Ep. 49 – The American Citizens Who Went to Fight Against ISIS

Modern War Institute

John Amble

Government, News

4.7 • 798 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2018

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In this episode, we talk to Joseph Young and Jason Fritz of American University's School of Public Affairs about a phenomenon they've been studying: private Americans who traveled to the Middle East to fight ISIS. They interviewed many of these individuals, and they share what they learned about them and why they chose to go and fight in Iraq and Syria.

Transcript

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0:00.0	We had noticed a number of news reports of individuals who were going to fight against the Islamic State.
0:14.2	And so I'm like, well, why don't we dig into it?
0:16.9	I think most of them are also motivated by a feeling that there's this really great injustice going on in the world.
0:22.6	And, you know, many of them cited watching ISIS videos.
0:26.6	Particularly with Iraqi Peshmerga.
0:28.6	They didn't want to, they didn't want a lot of dead Americans on their hands.
0:31.6	So they were often just doing guard duty.
0:33.6	I don't get the sense that that was the case for the, with the Assyrians and with
0:38.0	the Syrian Kurds. They, they were putting them up front and a number of Americans were
0:42.6	killed with the YPG.
0:49.5	Hey, welcome back to another episode of the Modern War Institute podcast. I'm John Ambo,
0:54.5	editorial director at MWI, and for this episode, we're reaching back into the MWI archives, so to
0:59.9	speak, for a conversation we originally recorded about two and a half years ago.
1:04.6	In 2014, after ISIS declared the establishment of a caliphate, supporters from all over the world
1:09.8	were moving to live under its rule and to fight as part of the organization.
1:14.0	But there were also foreigners who went to the Middle East to fight against ISIS, including
1:17.8	a number of Americans.
1:19.5	Joseph Young and Jason Fritz researched that trend, analyzing anti-IS fighters' motivations
1:24.7	and some of the tricky legal and policy issues that their situation raised.
1:28.3	And it's one of my favorite episodes I've had a chance to record.
1:31.3	Before we get to it, a couple quick things.
1:33.3	First, be sure you're subscribed to the MWI podcast.
	...

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