Original subtitles

(dramatic music)

In 2014 the Islamic State burst onto the world stage.

A track record of brutality,

executions, mass beheadings.

(dramatic music)

I loved America and I felt a debt to America

and I hadn't paid her back.

(gun blasts)

I get a phone call and this guy said, "Is this is Michael?

You want to join the YPG?

Are you ready to fight?

Are you willing to die?"

I said, "Yes."

I pray, I say, "Lord, let your will be done in this area,

but I really wanna kill them."

And then it's like boom!

(gun blasts)

Then it's fight time.

(gun blasts) (bomb explodes)

And it was just bedlam.

(gun blasts) Absolute bedlam.

Our nostrils were full of the smell of the dead.

Snipers were everywhere.

(gun booms) And they either run,

or they ended up dead.

So here you see that within this man is some real rage.

But some people think that he was not sincere

in what he was doing.

(Michael chuckles)

Like who's this old British dude.

Oh, he's a movie star coming here for publicity.

A successful Hollywood actor,

flying in for six months and then bug out the other way.

This actor who is becoming a militia fighter.

I mean, come on.

What would you say to that?

Turn it off.

So, we had doubts about every bit of Michael's story.

(dramatic music)

(rapid gunfire blasts)

Heval!

And set.

Are you ready?

My name is Michael Enright.

I'm a professional actor.

Captain, a ship's been spotted.

I was in "Pirates of the Caribbean" with Orlando Bloom.

I worked with Bradley Cooper, John Travolta, Robin Williams.

I also did "Knight and Day" with Tom Cruise.

Diesel hydraulic.

It's a diesel hydraulic.

I did "JAG," "Cold Case," "CSI," "Agents of Shield."

I loved acting, I'd been acting since I was a little boy.

Ever since when I got on a TV show

called "Get it Together" in Manchester.

Even before that, I can remember we were doing school plays

and I'd be cracking jokes and people would laugh

their butts off.

And I liked that reaction.

You know, like, oh, all right.

And then another thing was we had a lot of

American television and watching that I thought,

ooh, I wanna go there.

Everything about America was just so wow to me.

'Cause it was exciting and fun and crazy.

It was just everything I felt inside of me.

And I couldn't wait to get there.

And I made it, I couldn't believe I had done it.

I was, oh, loved it.

(Michael chuckles)

(dramatic music)

(traffic rumbles)

Holy shit!

Oh, my God.

I remember waking up on 9/11

and Howard Stern came on the radio.

A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.

You're kidding?

(sirens wail)

A second plane might have crashed

and the second building is on fire.

And when I heard him say that I jumped up, ran to the TV

and there it was.

(building crashes) (people yell)

What came down? It crashed!

The other Trade Center's down, it's down.

It's down.

I remember shortly after that, I just cried.

Every day I was just crying.

All these stories of all these people

that had been butchered.

And then it switched from pain to anger.

I was so angry.

I loved America and I felt a debt to America

and I hadn't paid her back.

All's I've done is sort of take.

So I decided I was gonna sign up with the American Army

and I'm gonna go and fight her enemies.

I called to join up and I left a message,

I want to go and fight in Afghanistan, call me back please.

And they never called and so I never went.

And that became the biggest regret of my life.

(dramatic music)

June, 2014, Islamic State forces

celebrating after astonishing the world.

Sweeping from Syria through Northern Iraq to Mosul.

The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria,

also known as ISIS, has rapidly morphed

into the world's most dangerous jihadist organization.

I remember when I heard about ISIS,

it brought back all those feelings that I'd had at 9/11.

It all came flooding back.

They've established themselves

as the most recognizable terror brand in the world.

Al-Qaeda is almost considered moderate these days.

(bomb explodes)

In 2014, the Middle East was just ripped apart

by an unparalleled level of violence.

ISIS was marching incredibly quickly through Iraq and Syria.

Literally in about 100 days, ISIS had conquered

an area of territory around the size of Cuba.

(gun blasts)

I started seeing new stories about

this new terrorist organization called the Islamic State.

Ethnic cleansing mass executions, beheadings,

it was the most evil barbaric thing I had seen.

And what made it worse for me was Jihadi John.

I'm back Obama and I'm back because of your arrogant

foreign policy towards the Islamic State,

despite our serious warnings.

It was an Englishman cutting off the head of an American,

an innocent American with his hands tied behind his back.

So just as your missiles continue to strike our people,

our knife will continue to strike the necks of your people.

(eerie music)

And it was antithesis of how I felt about America.

