Metal Gear Solidarity

Eamon speaks with an anonymous guest about their time fighting with the Kurds in Syria. This person left the US at a young age and fought alongside other international volunteers and the local kurds against Daesh (ISIS). Over the course of the fighting, this person sustained some serious injuries before returning home.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQ3KMOsjoLY

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Past episodes clip preview:

Speaker 1: So we decided to name this tree set thing cupcake.

Speaker 2: They got, you know, pepper sprayed and put into pressure positions.

Speaker 3: So what we're fighting to protect is some of the loss that. Because that was the moment when all of us realized this is real. Like we're doing this thing. Ohh, someone is definitely trying to kill me and like me specifically.

Speaker 4: Adventures upon adventures. You can't have too many.

Speaker 5: I really hope this works.

Episode Begins

Eamon: Good afternoon, evening, morning or whatever time of day it is where you are listener. How are you? This is Amon Fairley with another episode of Radical People, and we got a barn burner. Today. So. Went to fight with the Kurds in Syria and technically also in Iraq. So let's talk about this. First and foremost, I'm going to ask sort of like what your general motivation was?

Anonymous: To play like a bigger part in like the international struggle.

Eamon: OK.

Anonymous: And also to play a bigger part in the international indigenous community, which I thought is leading the struggle against capitalism path RG, bringing us back to our roots, and I really just went there to help and learn. And that's that's kind of that.

Eamon: Cool. And you went a little later than some of the people that I originally talked to. In fact, you told me that as you were leaving, you had just listened to the episodes I had done with the other people with some of the people who had gone.

Anonymous: Yes.

Eamon: So what as your time frame like? When did you head over?

Anonymous: I went there in [REDACTED], and then I just came back a month ago.

Eamon: Cool. So you were there for like 10 months. Cool. How the heck does somebody get themselves into Syria?

Anonymous: I just kind of like when I was 17, Efron was being attacked or I was just turning 18. I don't remember. So. But I had really wanted to go and I didn't have the money, but I had hit the right people up at the time because it was really, really popular to go. And. I just kind of kept uh, kept this on the side and kind of one day just said alright, I'm really gonna do it. I'm really gonna go. I had the money and the means and I. Thought that they I could still help. Cool.

Eamon: And so that involved what? Contacting someone on the Internet who's helped arrange for international volunteers to come. And they told you what airport to get plane ticket to that.

Anonymous: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep.

Eamon: Sort of thing.

Anonymous: Yeah, they helped me with a lot of things. I had contacted apparently the really right people. I did not know how lucky I was and I didn't go to the YPGI went to the Y. B. S so they had a completely different way of going at it, and I was really lucky because there's a lot of ways you can get caught up over there.

Eamon: OK.

Unknown Speaker: It's it's.

Eamon: Expand on that a little bit so. People understand like. First of all, what's the yips?

Anonymous: The webs is Y.

Eamon: Why BS?

Anonymous: Well, in Curtis, it's the yeah. Bisha.

Eamon: OK.

Anonymous: And they use a different alphabet so.

Eamon: So and when you like anglicize it into English, you say Y BS, not Y PS great.

Anonymous: YBS.

Eamon: And what's different about them from the YPG?

Anonymous: They are based in Shanghai or Sinjar for Kurdish Iraq. They control the border. And they protect the Yazidi people from ISIS or? Dash, as we say.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Anonymous: Or. Is stands for Sinjar resistance units, so they resist Iraq. And peshmerga. And ISIS, all at the same time.

Eamon: So they're resisting the the sort of official Iraqi government. Yes, the the Peshmerga, that's the Kurds in northern Iraq, correct? Yeah.

Anonymous: Yes, they are the Barzani clan.

Eamon: Is that is that the PKK? And then and then there's?

Anonymous: Yes. It's the not.

Eamon: PDK. Sorry. Yeah, not the PKK. The PKK is the one that. Yeah. Sorry. So the PDK and then. So the, which is, they're in. They're also in Iraq. And then there's also dash or ISIS. So they have a multi front.

Anonymous: PDK.

Unknown Speaker: Crisis.

Anonymous: Yes there is.

Eamon: Sort of project. To. To work against, yes. So you got on a plane, and where did you? Where did you? Land.

Anonymous: I landed in Sonia of Iraq.

Eamon: OK. So on Iraq and when someone just like waiting at the airport with? A sign that said.

Anonymous: No, I had to go to a couple of various houses. And through these people that I were waiting around, I had waited in those houses until somebody picked me up and they took me through the checkpoints. Almost no problem. I think I had one problem on the way and. That was just crossing into Sinjar.

