YPG

Former SAS operator Phil Campion’s documentary gets hands-on in the war against ISIS.

Rojava has to choose a strategic partner, Russia or the United States, in order to guarantee their survival as an autonomous Kurdish region.

SOFREP has identified a key choke point in an underground ISIS ratline funneling Westerners to Syria: Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul.

The roles of underground operations, guerrilla, sabotage and classic special operations units are groups who act in frustration to opposing forces. In this case the bullet meets the bone in Syria as Kurdish Forces are successfully deploying unconventional warfare tactics against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Kurdish forces have developed and deployed […]

From the moment I was met at my hotel on Sulaymaniyah, I was fed into an underground ratline, a clandestine logistics network for moving people, guns, and even ideas. The driver was a good man with good references. He was to drive me north, from Suly up into the mountains of northern Kurdistan. It was […]

Contractors are going to be swimming in a world of warfare between institutionalized, state-run violence and deinstitutionalized violence as freelancers.

MERCENARY!  The imagery is painted in our psyche from books, films, and even popular music.  It is the image of the lone wolf merc deep in the Congo with a rusty AK-47, running from the law back home, and desperate to end his down and out streak with a hand full of blood diamonds in […]

In an abandoned luxury apartment building in Til Kocher, Syria, a group of young women laugh, sing songs, and prepare chai tea for their guests. In the adjacent room is an arsenal of weapons ranging from American M4 rifles to Hungarian-made Dragunovs and locally manufactured Zagrov .50-caliber sniper rifles. The cheerful young women enjoying their […]

“Havrem,” whose real name is Alex, presents himself as an ideological warrior who ran away from home at the age of 16 to join the PKK and fight for Kurdish freedom. He talks about scaling the treacherous mountains of Turkey as a PKK fighter and of ruthless battles fought against ISIS in Northern Syria, but […]

One YPG member told me about a Daash fighter he shot four times with a Dragonov sniper rifle. The jihadist went down but kept trying to get back up.

Virtually every YPG fighter has a rule: Save the last bullet for yourself. In the war against ISIS, which they call the Daash, it is far better to choose your own way out rather than be captured by the jihadists and their so-called Islamic State. One source on the ground in Rojava (Kurdish-held Syria) told me […]

I heard the 12.7mm gunshots reverberate across the abandoned buildings throughout the morning and into the afternoon. Shot after shot rang out from the lot outside the abandoned warehouse next to the apartment building I stayed in with the YPG. Eventually, curiosity got the best of me. It did not appear to be one of […]