Two Americans volunteered to fight in Syria against Islamic State. Now they want out - but it won’t be easy
Sniper Kevin Howard and medic Taylor Hudson have grown disillusioned with their militia, but the US military has refused to help extract them from Syria
Former US Marine Kevin Howard claimed scores of kills as a sniper volunteering this year with a militia fighting Islamic State in Syria.
He wanted to help people, Howard had said this summer, especially Christians who were being persecuted for their faith just as they had been in areas where he had fought with the Marines in Iraq.
But this fall, Howard and a fellow American volunteer, Taylor Hudson, grew disillusioned with the US-backed militia and decided it was time to return home. But that decision launched both men on a still-unfolding journey that highlights the odd nature of their role as soldiers fighting for a cause, not a country.
Earlier this month, Howard, 28, from San Francisco, disappeared after crossing the border in Iraq. His friend Hudson then had to decide: Stay in Syria or go to Iraq in hopes of finding his missing comrade?
“I don’t know what my situation is going to be once I cross the border” into Iraq, Hudson said last week from a home where he was staying with friends in Syria.
Of the several hundred such volunteers who have served since the Syrian civil war began six years ago, some were killed. According to local estimates, several dozen remain fighting in Syria. Others returned to the US after their tours of duty, where would-be volunteers quiz them about the dangers they faced.
When Howard joined the Syriac Military Council, known as the MFS, last year, he was aware of the risks. He made one stipulation: He would fight as a sniper team with Hudson, 33, from Pasadena, California, who he trained with and trusted. Commanders agreed, with Hudson serving as a medic.
In July, when they spoke with the Los Angeles Times on the front line in Raqqa, they were encouraged. Militia fighters had broken through the city’s ancient wall and were gaining new footholds in Islamic State territory.
But Hudson never returned. Commanders refused to allow Hudson back to the front, he said, and began pushing Howard to shift south toward the worsening battle in Dair Alzour. Each heard that the other had been killed. Howard eventually persuaded commanders to transfer him where Hudson was so they could leave Syria together. But then, Hudson said, they were detained at the academy.
An MFS spokesman said the two were “absolutely not jailed” and that “we always appreciate the will of Westerners to join our fight and cause.”
Last month, a paralegal friend of Howard’s in the US, Jeanette Carlisle of Fort Worth, Texas, asked for help from US Army Colonel Ryan Dillon, a Baghdad-based spokesman for the US-led coalition. Could the military, she asked, rescue Hudson and her friend?
“While we join you in your concern for Mr Howard, US forces here are fully engaged in an international effort to defeat ISIS, and unfortunately are not resourced for or tasked with checking on Americans who make this dangerous choice for themselves,” Dillon wrote back, referring her to the State Department. ISIS is another name for Islamic State.
Hudson was desperate to leave. He still felt driven to help Syrian friends and a family that had sponsored him, but he was burned out.
“I had to come up with a formula to estimate how many of my friends I had seen shot. It was over 500,” he said.
He said he was told by a contact at the State Department that the two could seek help from US forces based in Kobani, on the northern border. But he and Howard were turned away.
“They talked to us like we are criminals,” Howard wrote in a message October 9. “We need help.”
After Howard and Hudson failed to get help in Kobani, Hudson said they returned to Tal Tamr, where he got his passport back and was allowed to leave after signing paperwork absolving the militia of responsibility for his safety. But militia leaders still held Howard, seizing his passport because he had been such a high-profile fighter, Hudson said. When Hudson last talked to him by phone October 13, Howard said militia officials had moved him east to Hasakah.
“He was afraid they were going to just drive him to the Iraqi border and dump him in the middle of nowhere,” Hudson said of his friend.
The next day, he learned what had happened to Howard.
The militia released a photo and video of Howard crossing the border into Iraq at Faysh Khabur. Although Howard remained incommunicado, by Thursday the US Consulate in Arbil confirmed to friends and family that Howard was being held by Kurdish officials in that northern Iraqi city, and that they should be able to secure his release in a few weeks.
Hudson is still in eastern Syria, trying to figure the safest route home. In a phone interview, said he didn’t regret volunteering to fight.