Eamon: I like to meditate on these moments for a minute because. It's you're. You almost say it like, as if you like went to Italy and then bounced down. You know you like I went to Rome and then waited for somebody and then they they met me and. It like it's a little gnarlier. You know, it's like you were waiting for complete strangers to hopefully be like, good to their word. In a country whose language you don't speak, where you probably stand out like a sore thumb. I'm I'm like not going to lie.

Unknown Speaker: Mm-hmm.

Anonymous: Mm-hmm.

Eamon: I don't. I would guess you don't look. Like the average low.

Unknown Speaker: No.

Anonymous: No, but it's funny that there's actually a lot of traffic through there, a lot of. There's a lot of white faces around there due to the. Iraq war, actually.

Eamon: OK.

Anonymous: A lot of people whose family are in the military kind of hover around this area. But also at the same time I was waiting while other internationalists were waiting on me and we were kind of in these places together. And one had prior experience.

Eamon: Cool. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Then you get someone who can kind of show you the ropes.

Anonymous: Yes. Yes, it was very. I was very fortunate the whole time.

Eamon: So. So. Did they run you through the standard like take you, go to the Academy, learn some Kurdish history, learn some Kurdish language, that sort of thing.

Anonymous: Actually, we all didn't trust each. Other yet kind of. Kept to our own, but like explain to each other what was going to happen at the point. So like what not to talk about around each other, not not to what to talk about during the checkpoint. And then once we had crossed over into Syria because you have to cross into Syria just to get to that northern tip in Iraq.

Eamon: And that's a that's a bridge over a river.

Anonymous: No, that's about over, yeah.

Eamon: A boat. A river. OK. And are are you on like a boat with like? Other civilians are you like sneaking on like a floating dingy?

Anonymous: We are sneaking on a floating floating dingy with the first time I had went with a bunch of refugees who are going back into Iraq or sorry, Syria.

Eamon: OK. And is this at night, so in the dark of night, there you are.

Anonymous: Yes, it was at 9:00.

Eamon: Sneaking across, is it? The Euphrates is the tiger. Sorry. So you're sneaking across the Tigris and rubber raft under the Starlight? It's kind of awesome.

Anonymous: It's the tigers.

Unknown Speaker: Hmm.

Anonymous: Yes, it was really cool. I had saw all the I saw the PKK and the and the YPG all at the same time. One one side of the river, the other side of the river. We snuck through.

Eamon: Nice. So you sneak through and then? Kind of. What's the what's the intake process for you once you're there?

Anonymous: We got interrogated and this is where we had bonded because we were all like except for one person who knew what it was like to be there. We were all like, whoa, these people don't think we're here to help or worried.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Anonymous: And uh. Just back and forth interrogating me a German, a Swede and.

Unknown Speaker: Uh.

Anonymous: We just like.

Unknown Speaker: Kind of hashed it.

Anonymous: Out eventually. And he was like, all of a sudden, very welcoming. I he send one person away. You say I need that person send another person away in new English. Very well, actually. And we just got in Terry. And also when I come back once he's like welcome, like, here you are. You made it proud that you made it like it was very like.

Unknown Speaker: Hmm.

Anonymous: Nice and all of a sudden, we wait there for one more night and we get sent off in all the different direction. When I was in a it's in JAR or Shingo. Depending on if your Yazidi or occurred or it pronounced it all different. I would it was relatively peaceful. I had like my team and my Tabor, and these were like my family at times. We ate together, we played games together, we cooked together, we made things work together and we we always managed to always be brothers somehow. And sometimes some of us would get called off to go fight in d'azur. Or on another occasion we were called the Fighting Man Beach and we showed up and nothing happened. Or sometimes in Iraq you would be getting bombed by Turkey. It's it's always wild somehow, but we all managed to make it work for us and. Kind of lean into this crazy world and. Cope with it with each other, I guess.

Eamon: So they call. You up to fight when you get there is they're already fighting, going on, or do they just kind of put you in a building and say alright? We're thinking that there's some **** over there. Keep your eyes open.

Anonymous: They do a little bit of both. You'll when we showed up, there were actually trenches. The first time I had went. And we thought it was. Well, I thought it was really weird that there were trenches. And basically we had sat in this trench for about two days until somebody had said anything to us about any advancement from this trench. We were just thinking we were holding it. I said tomorrow at 2:00 PM at night, we're going to or 2:00 AM at night. We're going to go take this Ridge that you can see right there. And it might have been like 2 football fields away or three football fields away when it was like the first time I knew that that was like the front line of where ISIS was also so. We weren't told very much. Well. We had ended up sleeping through and nothing had happened because they like to say. Tomorrow, a lot. And we ended up going like three days later. At night, probably about 12:00.

