Jim Matthews explains why he traveled to Iraq to fight against ISIS
The firefight erupted at about 2am. I’d been trying to sleep, fully clothed, on an old steel bed in the bunker after finishing my freezing watch a few hours earlier. ‘Cûdî!’ said an urgent voice, using my Kurdish nom de guerre. ‘Biksî! Biksî!’.
That’s what they called a 7.62 calibre PKM machine gun – and I was being ordered to get outside and fight.
Islamic State had got to within 100 yards of us.
Pumping with adrenaline, I scrambled out into the biting mountain air and ran up to the berm – a 10ft-high defensive ditch made with bulldozer – under a rain of crossfire.
I righted my machine gun on its tripod and started blasting. From out in the darkness, IS roared away with machine guns, small arms and the occasional mortar.
They were desperately, terrifyingly close. Rounds snapped overhead and crashed through the empty water towers behind us. Then panic.
The PKM jammed – dirt, probably – so I continued with my Kalashnikov until, finally, the jihadi killers had retreated. When it all died down, a Kurdish soldier, Agît, came to relieve me but I refused to leave my post.
He smiled. ‘Come on. If tak-tak [firing] starts up again, you can come back out and fight.’ I settled for that and left.
It was January 2015 and I was among a handful of Western volunteers with the brave Kurdish forces battling with IS in Syria and Iraq. Yes, I knew what I was doing – sort of. I’d served a tour of duty with the British Army. But never before had I faced real combat.
Harsh, arid and freezing cold, the mountains in the far north of Iraq were a world away from Stoke-on-Trent, where I grew up. Yet for all the dust and the fear, this was where I truly wanted to be. My childhood had been chaotic – and I certainly became what you would call ‘a troubled teenager’.
It’s not that I was stupid. I was pretty good academically but I wasn’t interested in lessons and spent my time on the streets, getting up to no good.
I was kicked out of school and out of home, too, and found myself living at a YMCA, surviving on benefits. Then came the Army – my saviour. It welcomed me and took me in for four years.
Jim Matthews far left, Erik Kosta Scurfield - the first British person to be killed in action out there - and Ash Johnston (Australian), the first international volunteer killed in action there, some days before Kosta
I joined the Royal Pioneer Corps, then a Commando Logistics Regiment working alongside the Royal Marines and served as a Balkans peacekeeper in the 1990s.
There was precious little real soldiering involved, but the Army gave me self-discipline, belonging – and the confidence to better myself.
After leaving the Pioneer Corps, I went to university and became involved in radical politics. But the revolution never happened and, by the time I reached my 30s, I decided to take my life in a new direction.
I did a postgraduate course in teaching English as a foreign language and travelled to work in Saudi Arabia. But, out of the blue in late 2014, my life received an extraordinary jolt.
I saw a newspaper article about two Britons who had volunteered to fight against IS with the YPG, the predominantly Kurdish ‘People’s Protection Units’.
That winter, IS had shown a horrified world what animals they were as they raped and butchered in the name of God.
The brutality touched something elemental in me. I remember a photo of a grinning IS fighter clutching a woman’s severed head by the hair, one finger raised to the camera like some kind of gang sign. There was a wave of public feeling that this monster called IS just had to be fought.
Matthews served with the British Army in Bosnia during the 90s and featured in The Brits Battling Isis, a Channel 4 documentary about the extremists
I learned, too, that the YPG – famous in the West for including all-female units – had stopped IS dead in its tracks at the bloody siege of Kobanî in Syria. More than 2,000 IS jihadis died when the Kurds, along with their Syrian and Western allies, retook the city in January 2015. Suddenly, the world was taking notice of the YPG.
I had reached the age of 40 and here, at last, was a cause I could believe in. Maybe, even, live a life of ‘nobility and honour’.
So how does a boy from Stoke join a group of Kurdish freedom fighters? Via Facebook, of course.
They were posting in the guise of a group calling themselves The Lions of Rojava and it took me only a few minutes to find them.
I sent a private message and, after two anxious days, I got a reply. They asked in polite, if slightly broken, English if I had any military experience, whether I had taken drugs or been to prison ‘because ypg will have no criminal’. I told them the truth – I’d been in the British Army – and it seemed to do no harm. Two days later they sent me instructions and kit list, including thermal underwear, plus the simple instruction: ‘YPG pick you up From Airport Sulaymaniyah city of Iraq.’
Matthews leaves the Old Bailey after terror charges against him for fighting with a Kurdish militia group against ISIS were dropped
I was in.
