The Canadian who fought with the Kurds reveals his near-death — and explains his surprise early return.
He was nearly hit by ISIS sniper, but Dillon Hillier wanted to stay in Iraq I wasn’t going to sit in the rear doing security. That’s not why I went there
Dillon Hillier sat at the kitchen table in his family’s stone farmhouse at the end of a long driveway. His mother poured coffee. His father fed the wood stove. Out the windows, the sun glared off snowy fields as clean and bright as a blank sheet of paper.
It was winter heaven but Mr. Hillier didn’t really want to be back in Lanark County, “Maple Syrup Capital of Canada.” He still wanted to be in northern Iraq, where he had just spent two months putting his military skills to use, sticking it to ISIS.
“I went there planning on a much longer trip,” he said. “And the political climate did not allow me to stay any longer.”
A veteran of the Canadian Forces, Mr. Hillier landed in Iraq in November and fought alongside the Kurdish peshmerga, motivated to volunteer by the October attacks in Ontario and Quebec and the unseemly flow of radicalized Canadians into the ISIS ranks.
He had intended on staying at least six months but on Jan. 27, his father Randy Hillier, a Progressive Conservative Ontario MPP, issued a statement saying his 26-year-old son had “returned safely home from the Middle East.”
In his first interview since returning to Canada, Mr. Hillier told the National Post his war had been cut short by U.S. military advisers, whom he said had pressured the Kurdish generals to stop allowing foreign volunteers to participate in the conflict.
He also revealed that an ISIS sniper had almost terminated his mission sooner, missing him by inches, and that RCMP national security officers from Ottawa had visited him last week to ask, among other things, if he had come across any Canadian ISIS members.
His parents, meanwhile, spoke for the first time about their ordeal — two months of worry that began with an email saying he was leaving to fight in Iraq, and that ended with the welcome message that he was coming home.
Like many Canadians, Mr. Hillier was appalled by ISIS and what it stood for, particularly after armed men espousing similar Islamist extremist beliefs murdered two Canadian Forces members in attacks in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Ottawa.
On Facebook, he began exchanging messages with Ali Mohamed Ali, a lieutenant in the peshmerga, the Kurdish militia in the semi-autonomous Iraqi-Kurdistan region on the front lines of the fight against the ISIS onslaught.
Mr. Hillier thought he had skills to offer the Kurds. He had spent five years in the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, including a sixmonth tour in Afghanistan, before retiring last April with the rank of corporal and going to work in the Alberta construction industry.
With Mr. Ali’s help, he made plans to travel to Iraq. It was “just the right thing to do,” he said in an interview before he left. He compared it to enlisting to fight the Germans during the Second World War, although, he said, “I think ISIS is far more barbaric.”
He didn’t tell his father until he was already at the airport and about to board a plane. In an email, he asked his dad to tell his mother he was going on vacation to Thailand and Laos and would be gone six months. But the MPP told his wife Jane the truth. He also tried, unsuccessfully, to stop Dillon. “I made many phone calls,” he said.
He landed in Sulaymaniyah and went almost immediately to the front at Tal Alwad. ISIS had captured a hill and he participated in the counter-attack that reclaimed it. He then returned to Sulaymaniyah to meet Pat, a former U.S. Marine and Iraq war veteran he had befriended on Facebook, both of them eager to help the Kurds.
They travelled together to Kirkuk and then to Rashad, where each side was hunkered down on opposite sides of a bridge. “We were 50 metres from ISIS,” he said. ISIS would send mortars and indirect fire across the river and the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, would race in with vehicles, open fire on ISIS and then retreat. “They would start a shooting match and leave us to deal with it,” he said.
He was hardly the only Western volunteer taking shots at ISIS. Dozens from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands and elsewhere had done the same, many citing their frustration over the limited international response to ISIS atrocities.
But as the first Canadian military veteran to do so publicly, Mr. Hillier caught the government off guard. Ottawa was wary, suggesting that Canadians moved by the plight of Syrians and Iraqis should join the armed forces or consider humanitarian work.
The public reaction was more positive. An online fundraising drive launched by Mr. Hillier’s brother raised $17,000, which he used to buy armoured plates and night vision goggles. “It was good to know that there were people back here that supported me,” he said.
Randy Hillier said there was a “very substantial outpouring” of support. After seeing Canadians travelling to the region to do “evil,” Dillon was a reminder of what Canadians really stood for. “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.”