Eamon: Do you think that? Helps. Your. Potential adrenaline rush to kind of get pumped faked a couple of times, or did it make it worse? Did it? Build the anticipation.

Anonymous: Scared me more, actually, because we didn't know when we were actually going to go forward. And they've been my first time. Fighting ISIS and de Lazor, I'd never it was out of my element at the time. And uh. I didn't speak Arabic. And a lot of the people down there speak Arabic and very my commander was, though Kurt, who spoke Kurdish. And that's how I end up finding out where things were. But mostly I was surrounded by Arabic people and German while I was in Delaware for the first time.

Eamon: Hmm, so when the fighting start, like did you have to rush that 3 football field length to make it to the Ridge? Are you, like, running into people shooting machine guns at you, like lay out that scene for me?

Anonymous: What the Kurds did is they laid out mortars right ahead of us, probably right dead on. And what they had told us beforehand is that we were going to go advance forward, but only halfway to this corner Nook where we had pushed ISIS back previously. And we believe that this little corner Nook was kind of like a divid and then a hill believe nobody was there and that we were to take that and hold it. And wait for a a dashka which is a big. Like old Russian gun, I guess it's a really big gun and. We had started running towards this area at night. Ice is getting mortared and all of a sudden we start getting mortared too and everybody starts running away and I had made it to the divid with another man and we had just laid there for a while and.

Eamon: So just the two you made it.

Anonymous: There and everyone else split. Yeah, about 10 mortars had fell and everybody split and we had made it to the divid with one other man. And we'd waited there for about. 30 minutes, no bombs were going off and we had walked back to our. Side so you just.

Eamon: You made it to the rally point, but no one else did. You just had to get up and walk back there, getting shot at when you were running back.

Anonymous: And. Yeah. No, just mortars. Mortars were going off all. All the time during that whole thing, we were bombing them and they had decided, like, about 10 murders had fell all at once. And I was like, jumped in the divot on this. And he was already in the divid.

Eamon: Yeah. So that's your. That's your first combat experience?

Anonymous: No, that's my first time in De Lazor, so.

Eamon: Sorry.

Anonymous: OK, ISIS had also attacked in in Chingo once they had took on our checkpoint, killed the people at the checkpoint. And then held it and we had. Showed up and fired at it from them, from a distance and they ended up pulling back to a little village and we had engaged them in the village. And there were about 12. So ISIS in like Iraq is like small subgroups. Yeah. And they were really strong at the time and Elazar. So they would sneak right across the border from Blazor into Iraq. And that was just one of those occasions. And I was called out. On that too.

Eamon: And when they fell back to the village, did you?

Anonymous: Guys pursue them. Yeah. We pursued them into the village and we actually had to wait several hours because we were worried that they would hurt the people. But the and they just didn't do that. They I guess they only plan on holding the.

Eamon: And it did. And then did you end up? Did they end up just scattering away or you you killed every single one of them? Yeah, yeah.

Anonymous: No, we had killed every single. One of them.

Eamon: If I get too. Personal you know, there's things you want to talk about then that's fine. Yeah, and I'm totally fine with that. Well, did you kill any of them? So your unit killed all of them.

Anonymous: Yeah, actually there were like more than just like one unit. A lot of us were called out. We were all firing.

Eamon: OK, so so there's several of these doors pursuit that had gone and scared these guys out of the checkpoint. Mm-hmm. Waited a minute, then eventually rushed them in this small village and you just drastically outnumbered them. They all ended up dead. Yeah, great. How did. You feel after that.

Anonymous: Yeah I don't really know how to interpret it. I felt like I actually played like a minor role in this first, like it wasn't. I feel like everybody was just, like, waiting on something to happen and everybody jumped on it and I was like, new to this world, so I had kinda. Just played my part during this point. Actually I had earned a big sink. For whatever I was doing correct and a big Spink is a RPG.

Eamon: Ohh cool. They, they they they liked your style. They gave you a rocket.

Anonymous: Yes, so I.

Eamon: Propelled grenade? Yes. Nice.

Anonymous: Yeah, they actually needed somebody at the time to use it. And I was there, though I didn't. Didn't like. I didn't need to use it. They had just given it to me. Yeah, and I was acting confident enough, I guess. Yeah. And they told me to keep it, and they gave me a rocket bag and everything. Yeah. Yeah.

