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 Douglas is one of a growing band of foreigners to dodge
authorities and join the fight against Islamic State militants who
have killed thousands and taken vast parts of Iraq and Syria,
declaring a caliphate in territory under their control.
Many of these fighters argue they are there for humanitarian reasons
but they say their decision to take up arms to fight for the Syrian
people will not be viewed as such by some.
"I want to fight the Islamic State, although it might be the last
thing I do," said Douglas, 66, from Vancouver, as he prepared to
board a boat crossing a remote stretch of the Tigris River .
"I know I have 10 years to live before I will start develop dementia
or have a stroke so I wanted to do something good," he added,
although he acknowledged that taking up arms was new on the list of
jobs and occupations he has previously pursued.
So far an estimated few dozen Westerners have joined Kurdish
fighters battling Islamic State in northern Syria, including
Americans, Canadians, Germans, and Britons.
The Syrian Kurdish armed faction known as the YPG has not released
official numbers confirming foreign or "freedom fighters" and
academics say it's hard to assess the total.
 But the number pales compared to an estimated 16,000 fighters from
about 90 countries to join Islamic State since 2012, according to
the U.S. Department of State figures.
The United Nations has warned extremists groups in Syria and Iraq
are recruiting foreigners on an "unprecedented scale" and with a
commitment to jihad who could "form the core of a new diaspora" and
be a threat for years to come.
FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE?
Western governments are closely monitoring foreign fighters but law
enforcement agencies are acting differently towards those joining
Islamic State or those linking up with the Kurdish resistance whose
motivations are far more diverse.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has made it clear there is a
fundamental difference between fighting for the Kurds and Islamic
State. British law stipulates fighting in a foreign war is not
automatically an offense and depends on circumstances.
Two British military veterans, Jamie Read and James Hughes, returned
to England last month after several months with the YPG, saying they
were fighting for "humanitarian purposes", and no action has been
taken against them on their return.
They signed up outraged by a series of chilling videos showing the
murders of two U.S. journalists, a U.S. aid worker, and two British
aid workers and by the plight of millions of Syrians caught between
Islamic State and government forces.
British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human
Rights, estimates in six months the radical Sunni group has killed
about 1,878 people in Syria off the battlefield, mostly civilians.
More than 200,000 people have been killed in the Syrian civil war,
which started when President Bashar al-Assad's forces cracked down
on peaceful pro-democracy protests in 2011.
"We went there to help innocent people and to document the YPG
struggle against ISIS," Hughes, 26, who spent five years in the
British army, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
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"We had a warm welcome home. Everybody thought we were heroes. They
were proud of us. I also received hundreds of messages of people
wanting to join the YPG," he said, adding he planned to return to
Syria in coming months.
Still many foreign YPG fighters are concerned about legal
repercussions when they return home so seek to stay anonymous. "We
might get in trouble with our governments," said one U.S. veteran
who ensured all his financial and legal affairs were in order before
heading to Rojava, the area controlled by the YPG in Syria.
Many are concerned how the media portrays them at home and wanted to
clarify they are volunteers, not mercenaries. They say they are not
paid but are there as they believe in the cause.
Many have some military experience and have signed up to the battle
through contacts on Facebook.
Lorenzo Vidino, an analyst at the Institute for the International
Political Studies in Italy, said foreign fighters might argue they
are joining the battle against Islamic State for the good but they
were not effective militarily.
"Westerners joining the YPG are a very small phenomenon especially
if compared to Islamic State. The IS recruitment machine works
better and you can see evidence of that in terms of numbers," he
told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
U.S. fighter Dean Parker, 49, joined after watching video footage of
the blitz on Sinjar in northwest Iraq in August when Islamic State
militants killed or captured thousands of minority Yazidis.
"I saw the fear and terror on this child eyes who was looking
directly at me through the camera ... I never been moved by anything
like that in my life," he said in an email exchange, one of several
foreign fighters from Syria interviewed on location, by email or by
phone in November and December.
Canadian-Israeli woman Gill Rosenberg, 31, from Tel Aviv, said in a
recent interview with Israel Radio that she decided to join the YPG
for humanitarian and ideological reasons.
But not all foreign fighters are motivated by the same cause.
Jordan Matson, 28, a U.S. army veteran from Winconsin who joined the
YPG about four months ago, said he joined because he was running
away from a "civilian" life he didn't really like.
"Here, instead, everything makes sense," he told the Thomson Reuters
Foundation in a YPG base near to Derik, a town in Syria's
northeastern Kurdish region.
(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)
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