Among those who contacted the MPP was a father in the same situation. “I was approached by another dad. He believes his son is over there and we did endeavour to help locate him,” he said. “Knowing what his family would be feeling, we chatted with him a few times and Dillon put out inquiries to see if we could contact him.” But they could not find him.
Throughout his expedition, Dillon stayed in touch with his family. Not wanting to distract him when he was in danger, his father asked him to send a note whenever it was convenient. His father read up on Kurdistan but did not lobby his son to get out of Iraq.
“I knew Dillon. I was encouraging him to be alert and be aware, be safe,” he said. “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,” he said. “I never wanted to take his concentration away if there was danger imminent. But Dillon would keep us informed and we chatted with him.”
Eventually, Mr. Hillier and his American friend ended up serving under a General named Araz, who brought them to Daquq. “He spoke English, he was Swedish-educated and had been an Iraqi army general,” Mr. Hillier said. “He was a good guy.” The general used the two foreign vets for security. “Which was good because he would not hesitate to get out front.”
Their days were unpredict- able. They would wait in their room in the military barracks in Daquq until the general’s bodyguards banged on the door and told them to grab their gear, they were leaving. “Sometimes it would be to buy furniture for the general, sometimes it would be to go to battle,” he said.
The front was about five kilometres away and they would accompany General Araz to positions where he would inspect his troops and fire off a few shots at ISIS. “Most of it was just kind of stalemate trench warfare, but not actual movement, very World War I,” said Mr. Hillier.
The worst skirmish he experienced lasted two days. “We were getting shot at all day,” he said. (He would not discuss whether he had killed anyone in combat.) He slept behind sand bags, the bullets whizzing overhead. He got up to relieve himself and as he was walking back to the bunker a bullet missed him by inches. His friend Pat also had a close call with a sniper, he said.
“I would say that ISIS has pretty good snipers,” he said. “Most of them were Chechens, Afghans.” He knows because when they were killed, the peshmerga would collect IDs off the bodies. He said the Kurds have stacks of identity cards and passports taken from dead ISIS foreign fighters.
The Kurdish forces were dedicated and “did what they could with what they had,” he said. Although some of their equipment was “junk,” and they were reluctant to take advice, they were receiving modern arms from foreign governments such as Germany, he said.
Canada has also been helping supply the Iraqi and Kurdish forces, and has deployed almost 70 Special Forces soldiers to Iraq, where they returned fire against ISIS on three occasions, stirring a political debate in Ottawa over the extent of Canada’s military role in the conflict.
Perhaps surprisingly, Mr. Hillier said that as a libertarian he did not believe Canada should intervene in foreign conflicts at all. “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.”
It all ended fairly quickly for Mr. Hillier. One day, the Kurdish military brass were preparing to assign him to a sniper unit, the next they had completely changed their tone. An apologetic general, who was accompanied by U.S. Green Berets, told Mr. Hillier and his American friend they would no longer be used in combat operations.
The U.S. military apparently did not want foreign volunteers in the combat areas, whether for reasons of operational security or public image. “It’s like any government, they don’t like things that they can’t control,” he said.
He could have stayed but his days on the front lines were over. “I wasn’t going to sit in the rear doing security. That’s not why I went there. So we decided to head out.” He contacted an RCMP officer in the United Arab Emirates he had communicated with, and let him know he was leaving. His parents were in Florida when they heard the news. They jumped in the car and started driving north, hoping to be there at the airport when he arrived.
He flew back the way he’d come, through Doha and London. He was sure he was in for a grilling at Canadian customs at the airport in Toronto. He was upfront with the Canada Border Services Agency officer, admitting he had been in Iraq fighting with the peshmerga. But he said he was simply asked if he had any alcohol or tobacco to declare and waved through.
He arrived home on Jan. 25. The next day, two RCMP officers from the Integrated National Security Enforcement Team came the farmhouse to question him. They said they were there to determine if any crimes had been committed.
“I wanted them to know I wasn’t with the PKK,” he said. Since the PKK is on Canada’s list of terrorist groups, those fighting with the group could face charges. But he had no role with the group and told the officers so. “They asked me if I had seen any Canadians on the other side,” he said, meaning ISIS. He hadn’t. “I don’t think I really provided them with any useful information, just some insight.”
Two weeks after leaving the war, he is trying to figure out what to do next. He doesn’t want to go back to a construction crew in Alberta. He wants to know what someone with his skills could do, whether he should go back to school.
“I’m not really sure,” he said.
In the family farmhouse on Thursday, the sky outside was perfectly blue and the snow banks were piled up on either side of the driveway leading out to the road to Perth.
“I’m going to get him to shovel the laneway,” his father said.