Eamon: Sweet, nice getting towed around an RPG. I guess you know war for most people who, let's say, live in Canada. the United States like, you know, young people, people who don't serve in the military. Whatever. We see it in movies, we see it on TV. We see it on the news and we hear about it. And we may even talk about it. And really. Try to understand how. You know, just sort of insane it is. But like I guess, how did you feel when you knew those? People. Were dead. Like, was there any cause? Of course I like. That's what you're there to do and you know and like I imagine you have feelings where they're these are bad people who do bad things to other people.

Unknown Speaker: OK. M.

Eamon: But was it still? Did it still strike you the first time you were involved in a combat thing that resulted in people dying?

Anonymous: A a little bit, but I had gotten through it almost immediately on how. How do I answer this?

Unknown Speaker: Hmm.

Anonymous: People just there is like a family, I guess, and I'd somehow like immediately got swept up in this feeling of these. People were more than just comrades or more, you know, we had we had something together. And when this happened, it was a great joy and I my hate Spanish commander, talked about like, you know, you did a, you know, did a good service. Like played your part. And I'm very proud of you. And prior to all this, we had been filled with what? Isis had done to these people. And on along the way I became more sure that what I had done throughout the whole experience in the beginning to the end was a good thing. But in the beginning, I guess I didn't know quite how to interpret it. But I guess like I had a good feeling about it. I had knew that I'd went there to fight. Fascism, I guess, and that is Islamic fascism, and I was prepared to.

Eamon: Have very, very violent, like overt fascism.

Anonymous: And they don't hold back on during the educational parts. It's a lot of education. They care a lot about this. They really want you to understand the situation, who they are, what's going on, why ISIS even formed. And. Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of how.

Eamon: I and then when you were there, you got you ended up taking some wounds yourself. Correct. Yeah. Are you OK talking about those?

Anonymous: Yeah, I can get into that a little bit. One time we were taking a village and. We were advancing forward on a farm and I'd stuck my arms out to like covering fire from with my AK or clutching cover.

Eamon: Yeah.

Anonymous: And I was shooting and somebody had thrown a grenade and I had not, like, quite taken notice of this and my hands were hit. And a little bit of my chest was hit, but I was actually fine. I. Pretty much maintained. I like went straight to the medic after that and everybody would move forward. We had. It was a small advancement so everything was fine that.

Unknown Speaker: Time.

Anonymous: The second time I had got injured. It was actually after a long campaign of three weeks, every single night going out into this village and sweeping houses, and we had only taken out the outskirts and we were trying to move inward from the east. And we had went into this hotel and on the 1st floor there were some bombs, but actually like. The furniture from must have been the whole hotel was actually like stocked up. And the the stairway areas. So we had got a really weird feeling from this place. It was a little different and we had never like swept a multi tiered building and it just felt really heavy. So we had stayed down there asking our commanders what to do and they told us to sweep the whole building like ****. We gotta sweep this whole building. It's just 9 of.

Unknown Speaker: Yes.

Anonymous: So we had to leave two people downstairs to hold the, you know, doorways and make sure everything's. Fine. We had started removing this furniture. We were scared that they were actually gonna be bombs or something. We we paying very close attention. Finally, no bombs in the furniture, so we had removed it all from the stairway. We moved up and as soon as we had moved up, we had to well. I was third. In front and I had jumped into a. Room. Because somebody was laying down fire, it was actually just two people. We ended up finding out. It laid down very heavy fire with Dixie and it's another Russian machine gun. Shoot a mosin round if you know what Mosin is.

Eamon: A very large rifle cartridge, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Anonymous: They are ******* huge rounds. Regardless, this gun can shoot. Two bullets, like every second I had been trained on this weapon. And then if you pull the trigger you like, just barely Doo Doo, Doo, Doo Doo. And it's like a test to pull it and get one round out. Sorry, I guess that's a side thing, but.

Eamon: Yeah. No. Not. It's not a side thing that these are the interesting details.

Anonymous: Anyway. I mean this it was only one gun, but all of a sudden bullets had been like flying everywhere. I jumped in this room and the bullets were still flying through the walls and probably through the walls that people were behind me. I had like immediately been hit in the leg as soon as I jumped into this room and I gripped onto the ground for all I could to not be hit again, and after that had happened, my commander. Had threw grenade down the the hallway and blew up and all of a sudden he went in the room, grabbed me by the collar and then threw me down the stairs. And all of a sudden I'm getting pulled back down the road and that was like the end of that. But I was actually fortunate because I was pulled out. One person wasn't who wasn't in another room, right, just ahead of me. Didn't get pulled out. He actually had lived and then had to kill himself right there.

Eamon: *** ****.

Anonymous: Yeah, like we had a rule we ought to carry an extra bullet. That was a real rule. Not that all of us actually followed.

