AMID a rain-soaked field of wild yellow flowers roughly a mile from where Isis militants are dug in, Gulf War veteran Alan Duncan scans the mountainside for signs of the enemy.

Machineguns clatter in the distance as the former British soldier turned double-glazing salesman, clutching a modified assault rifle and wearing a light vest stuffed with ammunition, patrols the front line in northern Iraq between Kurdish security forces and fighters from the group, also known as Islamic State.

“They [Isis] are murderers, child rapists, they’re not even fit to be called humans,” says Duncan, 47, explaining why he traded civilian life in northeast Scotland for a chance to wage war against one of the most barbaric terrorist organisations in the world.

While western intelligence agencies struggle to stop their citizens joining Isis, a small, yet growing, band of men and women from countries such as Britain and America have joined the other side.

The cause has attracted a bizarre array of former soldiers, surfers, biker gangs, adventure-seekers, arms dealers and a handful of evangelical Christians who believe they are waging a crusade.

Their motives are equally eclectic: revulsion at Isis’s beheading of hostages, the collapse of the Iraqi army, boredom or the chance of combat after years in the army. Others liken their struggle to that of the British and American volunteers who fought fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Duncan, who joined the Royal Irish Regiment aged 16, says he was horrified as he watched reports in the summer on how Isis gradually took over parts of Syria before butchering their way across the border into Iraq. 

“I was kind of getting restless,” said Duncan, who wears a pistol on his hip of the sort that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein gave his officers as a present.“It was going away from a so-called people’s revolution in Syria to it becoming about Islamic extremism. And we were still throwing them arms. We were basically arming extremists.”

Late last year, after contacting Jordan Matson, an American fundamentalist Christian already fighting in Syria, he joined Syrian Kurds fighting for the YPG, or people’s defence units. Soon he was laying ambushes, sneaking through Isis lines at night to plant home-made bombs and fending off attacks on the front line.

However, Duncan quickly realised that the YPG fighters he was with were “as socialist as hell”, an ideology that clashed with his right-wing views — so he went back home to his fiancée.

Undaunted, he decided to return, joining up this time with a newly formed Assyrian Christian militia fighting alongside the Kurdish peshmerga security forces in northern Iraq. The trip has cost him £10,000, some of which he raised through a crowdfunding website.

Duncan is one of just seven foreign fighters with the militia, Dwekh Nawsha, whose name means “self-sacrifice” in the ancient Aramaic language spoken by Christ — a fraction of the 50-100 foreign fighters with the YPG.

A three-hour drive south of their headquarters in Dohuk, trenches fortified by walls of earth stretch for hundreds of miles through verdant hills scattered with bombed out villages that mark the point where Isis was driven back by Kurdish forces and allied air strikes in August.

For now, Kurdish forces in Iraq appear reluctant to allow foreigners to fight on the front line. American special forces have removed some from the battlefield. 

Although the wait has been frustrating, Duncan and his fellow volunteers are optimistic that they will get official permission soon. Until then, they spend most of their time at headquarters , reading Kindles, listening to music on iPods, updating Facebook pages and drinking tea. 

Tensions inevitably have flared. Duncan has been especially riled by one volunteer, a young American evangelical called Brett. 

“He had long hair and this lip piercing, stalking about as if he’s some sort of gangster, using Facebook as a dating agency,” recalled Duncan with disgust. “He was calling himself ‘soldier of Christ’ and saying he sees it as a crusade. The Assyrians hated it. This fight isn’t about religion. This is about everyone — Muslims, Christians, everyone — working together against one common enemy. This is about humanity.”

Duncan is equally dismissive of other volunteers he has met, many of whom he refers to as “clowns and muppets” seeking “Facebook likes and five minutes of fame”. Others he calls “X-Box warriors. They’re young kids from the UK and US. They don’t realise in war you don’t get three lives.It’s not this comfy game. You’re sitting freezing your arse off. You’re not getting fed properly, you’re tired, you’re on guard duty.They are a waste of time and dangerous.”

Duncan reserves some of his fiercest criticism for Britain’s s failure to send weapons to Kurdish forces in the region.

 “They don’t understand that the Kurdish peshmerga are the only ones serious about fighting Isis,” he said. “The British need to wake up.”

Kurdish commanders say their weapons, some made in the 1960s, lack the firepower to take on the heavily armoured American military vehicles that Isis captured from the Iraqi army.

Duncan believes that anti-tank missiles, general purpose machineguns and sniper rifles would be enough to tip the balance and allow the peshmerga to punch through Isis lines.

“It would be over in a matter of days if the British sent us proper weapons,” said

Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled Hamzo, the commander of a peshmerga commando unit as he sits across from Duncan on the floor of a makeshift headquarters a few miles from Isis positions. Although arming Kurdish forces would upset the West’s relationship with Turkey, a mercurial yet key ally in the region, wealthy individuals in the West are working behind the scenes to send funds and aid to the Kurds.

Among them is Foster Friess,a Republican multimillionaire. The right-wing Christian donor is lobbying Washington to send weapons directly to Kurdish forces rather than via the central government in Baghdad, which is accused of holding on to weapons earmarked for the Kurds.

Friess’s efforts have sparked rumours that he wants to use his considerable wealth and influence to arm the Kurds privately, which he denies.

“The US administration refuses to recognise that in this case the undeniable main effort on the ground in this war to defend humanity is the Kurdish peshmerga,” said retired brigadier-general, Ernie Audino, who advises Friess. 

“There is no war against Isis without them.” 

Others have taken a more hands-on approach. Matthew VanDyke, an American filmmaker, spent the winter with four former US soldiers training a militia of Assyrian Christians at a covert training camp inside Kurdish territory in northern Iraq.

“We are crowdfunding the war on terror,” said VanDyke, who set up a group called Sons of Liberty International to raise funds for his training mission, which he says has piqued the interest of the State Department.

It is unclear how western governments will respond to the private individuals who train and fight alongside foreign forces in Iraq and Syria.

Although stopped and questioned at Heathrow airport in December, Duncan says he has met British consular officials in northern Iraq.

“They said that they can’t stop me fighting but that if I gave more interviews to the press then the bounty on my head will go up,” he said.

Unfazed, Duncan is adamant that he will stay in Iraq until Isis is defeated. He is desperate to fight in the battle to recapture the city of Tikrit.

Pro-government forces, including 20,000 Shia militiamen, began their advance on the Isis stronghold three weeks ago. But the operation slowed this week as landmines, suicide bombers and sniper fire inflicted heavy losses on government forces, sowing discord among commanders.

Duncan has planned for any eventuality, even his own capture. “I have a couple of pistol rounds just in case,” he says. 

“They will never take me. I’m too much of a coward to go through all the torturing they do.”

Article here https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/paying-their-own-way-to-fight-isis-fr8rqwjf9hw