Were so grateful to America and the American people

for everything I'd had in that life that I've lived there.

And he was doing that.

It just was like an onslaught.

First they get an American and cut his head off.

And then there's an Englishman, then the Japanese,

and Muath, the Jordanian pilot.

That was a very difficult one to watch.

They poured paraffin on him, put him in a cage

and then they lit it and it went right in

and burned him alive.

And I thought, no.

(dramatic music)

Last week, fleeing execution, rape,

and slavery at the hands of so-called Islamic State,

tens of thousands of Yazidis fled for their lives

through the Syrian desert.

And then, I heard about the Yazidis on the news.

These people who lived in the Sengal Sinjar Mountains.

Learned that ISIS had gone into that region

and literally butchered all the men.

The Islamic State believed many different things.

They thought the Yazidis were devil worshipers.

Believed in shooting boys and men in ditches,

enslaving women.

Some girls as young as three years old,

were sold into sexual slavery by the Islamic State.

They gang raped the women, they sold them in markets.

And I would see the videos on YouTube.

How much for the blue-eyed Yazidi?

(men speak in a foreign language)

I think many people in the west and beyond

were quite appalled and disgusted by this.

And also disgusted by what seemed to be

the inaction of western governments.

When the attacks against the Yazidis happened,

there was a call for humanitarian intervention

and this led to airdrops of supplies.

But the United States and Britain had just spent 10 years

in the occupation of Iraq

and there was absolutely no interest in going back in

and putting boots on the ground

to fight another conflict in the region.

Well, when I saw that stuff, all of these videos,

it made me sick, not just what ISIS was doing,

killing civilians, but that armies weren't clamoring

to go fight them.

(women scream)

I remember I was like, what?

This was so horrible, what they were doing.

And so I wanted to hit them back.

I mean, there's no talking to that kind of mentality.

You have to have action and they need to be stopped.

And so I wanted to be part of that.

And I started making steps to go.

(dramatic music)

When I was asked to do an in depth profile

of Michael Enright in late 2019,

I didn't automatically jump at the story.

We had doubts about every bit of Michael's story,

from day one of the story, all the way up

to the present time.

It sounds like something from the mind

of a Hollywood script writer.

But I made a couple of phone calls

and there was really something there.

What really grabbed my interest was the complexity

of Michael's need to get involved

and risk his life for people he'd never met.

It's what makes him an intriguing character.

(dramatic music)

I wanted to go and fight ISIS,

but I knew England and America were not at the time.

So I needed to find out exactly who was on the ground.

The Kurdish military

has been America's most reliable partner

in the war against ISIS.

They've done most of the fighting

and almost all of the dying.

The Kurds are often described as the largest ethnic group

without a state of their own.

And that's probably fair.

I mean, right now there are about 30 odd million Kurds

scattered across the four states, Iraq, Turkey, Syria, Iran,

and they have no state.

When the struggle against Islamic State emerged in Syria,

this YPG emerged, they were seen as the one group

seriously putting up a fight against Islamic State.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

The Syrian Kurds organized themselves and became the YPG.

And they were the men and women

that were on the ground fighting ISIS.

These Kurdish freedom fighters,

who were taking it upon themselves to fight back

and clean their own backyard, completely outnumbered,

outarmed, and ill-equipped.

The Kurdish fighting force, the YPG,

they have been a staunch ally of the United States

in fighting ISIS.

(guns blast)

And the Kurdish fighters are thought

to have about a hundred westerners fighting on their side.

The YPG seem to be willing to accept anybody

who volunteered to come join them.

And I suspect that it's because the YPG

needed the sheer manpower involved

in fighting against the Islamic State.

While researching Michael's story,

we end up diving into this whole netherworld

that I didn't really comprehend or really know existed,

which is this large number of western volunteers

who decide to go fight in Syria.

I could see who were the good guys in this fight.

And I wanted to volunteer, put my life on the line

and fight for what I thought was the clearest distinction

between good and evil since the Second World War.

There was this perfect enemy.

This bad guy had surfaced,

not one real army landed to destroy them.

The Americans and Europeans were supporting

with air support as everybody knows.

But as for boots on the ground,

it was just the YPG, in Syria at least.

And that's when I was able to start making moves

toward going over there.

At that point, I'd already decided I was gonna go.

So I called a friend of mine who was British special forces

and he was working as a contractor.

And I said, listen, I said, I wanna go.

I wanna go and fight.

And we had a long conversation about it.

