American, British volunteers battle militant fighters
RAQQA, Syria — Hunkered down on the top floor of an abandoned building, two Americans and a British volunteer face off against Islamic State snipers in the Syrian city of Raqqa. The trio, including two who served in the French Foreign Legion and the war in Iraq, have made the war against Islamic State their own.
They are among dozens of Western volunteers who have battled the Islamic State in Iraq, and now in Raqqa, the city in northeastern Syria that the militants declared the capital of their self-proclaimed caliphate.
The men joined U.S.-allied Syrian militias for different reasons — some motivated by survivors’ accounts of brutality at the hands of the extremists. Others joined what they see as a quest for justice.
Taylor Hudson, a 33year-old from Pasadena, compares the fight for Raqqa to the 1945 Battle of Berlin in World War II that ended the rule of Adolf Hitler.
Syria’s war, now in its seventh year, has attracted foreign fighters to all sides.
Extremists from Europe, Asia and North Africa have flocked to Islamic State as well as local al Qaeda-linked groups. Shiite Iranian and Lebanese militias have sided with the Syrian government, deepening the sectarian nature of the conflict that has killed over 400,000 people and displaced over 11 million.
A much smaller number of Western volunteers fight alongside the U.S.-allied Kurdish militia known as the People’s Protection Units, or YPG.
Earlier this month, the YPG announced that 28-year-old Robert Grodt of Santa Cruz and 29-yearold Nicholas Alan Warden of Buffalo, N.Y, died in the battle for Raqqa.