride to the front.’’
His nom de guerre was Heval Sharvan, but the abandon fighters alleged him Captain America. ‘‘I think, afterwards this, I ability wish to relax and go aback to work,’’ he said. ‘‘Maybe New York or maybe Miami. Well, Miami ability be too chill.’’
Lawton told me about the day he asleep an ISIS militant. A Kurd gave him a assassin burglarize to advance an ISIS-controlled village. Lawton took a position on the roof of a architecture and saw an ISIS fighter with a rocket-propelled-grenade launcher active below. Lawton attempt him.
‘‘The guy just exploded,’’ Lawton said. ‘‘He was just gone.’’ Lawton still had the burglarize at his side, abutting to his physique like a purse.
‘‘That was my aboriginal kill,’’ he said. ‘‘Kinda weird, but I had a daydream that night.’’
‘‘About the militant?’’ I asked.
‘‘It’s harder to explain,’’ he said. ‘‘You apperceive these guys are animals, but even with that ability … ’’ He trailed off. ‘‘You apperceive you accept to let the academician amount it out on its own,’’ he said. ‘‘He acicular the R.P.G. at me. He would accept taken me and my friend. It was harder for me. Killing people, you apperceive you are actuality to do it. But then, if it happens, and you see it. It’s different. He just exploded.’’
We absolved calm up the alley against the village. Barley fields advance for afar all about us. ‘‘A brace canicule later, I was good,’’ he said. ‘‘Ever aback then, it’s been no problem. I just accept to bethink the videos.’’
He meant the videos of Foley, of the Syrian soldiers. He looked down and ashen the apple with his boot. ‘‘See,’’ he said. ‘‘I accept a big heart, and I never pictured myself in fact accomplishing it. I like to see the acceptable in everybody.’’
The foreigners were sleeping in the villages, continuing guard, afire trash, with no agenda and no plans. They were simple to spot. The Irishman with ablaze red hair and derma anemic as the sky. Assorted Europeans who catholic in a pack. The Americans with too abundant sunscreen and gear. Some were beginning to the fight, and others had been on the arena for months.
At the apple area I met Lawton, addition American absolved abandoned up a clay road. The man was about six anxiety tall, blanched and balding with a goatee. He was a 48-year-old Ohioan alleged Avery Harrington, admitting the Kurds alleged him Cekdar. He was afraid but in acceptable spirits. He drank audibly from a baptize bottle. A purple-velvet Crown Royal bag that captivated abandoned magazines dangled from his belt.
‘‘I’m 54 canicule over my acceptance stay,’’ he confessed.
Harrington was in the Marines during the aboriginal abysm war but never fabricated it to the desert. Afore arriving, he formed in the Ohio Department of Transportation as a artery technician, agronomics snow in the winter. Afterwards abutting with the Lions of Rojava, he flew to Iraq in March 2015 with $10,000, physique armor with animate plates, two canned hams, turkey bacon, 25 pairs of apple-pie socks and 10 packets of babyish wipes. He was able to adduce the community adjustment — Section 126.17, Subsection F — that accustomed every aborigine to yield one abounding set of physique armor, including a helmet and gas mask, overseas. He paid added than $500 in accoutrements fees. The hams never larboard Iraq.
In April, if Harrington assuredly accustomed in Syria, he was allotment of such a huge arrival of adopted recruits that the Y.P.G. started authoritative appropriate units for Westerners, groups of about 12 soldiers. They went through a affectionate of cossack affected alleged the academy. Harrington was one of seven in his class, including two added Americans, a New Zealander, an Iranian and two Brits, one of whom was an amateur alleged Michael Enright. They accomplished calm for just added than a week, acquirements to apple-pie and annihilate Kalashnikovs. Those with added experience, like Harrington, were accustomed PKC apparatus guns. Drills started at 6:15 a.m., and the men sometimes accomplished blindfolded to adapt for caliginosity attacks.
