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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — As non-governmental organizations have poured into Iraq and the Kurdistan Region, volunteers from one experienced NGO who carries arms and defends themselves are now encouraging others to volunteer without the expectation of financial reward in the Shingal region.
“Other NGOs either buy security, or pay, or don’t go,” Dave Dawson the country manager for the Free Kurdistan Rangers (FKR) told Rudaw English. “But for us it’s just self-defense. We aren’t going to engage or fight against ISIS.”
Dawson’s uncle and a former US Army Green Beret, David Eubank, received international media coverage last month after a video spread of him dodging sniper fire to save a little girl in west Mosul.
“We are in the front lines. For our organization, that is our place,” Dawson said. “Our team is about 15 or 20 people. We operate alongside the Iraqi army, so we are right in the front line area.”
Eubank’s wife and three children also were volunteering in western Mosul.
“For us, it’s always been that we are called to go. We want to go. We want to be with those people who are in the fighting because there’s nobody else there. And we are so small that we can’t be that useful in a camp,” he added. “We’d be depleted.”
Founder of the Free Burma Rangers and a former US Army Green Beret David Eubank, 56, carries a girl to safety in Mosul in June. Photo: FKR
Dawson, 26, worked for five years with the Free Burma Rangers (FBR) in country, prior to the rise of ISIS in Iraq in 2014, then the organization heard the media reports of the rise of ISIS and the terrible things they were doing against the Yezidis and other groups.
“One of the things that makes us different is that we do work with the armed groups who are there because you just can’t separate yourself from them if you going to be in that area,” he explained. “And in a lot of ways you don’t want to be separated from them because those are the guys who are going to protect you — especially when you are caring for civilians.”
Initially in early 2015 and prior to going to Mosul, the FKR spent a lot of time in Shingal.
“There’s a stark comparison between the Kurds and Yezidis to the ethnic minorities of Burma and in both of their fights against the majority government that has always given authority over them,” explained Dawson.
Through the nine-month offensive to recapture Mosul from ISIS, the FKR worked with interpreters, drivers and others here who are Muslim and Yezidi.
“In the east side of Mosul we were distributing kerosene and 70 kilograms of rice and beans and lentils and oil to families,” Dawson said. “We were in the Al-Intisar neighborhood because no one else was distributing. They were just trapped without access to anything.”
Shaheen, a Yezidi interpreter, had volunteered with the group when he was shot on May 4 in Mosul, while providing medical aid to eight wounded Iraqi soldiers.
After multiple surgeries, Shaheen died from an infection 10 days after he was wounded.
Dawson explained in Burma there are 75 active relief teams in the organization. So he estimates about 80 percent of the volunteers are animists, those who believe in spirits. Another 15 percent including most of the organizers are Christians and maybe 5 percent are atheists.
Dawson, who is Christian, says the most challenging thing is not being able to do more.
“A woman [in Mosul] came up to us and told us, ‘You are worse than ISIS. ISIS is giving us more food, more supplies. Why don’t you give us more stuff?’ That kind of thing is challenging. I told her that I was sorry and wished that I was able to give her a lot more. But this is all we have and all we have been given.
“Our core tenets are: To be able to read and write, so you can understand; Everything you do, you do for love. That’s why we don’t pay… Lastly, if the people we are helping can’t run away, we don’t run away.”
Volunteers from Burma train Kurdish Peshmerga on battlefield medicine. Photo: FKR
The blonde-haired Dawson of Seattle, Washington, knows he can get on a plane anytime and return to the United States, but that is not what the Free Burma Rangers were founded upon.
“I should have died several times. I don’t feel like those aspects are a challenge," he said. "For me, it’s like you are either going to die or you aren’t going to die. For me the biggest challenge is navigating all the legal processes here in Kurdistan."
Dawson believes the situation is actually more dangerous now for civilians and aid workers in Iraq than it was before Mosul city was declared liberated on June 10. And for the moment, the FKR team has returned to Shingal.
"For what we've tried to do in Shingal is to help the Yezidi people who do not receive a lot of aid as compared to the other camps in Duhok and places like this,” he said. “[One of] the few organizations I see working there is the Barzani Charity Foundation, but I think they are one of the only organizations who has the full permission to go there. So there is competition.”
Three years after the atrocities began for the Yezidis on Mount Shingal on August 3, 2014, Dawson believes there still isn’t an organized global effort to help the minority group truly rebuild and return.
"But there is also not a lot of international support for the Yezidi people and that is really sad ... [the lack of effort] to preserve their identity and history as Yezidi people. And that's something — for rebuilding to be accomplished there — that they need for their identity."
In late-July, Dave Dawson leaps into a recently repaired pool in the city of Shingal. Photo: FKR
For the few Yezidis who have returned, or never left, they remain splintered among political and even paramilitary lines.
“Basically, what we've seen is as a group comes into Shingal, a band of Yezidis will join them, and that's really sad,” he said. “They'll become a subsidiary of that organization. So the PUK will have a group of Yezidis, the PKK or the YBS will have a group of Yezidis, the Hashd al-Shaabi will have a group of Yezidis and that's just a whole 'nother level of like 'Whoa. How does that work?' ”
Some of the differences between Burma, where the organization had 75 teams, and here with one are Iraq’s relatively higher standard of living and historically-grounded mistrusts.
"There's this issue of culture that exists here that people aren't that motivated to help one another, and especially to help those outside of their own ethnic group,” he said.
“Secondly, the standard of living here is so high, no one can understand the volunteer [aspect]. In Burma all in our organization are volunteers. When we pitch the idea to the Peshmerga or the Yezidis, they say it's an amazing thing, but we aren't going to do that unless you give us money. That's where we've run into the brick wall.”
Still, Dawson is hopeful that the Free Burma Ranger model can work in Shingal.
He said: "We want to motiviate through love and not because you are getting some kind of [financial] benefit.”
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