Eamon: It so, I mean, is it so ultimately if you you don't get captured and then tortured used for propaganda purposes and beheaded and things like that?

Anonymous: Yeah, it's well known that if you get caught that you will usually be either way, even if you're a corpse, they'll do stuff to your body and then they'll make the Kurds pay for your body back. Because the Kurds have this, like, vow that they're not gonna let ISIS keep your body. Yeah. And they go through tremendous things to get a foreigner body, a foreigners body back. What was the question?

Eamon: No. Oh, is it weird to talk about the the suicide that at the end of that and why that had to happen?

Unknown Speaker: So I mean you.

Eamon: You've gotten the shrapnel in your hands. You had gone into this building and you know there. People shooting at you like crazy and you fortunate enough to get grabbed and dragged out. This is a question I've asked. I think most of the young people who who went, but like what does your mother think of all this? Or like your family?

Anonymous: I lied to my mother about going because I didn't want her to worry. I thought about explaining to her what I was doing, but her lack of knowledge on the situation. Kind of made me not want to do that. I decided to just go and if I had made it back, I was going to tell them about what I had experienced.

Eamon: You've made it back. Have you told your parents about what you've experienced?

Anonymous: Yeah, I told my mother and sister.

Eamon: And what did your mother say?

Anonymous: She basically really tried to understand why I left. But it doesn't really understand the. What I did there, she doesn't want to know exactly. She knows that I had fought ISIS and that I myself was not a terrorist, is what she wants to know from that. And that's what she. Got from her.

Eamon: I know mine. I'm not a. Terrorist. I asked that question because it's it's such a. Dangerous thing to do, obviously. And it's not a common thing to do, and so I imagine for most people, their loved ones, their families. Like. It would, it would frighten them, you know, and like when when we do things. That are are. Risky. You know, like we're we're risking them too, you know. And. And that's why I kind of like to to ask, like, how people handled that, you know, just whether they told the truth or whether they didn't tell me they got back or if they told them at all, you know? Umm. Is there a? When this was wrapping up for you, I think at one point you told me that you had to go to a hospital.

Anonymous: MHM.

Eamon: Can you tell me about that, that hospital situation?

Anonymous: Yeah, right after I had been shot, they took me initially to a tent and in this tent there was an American doctor and my Spanish commander basically was like, man, you gotta, like, let this person in here. And he's Craig and it. Was. Not it wasn't accurate, obviously. I'm a white man.

Eamon: With very lovely.

Anonymous: And they they knew he was a Spaniard and they obviously knew I was a an American or, you know, a white man, obviously. And they're trying to get my name, get my name, get my name, get my name and my commander just been saying his, his name is this. His name is. This which is. They just basically it threw me out with this bullet in my leg and it I guess.

Eamon: Did you try say like speaking in Kurdish to see if you could fool them?

Anonymous: No, I knew from the ******* start. It was a bad idea, that they were not going to take me based on past people who had tried to go to this place with trapnel or missing limbs or like the worst situations. You would think that they wouldn't turn somebody away, but they do.

Eamon: And this is medicine, some frontiers, however, you say that it's French, but doctors without.

Anonymous: Borders, yeah.

Eamon: So doctors Without Borders stop putting up borders. This guys got a bullet and it's like.

Anonymous: Yeah, it is a thing made. There were citizens in there, so I suppose I don't qualify as a citizen in this place. But or, you know, just regular people, not, not the the the Y. PG yeah. Civilians. Yeah, because that at this time, I.

Eamon: Civilian.

Anonymous: Was. In which means I was in the YPG. And the Syrian Democratic forces cause. It's a coalition.

Eamon: Yeah.

Anonymous: Anyway. I had gotten ******* thrown out of this place and every my friends were telling. It's gonna be OK. It's gonna be OK. It's gonna be OK. It's gonna.

Eamon: Is this thing bleeding out a lot? At the time.

Anonymous: No, it it did not pass through. It hit in a weird angle where you could like it had a big hole. It passed. But it the way they took it out must have went in a weird angle and.

Eamon: They still had it. It was in there when you were going to.

Anonymous: Go. Yeah.

Eamon: The hospital it's. Still in, yes. Let. Let me just ask. Did that hurt? Like ****.

Anonymous: Yeah, it hurt a lot, and it hurt even worse when they were putting a tourniquet on my leg that it put the icing on the cake, I mean.

Eamon: OK. Do you feel like you were, like, kind of holding it down, like, not panicking, do you? Feel like you. Trying to be like. OK, alright. OK. No shame.