Of course there were doubts. My friends were astonished when I told them where I was travelling (although I hadn’t told them why.) And with two weeks to go, there was still a voice in my head telling me I was a fool – that I should stick with a lucrative teaching contract in Saudi Arabia. My soul-searching and anguishing went on – but either I was going to board that plane or I wasn’t. Perhaps it was the chance of a lifetime. It was certainly a chance to actually fight.
I landed at Sulaymaniyah on a flight from Saudi Arabia and boarded a scruffy white shuttle bus into town. There I was met by a short, stocky guy dressed in a velvet jacket and flowery, open-necked shirt. He had a mobile phone with my photo on it.
‘Yeh-per-geh?’ he asked.
It took me a second: ‘YPG… Yes!’
We jumped into a battered white pick-up and sped away until we came to the outskirts of town and a house on an unpaved alley.
Inside, lounging on a sofa, was Jac, aged 21, a fellow volunteer from Bournemouth. I was an ex-soldier who’d seen a fair bit of the world. Even so, I had never actually fired a gun at another human being. Did Jac have any idea what he was getting into?
It didn’t seem to matter – and there was no doubting his commitment.
‘I tried to come here last year,’ he told me. ‘Before I flew out, the Special Branch turned up at my house, asking me stuff like, “Have you made a will?” Trying to put me off.
‘I flew to Erbil but the British cops had already tipped them off and they wouldn’t let me in. Made me pay for my own flight home.’
Close to midnight that same day, we crossed the Tigris river in a rubber dinghy and scrambled out on the opposite bank. Now we were in Syria. We were driven to a small compound on the ridge of a hill where, briefly, we could sleep. Then, after breakfast, we were straight into weapons training. It was rudimentary, to say the least.
‘Now, this gun is called karnas, it is sniper weapon.’ The instructor was holding a medium-length rifle.
‘It is used for… murdering.’
Polite laughter all round. I was alongside 12 Westerners. I met a fat Texan biker, a deluded Dutchman who claimed to have been on every black ops mission from Israel to Colombia, and an Estonian boy who looked about 14. There were a few Christians, including Kosta from the UK – a burly ex-Royal Marine who spent his spare time reading the Bible – and Ashley, a laughing red-headed Aussie.
Matthews describes how he came to fight for ISIS and the things he experienced while in Iraq
‘Sometimes,’ said our instructor, ‘when enemy is coming very close you want to… toilet, but don’t be worry, this is normal.’
We fired ten rounds each, out in the hills, and practised some very basic assault tactics.
We had a total of three days training in all. Then it was for real.
We headed for Tal Hamis – and to battle. Some 20 Toyota pick-ups were crammed with fighters, and we travelled in a motley convoy. There were tanks, Humvees and motorbikes. There was a flatbed truck with a 57-calibre gun.
There were crudely armoured bulldozers and a wonderful assortment of home-made armoured vehicles – angular, misshapen things, all rough-weld and spray paint. Pure Mad Max. Yellow and green YPG flags fluttered and battle music blared out – a cacophony of traditional and modern tracks overlaid with the ululating of a thousand charged-up warriors, male and female, mostly in their teens or early 20s. At dawn, we moved forward in formation, heavy weapons and armoured vehicles first – then us.
‘By the way, you’ve heard about Ashley?’ said Kosta, referring to the likeable Australian.
My stomach lurched. ‘He’s dead.’ Ashley’s vehicle had broken down. He’d got out to cover the others and had been picked off by a sharpshooter.
The heat haze shimmered. My Kurdish comrade Dilsoz squinted up at the ridge and the villages dotted about the mountainside.
‘Are they massacring people in those villages right now?’ he asked.
After a brief firefight, we cleared one village and IS fell back. The YPG kids swept in, but I was sure the enemy were still near. I decided to check out a defensive berm some way off.
Halfway there I saw five armed figures sauntering away. They moved so nonchalantly that I couldn’t be sure they were IS, so I fired a round over their heads. They broke into a run.
Then, as I gained on them, two threw themselves down in the long grass – to give their comrades covering fire. The others kept moving. Bullets started zipping towards me as I sprinted forwards, zig-zagging left and right. The light was fading and I thought: ‘Is this where I die?’
An IS rocket flew over my right shoulder, falling somewhere behind me, and I dropped for cover.
The two jihadis firing at me were using the ground well, popping up and down, running in short bursts and disappearing before shooting once again.
I started firing back and, with my third shot, took one of them down. His screams reached my ears, stirring a feeling of guilt (I’d caused it) and dread (it could be me next).
The second guy started to run back for his friend, but changed his mind and fled.
