Looking for a fight: tracing the mobilization of eight American volunteers in YPG

The rapid rise and well-documented brutality of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) generated intense scholarly attention, with particular focus directed toward the thousands of foreign nationals who joined its ranks as armed combatants. This preoccupation has, however, produced a corresponding gap in the study of their counterparts: foreign fighters in the ranks of the People’s Protection Units (YPG). The YPG is one of the constituent militias within the structure of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a non-state fighting force under the command of the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (DAANES) which controls the enclave known as Rojava. This article addresses the issue of non-jihadist foreign fighters by examining the mobilization of eight American volunteers within the YPG. Drawing on qualitative data collected through long-form interviews, this article argues that a matrix of non-material motivations contributed to the mobilization of American foreign fighters in YPG, including vicarious grievance, political ideology, and the bottom-up construction of sense making frames.