Anonymous: I was crying. No, no, no. Shame because that was intense. I was crying. Other confusion for me and this time and then by the time I had been gotten to the medic tent of these ******* sorry, I'm not going to say that.

Eamon: That's OK you can.

Anonymous: A lot, am I? Say whatever you want. Alright. By the time I got to.

Unknown Speaker: Andrew podcast.

Anonymous: This Medical Center, OK. By the time I got into. This tent. I had heard it all like that. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that of how I'm gonna get into this tent. And basically they winged it on trying to get me and they're just saying I'm Kurdish. Well, that didn't work. And I had to wait two more days until I could get to tell Tamer in a very, very nice hospital, but and then there probably about 3 hours later, they had taken the bullet out of my leg. Did you keep it. No, I couldn't even take it home if I wanted to.

Eamon: OK. Yeah. Like get it decorate it and paint it to it. So it looks like something else and put eyes on some some googly.

Anonymous: Eyes on it. You know, I actually tried to bring something of this nature home, and they did actually find it with. Somehow, yeah, yeah.

Eamon: Nay. I guess no, no, no, no. Souvenirs policy. When did you decide to come home? After and, yeah, just sort of like why? Like when and why? So.

Anonymous: Uh. After seven months of being there. I was going through a lot of depression. I was also a medic. I'd been trained to do medic stuff I wanted to. Go to. Stand to learn. This was one of the things that I'd have the opportunity to learn of all places.

Eamon: Hey, in the field, right?

Anonymous: In the field. But I had become very depressed on. All the stuff I'd seen and it just kind of started to weigh down on me that uh. It's it's dealing with death. Really, you know. It. Feels revolutionary, you see. People liberated and do things that they could never do in these communities prior and also come back to their roots, but at the same time you're doing the the gritty part. You're not building the community, you're. You're trying to make it exist. I guess in some way. And I just kind of got impacted by that and. After seven months, I had asked to go and they said yes tomorrow.

Eamon: Oh wow. Yeah. Did you? Do you think they could tell that you were down in spirits or?

Unknown Speaker: Come on.

Anonymous: Yeah, yeah, this is actually contributes to that. Is. Yeah. Tomorrow, no problem. But the they don't like to like. Just let people leave, because if you're in down spirits, you wanna like throw you a party or something, right? Yeah. And the hierarchy doesn't. Everybody's called Haval there. Right. So you might have a general or something, but you don't call him general. Blah blah blah, you call him, blah blah blah. Blah blah OK. And everybody knows everybody. So my of all maduros. Who is a general constantly through places? And said Ohh well, you know, I realize you were. You've done a lot and I want to thank you and we're going to have a you know. A big morale. And I'd waited like 3 months waiting on this morale and eventually like we had been through, I'd fought up until the last month. I was there with Iraq.

Eamon: So can I go home? Yes. Tomorrow.

Anonymous: Yeah.

Eamon: Three months later, like what? We can't send you off at your party, and it takes a little time.

Anonymous: Uh-huh.

Eamon: To plan the party.

Anonymous: Well, cause this whole swing of events had happened when I had asked. And they said, yeah, tomorrow. But like, I the culture there is different. So they didn't mean tomorrow, but that's fine. You.

Eamon: Tomorrow means sure, we'll get to.

Anonymous: It. Yeah, like it's it's, it's. The way it is.

Eamon: Well, it's still we'll follow your. Papers and you know it's gonna take.

Anonymous: A second, yeah, pretty much. And it and it. And it really. You could you understand the gravity of the situation when you're in the situation. So you're not trying to get the the number one thing on their list to be done is for you to go home. You're a part of it and you have to wait and you have to be, you know. Part of it. And I took that on. That's fine. And I was a little depressed, but. After asking, we had started fighting. And my the person I was waiting on for this lovely morale was on the other side of the. Border so they. And we thought until about damn near the last couple weeks. Before I left, I had got this pocket of time where we weren't fighting and they had sent me home.

Eamon: When you say fighting.

Anonymous: Yeah, we were fighting.

Eamon: What happens to? You if you get caught shooting at.

Anonymous: But if you're an American, I imagine that there's going to be a lot of correlation between governments on the on the capture of, I don't know, Americans.

Eamon: Yeah, they're gonna be, I imagine, a little ******.

Anonymous: I imagine everybody's gonna be a little. ****** in this situation, but.

Eamon: It's it's such a complex place, too. I mean with, like Turkey, the different Kurdish groups, the Iraqis dash, like you have a lot of different. Alliances and coalitions and trying to be aware of who's with who. I mean, it's it, you know, it's not for the it's not just a black and white situation of like us first, then a little. It's a little murky.