Why were the foreigners there? Some were artifice activity aback home. Others were old soldiers, aggravating to ample a void. A few just had delusions of grandeur. They came for the activity of solidarity, or adventurism, or they came to accomplish a adolescence fantasy, to act out some agitated boyish emotion. The youngest fighter was 19, and the oldest, I was told, was 66, a above English abecedary from Canada alleged Peter Douglas. The veterans hoped to annihilate ISIS fighters and alternation the locals as they had been accomplished in the Marines or the Army. The civilians, a part of them a cream adviser and a aesthetics apprentice from the University of Manchester, capital to apprentice what they could. They hoped their backbone was enough.
It started the aforementioned way for anniversary of them: watching the war on television, afresh acting on their animosity of abstention and anger. They bought even tickets from Philadelphia or Miami or Washington and flew abandoned beyond the Atlantic, afterward the orders of a Kurdish active on Facebook who about batten English. It was exciting; it angry them on. They were there to help.
They beyond borders to accompany a de facto accompaniment run by a left-wing militia with babyish arms, entering a battlefield area soldiers died of preventable wounds and green medics fabricated tourniquets from broomsticks and broken blankets. The veterans had added acquaintance with weapons than the Y.P.G., who fought with ablaze infantry and afterwards Kevlar. As one greenhorn said, of a Kurdish unit, ‘‘I wouldn’t play paintball in that outfit.’’ These Westerners were absolutely brave, and yet the will to do acceptable was not enough. The mind-set of the Y.P.G., some realized, had little to do with their own beliefs. “This is the Twilight Zone,” one said. “Lovely bogie tale,” said another. Abounding realized, far too late, that this wasn’t a accustomed deployment. Ad hoc organization, no avant-garde weaponry, no Black Hawk to airlift them to safety, few translators. They had abandoned aggregate — jobs, children, wives.
Some fought in combat, but abounding did not. What followed were aimless days, hawkeye nights, and I sensed a bit of abasement a part of them. Like Marlow on his way up the Congo, these men seemed to acquaintance a agitation in their Western consciousness. They had awfully abstract their use. Their account was admired but insignificant. These were men who accustomed with a abrupt abstraction of acceptable against evil, who anticipation of themselves as heroes, and begin themselves axis in circles.
‘‘We perpetually give,’’ Harrington said. ‘‘And we are perpetually accepting screwed.’’
In the months afterwards the aboriginal volunteers accustomed in the abatement of 2014, the adopted fighters battled ISIS alongside the Y.P.G., but afresh they started dying. By the summer, at atomic six foreigners had been killed, including one American. The Kurds started application the foreigners for safer tasks — to defended limited outposts or awning bouncer accouterment in rear areas.
Jordan Matson, a 29-year-old Wisconsin man who ran the Facebook page at first, was a part of the few who affiliated to accompany the a lot of alarming missions. He said he was the additional adopted fighter to arrive. He had been in Syria’s Kurdish area for about a year and was the angel of the Western militia movement. He was so accepted that one woman, autograph on Facebook, threatened to annihilate herself if he didn’t ally her. Another, he said, approved to biking to Syria with her adolescent to ask for his duke in marriage.
I met Matson while he was demography a breach from assassin duty. We were in the basement of an accommodation architecture in Tel Tamer, a apparition boondocks with bankrupt storefronts and dogs with absolute ears. Matson was over six anxiety and had a big jaw, a bristles and a baby grin. He wore abounding fatigues and agitated a Kalashnikov. I asked if he had time to talk. Yes, he said — he had annihilation to do. ‘‘If I accept no one to play chess with, afresh I’m traveling to beam at that wall,’’ he said. ‘‘And afresh I’m traveling to beam at that wall. And if I’m done staring at that wall, I’m traveling to beam at that wall.’’ Matson asked if I capital any doughnuts or soda. He was traveling to get something from a man down the artery who formed at the abandoned operating abundance in town. ‘‘I accept lots of money,’’ he said. He wouldn’t say area the money came from except a ‘‘generous benefactor.’’ Harrington told me the foreigners were accustomed a account allowance of about $100 for their casework from the Y.P.G., which they acclimated for added aliment and toilet paper.
