Vetting Islamic State

"I went there planning on a much longer trip. And the political climate did not allow me to stay any longer."
"I would say that ISIS has pretty good snipers. Most of them were Chechens, Afghans."
"It's like any government they [The U.S.] don't like things that they can't control"
"I wasn't going to sit in the rear doing security. That's not why I went there. So we decided to head out."
"Most of it was just kind of stalemate trench warfare, but not actual movement, very First World War."
"They asked me if I had seen any Canadians on the other side. I don't think I really provided them with any useful information, just some insight."
Dillon Hillier, Perth, Ontario

Courtesy of Dillon Hillier   Dillon Hillier landed in Iraq in November and spent two months fighting alongside the Kurdish peshmerga.

"I knew Dillon. I was encouraging him to be alert and be aware, be safe. I knew there were no words that I was going to use that were going to compel him or implore him to leave Kurdistan and get on the next flight."
"I never wanted to take his concentration away if there was danger imminent. But Dillon would keep us informed and we chatted with him."
Randy Hillier, Ontario MPP

Dillon Hillier became fairly well incensed at what he read about Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, and the courage of the Kurdish peshmerga military in opposing the ISIS sweep through Iraq. As a former member of the Canadian military, the 26-year-old felt restless, and persuaded himself that he could put his military training and his willingness to help the Kurds to good use by travelling to Iraq to help in any way he could.

He had been in contact online with a Kurdish member of the peshmerga who encouraged his vision of helping an ethnic group which had long suffered discrimination in Iraq, Syria, Iran and Pakistan, and now were being confronted by a deadly enemy whose purpose was to uproot Christians, Yazidis and any ethnic or religious minority groups to carve out their own Sunni Islamist caliphate. The barbarous cold-blooded mass rapes, murder and atrocities committed by ISIS was its own argument to help.

Dillon Hillier felt that his experience of five years in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, his six-month tour in Afghanistan before his retirement from his corporal rank, had prepared him to offer professional help to the Kurds whom he had good enough reason to admire for their steadfast determination to oppose the totalitarian ambitions of the Islamic State to transform Syria and Iraq into their oppressive caliphate.

He informed his parents of his plans at the very last moment of his departure, at a juncture where nothing they could do to have him change his mind could effect a turnaround in his plans. The young man saw almost immediate conflict where ISIS had captured a hill at Tal Alwad, and a counterattack he was engaged with forced their retreat. He met up with an American, a former U.S. marine, and Iraq war veteran he had first met online and together they set out to do what they could to help.

Travelling to Kirkuk "we were 50 metres from ISIS", said Dillon, describing how ISIS would send mortars and indirect fire across the river and the Kurdistan Workers' Party would open fire on ISIS, then hastily retreat. "They would start a shooting match and leave us to deal with it", he said. Western volunteers helping wherever they could against ISIS, from the U.S., U.K., Germany, Netherlands and elsewhere were there as well, he said.

Dillon was the first Canadian military veteran to travel to Iraq to fight against ISIS. "I think it was a real eye opener for a lot of people in Canada that there was somebody going over who was quite the contrary", to the numbers of Muslims inspired to travel to Syria to fight for the Islamic State, as jihadists. An online fundraising that Dillon Hillier's brother began raised $17,000, used to procure armoured plates and night vision goggles was ample evidence that people approved of his mission.

"It was good to know that there were people back here that supported me", he said of the "very substantial outpouring" of support. The Kurdish forces, he said, "did what they could with what they had". Some of their equipment was "junk", though they were being sent more modern arms from governments such as Germany. He himself felt Canada should not intervene. "It's an Iraqi problem and it needs to be an Iraqi solution" he said.

"Obviously the Kurds are the good guys and if we're going to help anybody we should help them", he added. As it happened, however, Dillon Hillier's time in Iraq was a lot shorter than he had planned for. He had been attached to what he saw as an humanitarian obligation to do what he could to make a difference for the Kurds battling ISIS. And then, suddenly, everything changed. A Kurdish general, accompanied by U.S. green berets, apologetically informed Hillier and his American friend they would no longer be used in combat situations.

It was evidently not the U.S. military's intention to have foreign volunteers in the areas of combat. Neither operational security nor public image was cited, but obviously, with an aerial bombing campaign there will be casualties, and if they began to include volunteer Westerners helping the peshmerga and unforeseen events resulting in deaths should occur, the public outcry and backlash would be immense and difficult to deal with.