Anonymous: Well, Speaking of people getting captured and as I was saying, how much I felt it was like. A. Family. We had two volunteers that wanted to come through, which sparked this whole incident. And we they had came through the same route I had but had more problems and Iraq had fired upon these two foreigners and captured them. One was from Spain and one was from Germany. And they actually captured them and.

Eamon: Where, where were they from?

Unknown Speaker: OK.

Anonymous: As this was all going down, obviously they had escorts on our side. Yeah, they had killed one of our escorts and another escort had killed 5 of their troops. And at the end of all this, where I was, we were called to action. We had to go get these people from and we show up. On this other side of the road. And like a big scary gorilla militia, you know, popping up in the desert. And here's Iraq, with about 50 soldiers on the other side, and we had about 100 or so. And it's a very heavy weapons ready to.

Eamon: Use. You had the heavy.

Anonymous: Weapons. I had my.

Eamon: Not you personally, but your side.

Anonymous: My yeah, my side had very happy weapons and I. Personally had heavy weapons on me.

Eamon: Nice.

Anonymous: Yes, we were definitely we had been enemies, enemies, enemies previously with Iraq and had problems with them making, including with Turkey to allow us to be bombed. We're actually. At the peak, yeah. So they depending on whether they like us or hate. Us or whatever. They'll say we're the PKK and allow Turkey to bomb us. We had to fire.

Eamon: Turkey will fly. I'm a fighter, jets and.

Anonymous: Yeah, we had prior bad blood to this. So we were ready to fight when this moment had came. But out of all that happened, the person from diplomacy had came. They said. We cannot fight these people right here, right now. I'm going to. And he had went after some very nearly words between each other, had started to talk about taking our foreigners back from us. And eventually we had ended up with our foreigners on our side, but without their passports and stuff. So this had led to, like, you know, future problems.

Eamon: Yeah.

Anonymous: And we ended up getting the passports back too. So like I tried to run this back to the family. Thing is, we really made sure that we weren't. Again, allow each other to get captured sometimes.

Eamon: That's really cool. It's been home for a while. How's it feel being back?

Anonymous: At first I kind of regretted coming home. But I'm trying to. Make. Trying to make the best. Of it, yeah.

Eamon: Did you ever fire the RPG?

Anonymous: Yeah, several times.

Eamon: How? How was that? Was that? Cool.

Anonymous: I was terrified of the RPG, which is like, and I probably was like the whole time, honestly, because it's you think it kick you and I'm not a very big person, but you think I'd kick you out right on your ***. It doesn't, but it's so loud and deafening and there's fire and the dangerous weapon. They're just and heavy to lug around.

Eamon: Did it feel a little cool to? Shoot it though bad.

Anonymous: It was ****** every time I did it, and I had a lot of fun things to shoot at apparently, you know, like it was pretty alright with it.

Eamon: Pretty good aim. Played a lot of super scope on Super Nintendo when I was a kid.

Anonymous: Yeah, it worked out like, but I never really wanted. I was like somebody had to call on me. To do it, yeah, yeah.

Eamon: They'd be like, alright, yeah.

Anonymous: On that and I really guys, can't we just shoot at it more and I'd do it and it was always like, wow, that's great.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Anonymous: Did it right?

Unknown Speaker: Awesome.

Anonymous: And one time I had the opportunity to shoot a tank and it. Took me. Two shots. Yeah, and I missed once and.

Eamon: Nice even.

Anonymous: Then got it to the second shot.

Eamon: That is ******* cool, yeah. Thank you so much for taking time to. You know, relay all this to to me and. To. Us super cool. Do you have anything you'd like? To say just. About the Kurds or the, you know, the situation there, anything that you think people need? To know that. You haven't said yet.

Anonymous: UM. Yeah, I think it's really important as a a person from. America, but it's from European blood, I guess. So it's a colonizer to really try to play a big part in this indigenous struggle that's going across the world right now. And to be of servants to this. I think that. America alone, we've had a lot of colonizing and like even on Iraq. We have a. Very deep history of meddling with this country, and it's in the fallout of this while being there as as well as seeing the new fall out of Syria and what they're trying to play around there. That we have. As citizens of the United States of America, we are. Sitting by watching these things happen and I grew up watching my family and. Friends and everybody ideally just watching these things as if it's just news and that's it.

Eamon: Just a TV show, man.

Anonymous: Just a TV show.

Eamon: What's on next?

Anonymous: And I what they were doing had resonated with me since I was young and I wanted to play a part in it and I seized the moment when I could and. I think people should really try to help. The best they can and really question their capacity, because these people are put under this life every single day. Well, people, we're used to a certain kind of criminal activity in the United States. Where? We're scared of cops and things like this, and we could play a really big part in these communities trying to defend them and stuff. I believe we should be servitude to these communities, really affected by the problems in the United States. And abroad.