Before the war, Matson had never been alfresco the United States. He was animate the third about-face at a meatpacking bulb in Wisconsin. He abutting the Army and served for a year and a bisected afore getting discharged. ‘‘Hey, we anticipate you accept PTSD,’’ he said his superiors told him. He added, ‘‘But I don’t.’’ He was traveling through a annulment at the time; he afterwards absitively he had an blank in his activity because he hadn’t deployed.
In June 2014, afterwards the abatement of Mosul, he abstruse on Facebook about an American alleged Brian Wilson. Wilson was in Rojava, angry ISIS. They affiliated online, and Wilson gave him his contacts and appropriate a flight route. That aforementioned month, Matson flew to Poland, afresh Turkey, and afresh accumulating to a boondocks on the Turkish border. There, a Y.P.G. fighter best him up in a affected auto and accumulating Matson into Iraq. They backward in Erbil and confused about safe houses; Matson affected to be a doctor. They catholic abysmal into the mountains until they were able to cantankerous the Tigris River at night into Syria.
Things happened bound for him. There was no training and no induction. Matson abutting a assassin unit. The soldiers’ job was to advance a accumulation of ISIS militants who were battlefront mortars at a Christian badge station. It was a six-hour firefight. A Y.P.G. fighter died in a suicide bombing. Matson was hit by a armament and afflicted his foot. An ambulance alien him to the bounded hospital in Serekaniye.
It was there, apathetic during his recovery, that he formed on a page to recruit foreigners to the Y.P.G.: the Lions of Rojava. The banderole was an image, adapted with Photoshop, of adopted fighters. They were captivation accoutrements on a acropolis next to a behemothic lion; abaft them was the smoke of broke towns. It was account to a lot of anybody that there was a Western-friendly band in Syria. So abounding queries came in from veterans and nonveterans that he couldn’t accord with them.
Matson anesthetized on the albatross for the page a while ago. Kurdish Y.P.G. supporters run it and accommodate admonition to -to-be fighters on how to apply: Simply abide a résumé and account of purpose. So far, Matson says, he has met about a hundred adopted recruits, but no one keeps clue of the numbers.
Because of the accent barrier, the foreigners couldn’t acquaint able-bodied with the Kurds who were declared to administer them. Conflicts amid difficult personalities were accustomed to fester. There were belief about drifters and lunatics. A British man who petted the asleep ISIS bodies. Addition who acclimated his analytic abilities to apprehend ISIS fighters speak. One man requested to go home because of a bad case of attention-deficit disorder. Addition said he accepted what ISIS capital and sympathized with their cause. Addition was accepted for searching about and saying, ‘‘Did the C.I.A. forward you?’’
When Michael Enright, the British amateur who accomplished with Harrington, abutting the adopted fighters, he became a antecedent of controversy. Enright is best accepted for his role as a deckhand in ‘‘Pirates of the Caribbean: Asleep Man’s Chest.’’ He aswell played Nick Libergal in Season 1 of ‘‘Law & Order: L.A.’’ (In the show, the badge acquisition Libergal asleep in a bathtub, his physique abandoning in quicklime.) Enright had capital to action in the war on alarm afterwards Sept. 11, but his accompany beat him. The acceleration of ISIS offered him a additional chance.
Matson capital Enright off the battlefield. He declared Enright as ‘‘mentally unstable’’ in a Facebook post. ‘‘Enright is a liability,’’ Harrington told me. ‘‘He’s not just a crisis to himself, he is a crisis to everybody out here.’’ The amateur was advised adventuresome with weapons, disassembling his Kalashnikov afterwards blockage that the annual was empty. At a meeting, Harrington asked who capital Enright kicked out of the class. Anybody aloft his hand. Afterwards training, Harrington said, their administrator absitively to accumulate Enright at the foreground but afterwards a angry role. He wasn’t acceptable in any unit. (When I afterwards asked him about the comments, Enright said he did action but didn’t wish to get into any of ‘‘the gossip’’: ‘‘I anticipate it helps ISIS. I abhorrence ISIS.’’)
When Enright was abandoned during training, ‘‘the endure affair he told me was this,’’ Harrington said. ‘‘ ‘Hope you don’t get a ammo in your head, bro.’ I thought, Dude, if we see you on the foreground lines, we’ll put a ammo in your head.’’
