US Army veteran has joined Kurdish forces to fight ISIS in Iraq

By Brett Gillin

Earlier this week, several reports began surfacing online of a United States citizen joining a “private army” in order to fight ISIS in Iraq. According to these reports, the citizen, named Jordan Matson, is a veteran of the United States Armed Forces, and has decided to join YPG Kurdish fighters.

According to this report through Yahoo News (via Reuters), a spokesman for the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, also known as YPG, confirms that Jordan Matson has joined their force to fight against ISIS.

“Yes it is true,” Redur Xeli, the YPG spokesman, told reporters via an online message. “He is fighting in the Jazaa area.”

Reports show that battling in Jazaa has been intense recently. The YPG claims that last month alone, they lost 35 of their soldiers in a battle with ISIS for control of Jazaa, a town in Syria’s northeaster Hasaka province. Because it is close to the Iraq border, it is a town of great strategic importance to both ISIS and the forces battling them.

While reports of Jordan Matson’s involvement with YPG vary, they are being verified by a multitude of sources. While many news agencies are reporting that Jordan Matson is an ex-Marine, Popular Military has discovered via the Journal Times, that in 2005, Jordan Matson was an Army Reserve Private who graduated from basic combat training in Fort Jackson, Columbia, S.C. Efforts to independently verify that this Jordan Matson is the same as the one fighting alongside YPG have been unsuccessful at the time of this writing.

Reuters reports that several friends of Matson’s have told reporters that Jordan told several members of an online gaming community that he was planning to join a “private army” in order to fight ISIS. One of the members of this community, Miguel Caron, told reporters “He told us in the community that he was getting hired by a private army and he let us know two to three months in advance.”

Caron continued “he sent me a personal Facebook message on the 16^th of September saying ‘hey boss, I’m heading to Syria.’ He told me he dropped his girlfriend and stopped looking for a job.”

According to Caron, Matson’s Facebook page claims that he was injured while fighting, but not seriously. Matson’s Facebook is private, so only friends can view these updates, although several Twitter users have disseminated the same information from his Facebook page.

Reports from Rare.us claim that Matson’s Facebook page has a message to his friends, reading “For all who didn’t know I’m in Syria fighting for the YPG against ISIS. I am ok, won’t be able to get on the net very often. I was hit by a mortar a few days ago during a 6 hour firefight but I’m fine. Delivered an ISIS bastard to hell.”