Eamon: Good luck in your. I know you're taking a little down time out of your home. Good luck with that. I hope that you're not left depressed or with you know anything that's weighing you down too much, so I hope you can, you know. Find something that keeps your attention here while you're. And that makes you feel good doing it.

Outro

Thank you all my lovely listeners for joining me yet again for another episode of Radical People. Thank you so much to my guest, who again shall remain nameless. Thank you to all my patrons over on Patreon, which is patreon.com/radical people. I've got some good patrons. I'm stoked it used to be a. This like weird, dusty post apocalyptic. You know, place my Patreon where, like someone might accidentally wander and then quietly back out the way they came. And now there's, like, some patrons signing up. And I love that because that really does help me out, you know, afford just the basics, the hosting and things like that. So if you want to sign up a dollar an episode, $2.00 an episode $4000 an episode. I am accepting it will be charged again per episode and I am lazy and also busy. So there will basically only ever be one a month. And hilariously, I say that, and I almost dropped this current episode, like at the end of or like middle of last month because I was like, ohh, you know, everything's popping off with Syria again with Rojava. And I have this very, you know, relevant interview. And then I was like, yeah, but then my patrons who are giving me dollars and stuff. Come on the back. **** twice a month. You like? Screw you, *******. So I didn't do that. I waited till the beginning of this month and here it is. So anyway, I'll do. I'll. I'll if you hook me up with a couple of dollars. I'll try not to like, put out 40 things in a month and drain you. Your credit card, because I just don't have time to record that much material anyway. So moving forward, you can contact me on Twitter at Radical under score podcast and yeah, just you could, I don't know if that will help your life. It probably won't. So you can follow me there and see the things that I'm posting about how climate change is going. To kill us all. Or you could just not it's it's. I promise it won't help your life to do it. In fact, how about this? Just don't go on Twitter at all. That's probably for the best. I'm not on Facebook or Instagram or any other social media site, not even in my personal life. And that that feels great. The only one I'm on is Twitter for this show and. It's a. It's a ******* cesspool, maid. So, yeah, if you're there and you want to just, like, swim in it. Great. I'm there Radical under score podcast. Otherwise. Just go outside. I also have an e-mail address radicalpeoplepodcast@gmail.com, where you can tell me how to improve this show, how to improve myself as a person. You could tell me to dress better. You could tell me to bathe more. You could also suggest someone who should be on my show and you could help me get in contact with that person. If it's a person you know and that would be awesome. So I'm always looking for more guests. I'm actually surprised. I've ever made. It This far with the show? This is like my 23rd episode and I've only had one repeat guest and so it's like 22 different individuals which. Might not sound like a lot, but it blows my mind that I made it this far. So anyway. That's that again. What? What? I hit patrons subscribe, unsubscribe, or rate the show. I don't know what that does, but ever I listen to podcasts and people say it. So I'm saying it too, subscribe and rate my show on iTunes or something. I don't know. Go to channel0network.com. Check out the other content made by Channel 0 network content. Creators it's an anarchist podcast network. If you're listening to this show, chances are you're going to like what's on that show. And. I think that's really all I. Have to say to. You people, other than take care of yourselves inside and out and. Get involved in things that you think are going to benefit yourself in your community and try not to get too bummed out out there because I get bummed out all the ******* time again. That's why I'm like, just don't. Go on Twitter. It's terrible because I see everything that's happening in the world and it's terrible. And it's just so much. It just comes in every direction and every every kind. You know, it's like, oh, this they're about to execute this guy in that prison. and they got kids in camps over here. And by the way, all the bugs and birds are dead. And, you know, it it's it can be so much at times that. It hurts. It wounds us. It wounds. Us deep, deep. Deep in our our poor little hearts. And then it it it apathy can set in very easily. So you know, just pick one thing like pick one thing. That's your thing that you're trying to. You know, work on and maybe pick a winnable battle or whatever. Just pick something that speaks to you in your heart and try to stay out there and stay involved like I and I promise to do the same because like at times I just really want to withdraw and be like bug it. I am hanging out with my little girl and we're going to play in the woods and world. Be damned, and then, you know, I picked myself up and I dust off my my little knees and I said no, it's time to time to give a ****. So. If you hang in there, I'll hang in there. Alright, pinky swear.

Have a good week month life I love. You be safe.

Outro Music: You gotta take chances to wait until they're all gone. Don't wait till they're all gone. Went to the gone.