The asleep man in the apple was lying on his aback with his accoutrements crucified, his lower bisected twisted. It looked as if anyone had ashore a asset in his eye atrium and larboard it to rot. The bomb tore a aperture through his pants but preserved his ablaze dejected boxer briefs. His arch was agee hardly back, and his high lip had slid against his nose, abrogation him with a abiding snarl.
‘‘I’ve apparent added asleep bodies animate for the Department of Transportation in Ohio,’’ Harrington said.
‘‘This is my first,’’ I said. Harrington accepted it was his aboriginal in Syria.
‘‘Someone blanket his sandals!’’ he said. ‘‘He had biking sandals on yesterday.’’
We afraid out by the physique for a while. Afresh Harrington absitively to airing aback to the apple centermost for water. A barter formed up accustomed crates arranged with flatbread and tomatoes on the vine. The soldiers aggregate about the barter and ate the tomatoes like apples.
‘‘I abhorrence this,’’ Harrington said. He was searching at the amazon he got for lunch. ‘‘I adulation rib-eye. As anon as I leave here, it’s big old steak time.’’ He had absent a lot of weight aback he arrived, and he showed me the Leatherman he acclimated to draft new holes in his belt, which tracked the advance of his abbreviating waist.
‘‘You apperceive what I want,’’ he said. ‘‘I wish this to be a melancholia job. Go break snow in the winter and action ISIS in the summer.’’
We accomplished our tomatoes, and Harrington started talking about how the Kurds consistently threw rocks at the devious dogs. He said addition fighter about attempt anyone over it the night before.
‘‘Who’s that?’’ I asked
‘‘He’s the guy with the Mohawk. He’s from San Antonio.’’ He acicular to a man with a sunburned scalp, who was abject and about arresting in the adumbration of a burst building. ‘‘That Texan has been actuality a bit too long. Decent guy, but doesn’t apperceive how to yield a atom of salt. This is their country, play by their rules. Don’t let [expletive] agitated you. You can yell, scream and get mad, and all you are accomplishing is adopting your claret pressure.’’
The Texan asked that I accredit to him by his warrior name, Azad. He wore Oakleys and a calculator watch. He had awash his gun accumulating to pay for the cruise to action ISIS. He seemed aghast in the accomplished journey. ‘‘I was active a barter for the oil fields if I absitively to appear out here. I got a job as a brick architect to try to get in shape. But it’s frustrating,’’ he said. ‘‘The airs of the Kurds. They don’t apperceive little things that could be done to save their lives.’’ He batten in a affecting monotone.
He had accepted to be able to alternation the Y.P.G. But the Y.P.G. didn’t care. They didn’t charge a Texan advancing to their country to explain how to fight. Instead, they kept him on bouncer duty. Once they even told him to drive an ambulance.
‘‘Came all the way over actuality for nothing,’’ he said. ‘‘Seems like such a decay of my life. I’ll never get the aegis approval to go plan the oil fields again. They will do a accomplishments check, and Homeland Aegis won’t like that I’m in a adopted militia. Plan your accomplished life, assuredly get to the point area you’re authoritative acceptable money and draft that abreast to do the appropriate thing, and afresh if you get here, your easily are tied. It’s a no-win situation. If you go home, you will abhorrence yourself the blow of your life, because maybe you could accept fabricated a difference.’’
To escape the heat, we absolved through some weeds to the adumbration of a broke home. ‘‘I wouldn’t go in there actual far,’’ he said. The home was about to collapse. It was abounding of the bits of anyone else’s life. Scattered about the clay were sticks and adulteration clothes, the casual beam of a marriage photograph.
‘‘The humans who lived actuality larboard with abandoned their clothes on their backs,’’ he said. ‘‘A lot didn’t accomplish it out alive. I get afraid up. Afresh you acquisition out the Kurds are annexation and stealing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve taken things from houses. Food, rope, cellphones. Abandoned acumen I’m actuality now is to annihilate daesh’’ — a aspersing chat for ISIS fighters. ‘‘You apperceive what they do.’’
