There's A Facebook Page Recruiting Volunteers To Fight Against ISIS
A Facebook page has been set up for Westerners who wish to fight alongside Kurdish forces against the Islamic State.
Run by Wisconsin's Jordan Matson, The Lions of Rojava recruits volunteers before providing them travel arrangements and other resources.
The soldiers are not being paid, instead they're finding their motivation in the despicable lack of help the Kurdish fighters have received from the rest of the world.
Volunteers simply post on the page's wall that they are interested before they are individually replied to, as none of the recruiting procedures are made public.
Images on the page, which is named after a Kurdish territory in Syria, feature fighters from the US, Britain, Canada, Amsterdam and Germany, some of whom have fought for their own countries in the past.
The Huffington Post quotes a status update Britain's Jamie Read, currently stationed in Syria, made earlier this month.
It reads,
Well boys and girls.... It looks like all the hard work has payed off I got my good news, most of you know what i'm doing for those that don't you will have to wait haha can't really say on here but all I can say is this time next week i will be living the dream.
Matson, 27, served in the US military for a year but was forced out due to the impact it was having on his mental health.
He had been loading food for work until he realized that he could no longer bear to watch the Islamic State wreak havoc while US soldiers refrained from entering the battlefield.
So he met some Kurds on Facebook, packed up some clothes and his toothbrush and hitched a ride on a plane.
I asked 'God, is this really where you want me to go?' Our government kept saying it was an Iraqi problem for over a year when this was occurring, and this was spreading, and I just had enough of it. I decided If my government wasn't going to do anything, I was.
Various Facebook posts show that he has recruited soldiers from Australia, Africa and Eastern Europe as well, and the numbers don't seem to be tapering off anytime soon.
According to the page's founders, dozens of people reach out daily.
Citations: This Facebook Page Is Recruiting Volunteer Fighters To Take On Islamic State (The Huffington Post)