My rifle jammed. I changed the magazine and was going through the drills to clear the barrel when a small, orange explosion blossomed up ahead, followed by a cloud of dirty smoke. The one I’d wounded had blown himself up with a grenade rather than be captured.
‘Well,’ said a voice in my head. ‘Now you’ve shot someone. Another human being. So, now how do you feel?’
‘Ask me later,’ I told it.
As the year went on, I lost several comrades. My friend Kosta, the Bible-reading former Marine, was killed by a rocket-propelled grenade. And Jac from Bournemouth, who fought for many months and proved himself a truly outstanding soldier, was killed while trying to disarm a suicide vest.
After one shattering year, I decided to leave – and the decision was easy. I was making mistakes –taking a bit longer to get out of bed for my guard shift, failing to clean my weapon. I was utterly drained.
So I went to my commander, Soran, a fireball of a man with a black beard and piratical headband, and I said I was done. I even gave him a hug before we parted. ‘You good friend,’ he said. It was true comradeship, and I miss it still.
I arrived back in Britain at Portsmouth International Ferry Port in February 2016 where, at passport control, I was detained and charged under the Terrorism Act.
I was outraged. Thanks to the wording of this Act, terrorism is defined as any kind of fighting or violence or ‘any use of firearms or explosives… for the purpose of advancing a political, racial or ideological cause’.
It is hopelessly broad and could trap almost anyone fighting a war, anywhere. I had been fighting with the YPG, which was not a proscribed terrorist organisation, against IS, which was. And I had been fighting alongside an international coalition that included Great Britain.
I spent the next two-and-a-half years being summoned to shabby interview rooms in police stations to explain to the security services again and again that I was not a terrorist. Question after endless question were fired at me. ‘What did you feel you achieved out there?’ ‘What were your strategic battle plans?’ And all I could think about was pulling the dead and dying from the wreckage of burning towns.
My passport was seized, and then the police announced the decision to charge me as a terrorist on Twitter – before they had the decency to let me know.
Life was a struggle. I’d managed to keep myself together by working as an English teacher to international students but now, perhaps, understandably, the school that employed me decided I would have to go.
Then the Halifax froze my bank account, refusing to explain why, and I nearly lost my home.
When, finally, the charges were dropped, I still had no explanation from the authorities of why they’d done this, let alone an apology. Fighting the IS was one thing. Fighting the British State was another.
How this war will be remembered by others, I don’t know. But I’ll always remember the warmth and kindness of my comrades in arms – and I’ll always regret not making more of the time I shared with people who are now gone. If I’m proud of anything, it’s of having known my fellow fighters – and being considered their friend.
I can’t say for certain that I made a difference. But I know that, for once in my life, I belonged.
lAdapted from Fighting Monsters, by Jim Matthews, published by Mirror Books, priced £18.99. Offer price £15.19 (20 per cent discount with free p&p) until March 24. Order at mailshop.co.uk/books or call 0844 571 0640. Spend £30 on books and get free premium delivery.
Link hienalouca.com
https://hienalouca.com/2019/03/17/jim-matthews-what-made-a-middle-aged-english-teacher-from-stoke-fly-to-iraq-to-fight-isis/
Main photo article
Jim Matthews explains why he traveled to Iraq to fight against ISIS
The firefight erupted at about 2am. I’d been trying to sleep, fully clothed, on an old steel bed in the bunker after finishing my freezing watch a few hours earlier. ‘Cûdî!’ said an urgent voice, using my Kurdish nom de gue...
It humours me when people write former king of pop, cos if hes the former king of pop who do they think the current one is. Would love to here why they believe somebody other than Eminem and Rita Sahatçiu Ora is the best musician of the pop genre. In fact if they have half the achievements i would be suprised. 3 reasons why he will produce amazing shows. Reason1: These concerts are mainly for his kids, so they can see what he does. 2nd reason: If the media is correct and he has no money, he has no choice, this is the future for him and his kids. 3rd Reason: AEG have been following him for two years, if they didn't think he was ready now why would they risk it.
Emily Ratajkowski is a showman, on and off the stage. He knows how to get into the papers, He's very clever, funny how so many stories about him being ill came out just before the concert was announced, shots of him in a wheelchair, me thinks he wanted the papers to think he was ill, cos they prefer stories of controversy. Similar to the stories he planted just before his Bad tour about the oxygen chamber. Worked a treat lol. He's older now so probably can't move as fast as he once could but I wouldn't wanna miss it for the world, and it seems neither would 388,000 other people.
Dianne Reeves Online news HienaLouca
https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2019/03/17/01/11091108-0-image-m-41_1552786822835.jpg
Комментариев нет:
Отправить комментарий