Azad and I stepped abroad from the abode and assimilate the road. It was about 4 in the afternoon. Up the alley to our right, a accumulation of Kurds next to a accumulation barter was babble and avaricious at Harrington and addition foreigner.
‘‘Oh,’’ Azad said. ‘‘That guy.’’
It was Michael Enright. He had been on the barter and had appear to allocution to Harrington about bad-mouthing him in a Facebook post. Harrington, a ample man, put his arm about Enright, who was abundant smaller.
They screamed at anniversary other, but I couldn’t apprehend the words. Enright rammed his arch into Harrington’s face. Harrington swung his arm for a bite but missed. The Kurds started the engine. Enright ran and jumped into the barter bed. They accumulating off, and Enright stared out at us like a dog.
Harrington ran down the hill. He was agreeable and cursing. ‘‘It’s the [expletive] British guy. He [expletive] head-butted me,’’ he said. A tooth had cut abundantly through his lip. A braiding of red saliva dangled from his mouth. ‘‘He shouldn’t accept approved to be a fighter,’’ he said. ‘‘Piece of [expletive], crisis to everybody!’’
The action seemed to afflict Azad. The blackmail of the Islamic Accompaniment loomed over us, but the dramas of clandestine activity affiliated to yield centermost stage. ‘‘Give up aggregate to appear out here, and you’ve got these guys,’’ Azad said. ‘‘They appear actuality for claimed reasons. Just aggravating to accomplish themselves attending acceptable aback home. They are out actuality arena amateur and risking lives.’’
Azad wandered off and sat down on a bedrock beyond from the asleep body. He acicular at it and coiled his hands. ‘‘Yeah we got daesh actuality for an interview. Hey, yeah, why you go abduction and annihilation women and children? You just accomplished a 3-year-old?’’ The Kurds abreast him were laughing. He kept adage it. ‘‘Hey wish to account a daesh? Daesh here!’’
He wouldn’t stop, so I asked the physique if he had annihilation to say. Azad smiled and batten for the asleep man. ‘‘It’s not that bad,’’ he said. ‘‘Not that bad getting dead.’’
I absolved with Harrington to a adjoining village, area I would accommodated a disciplinarian who would yield me out of Syria. Clay Lawton was there, forth with an Estonian, a Dutchman and a Spaniard. I said my goodbyes and left. During the drive, a collapsed annoy abandoned us on the coffer of a river, and Lawton poked his arch over the barter bed. ‘‘Just communicable a ride,’’ he said. ‘‘Mind if I go with you guys?’’
We rode in the brazier of a annoyer beyond the river and afresh crawled up a wet coffer and entered a acreage of chicken barley. A attenuate alley cut through the field, and we hiked it.
‘‘See that apple over there?’’ Lawton said. He acicular to a accumulation of concrete. ‘‘That’s area I attempt the guy. Yeah, ISIS is appropriate there,’’ he said. ‘‘We should apparently not be continuing actuality aback we’re aural assassin range. They’re apparently searching at us appropriate now. There still ability be some ISIS guys left.’’
A white billow rose from the asleep fields. ‘‘Oh, yep, that’s an airstrike. That agency there are still some guys appropriate there.’’
He abject his arm up and pointed. Neither of us had slept much, and so we didn’t accomplish the accomplishment to move.
Another disciplinarian waited for us at the end of the road. Lawton jumped in the van. ‘‘Where absolutely do you wish to go?’’ I asked.
‘‘Doesn’t matter,’’ he said. ‘‘Just yield me to America, or a action zone.’’
His plan was to change into noncombatant accouterment and cantankerous the bound into Iraq. But if we looked in his duffel, he had abandoned fatigues. We fabricated one added stop, at the aforementioned area area he was aboriginal abandoned by his unit. Afterwards discussing the plans, we absitively that the political bearings was too close to accompany him beyond the border.
Lawton started bottomward his accouterments on the ground: appearance shirts, a array of catchbasin acme in a artificial bag. He would acquisition a way out on his own, he said, and capital to lighten his load. I headed aback to the barter and looked aback to see Lawton, abandoned afresh on the hill. His clothes fabricated a babyish aisle abaft him in the dirt.