When Michael first came up with a question

about entering Syria or joining the YPG,

we were actually in a bar

watching a Manchester City football game.

I was worried about him for multitudes of reasons.

You know, we were evacuating people from that region,

not sending them up there.

You know, this guy'd been a Hollywood the week before

and he was not prepped for this at all.

But he was just adamant he was gonna do it.

He's determined, he's not going to listen to anybody.

He's not going to listen to reason.

He's not going to listen to pleading.

Michael is this fly-by-the-seat-of-his-pants kind of person.

This is just somebody who acts on instinct,

not on careful calculation and planning.

How I helped Michael to join the YPG initially

was basically via social media.

I knew of groups that were becoming tools on the ground,

The Lions of Rojava being one of them.

This is a pretty exceptional war.

This is one of the first wars I'd imagine

where the recruits of the armies

were drawn from Facebook and other social media.

I discovered a page for The Lions of Rojava

that had only just been set up by an American

called Jordan Matson.

He had been injured in Syria just a few weeks before.

He called for other international volunteers to come out.

Lions of Rojava said, buy a one-way ticket,

fly into Northern Iraq and contact us

once you bought your flight

and we'll give you a contact person.

I sold everything I had.

I had a Porsche 911.

I sold that to fund me going.

I sold everything.

I talked to a lot of Michael's friends

and colleagues in Los Angeles,

and to a person they were horrified

that he was talking about going over to Syria.

But in many ways they were not surprised.

This is Michael Enright reacting with his heart,

reacting with his gut, not necessarily

thinking everything through.

I thought this could be a set up,

the whole thing could be a set up.

It could be ISIS.

I thought to hell with it.

I'm gonna roll the dice.

So I bought the flight and then I texted them,

"Hey, how you doing, this is Michael Enright.

You told me to buy a flight.

I bought the flight, can you let me know

the contact person."

Didn't get back in touch.

What is going on here?

So I texted them again and I put it all in big caps,

contact person, contact person, contact person.

I get a phone call.

And I'm getting on the phone like, "Hello?"

And this guy said, "This is Michael?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "You want to join the YPG?"

I said, "Yes."

He said, "Are you ready to fight?

Are you willing to die?"

I said, "Yes."

(dramatic music)

Based on this interchange with a person

whose face he's never seen, Michael Enright launches himself

into the Middle East.

It's this mashup of recklessness and aspiration,

which very likely could have ended up

with Michael Enright in an orange suit

having his head chopped off in an ISIS video.

I flew to Iraq and met a couple of guys at a hotel,

a pretty germy hotel.

And I got in a truck and went let's roll.

That was the start of my journey with the YPG.

(dramatic music)

We went down to the river, to the Tigris,

right on the border of Iraq and Syria.

And we have to cross at night

because we're entering the country illegally.

And we went across in a dinghy.

And we go straight to what's called The Academy.

You wake up in the morning, you do exercise.

You go for a run.

And then you do a language lesson.

You learn some Kurdish.

And then you started to learn about the YPG

and the YPJ, YPJ is the women's unit.

The YPG believes in equality between the sexes.

So it's a matter of if you've got the fight in you

and in your heart, you know, that's what that's about.

It's not a gender thing.

Actually, you learned a lot and it was interesting.

At The Academy, the Kurds gave us like an understanding

of the difference between the cultures and the groups

and the ethnicities over there.

In addition to coaching us up on the weapon systems.

We got weapons training.

You learned to dismantle the big C machine gun.

You learned to dismantle your Kalashnikov.

You learned to put it back together.

Before I went to Syria, I'd never used a weapon,

I certainly didn't know how to dismantle one,

I hardly knew how to take the safety off.

I never wanted to, I never liked guns.

(gun blasts)

Whoa, fucking hell.

Excuse my language.

Whew, baby.

Heval!

Actually, I shot a Kalashnikov in a commercial I did.

Command control. (gun blasts)

I played a bank robber and I actually used the same weapon

that I would use for real in Syria.

Shoot. (gun blasts)

Well, that was the only time I'd ever

touched weapons before then.

(instructor speaks in a foreign language)

The training for volunteers in Syria with the YPG,

at first it was only two weeks long.

It was not enough for sure.

Just because there was a war,

they needed people on the front quite quickly.

And the best they could do was was that.

Just imagine being Michael Enright,

you're this actor, who's becoming a militia fighter

against a vicious organization like ISIS.

I mean, come on.

You're not qualified.

You know nothing about guns.

You've never fought in a war.

You would not do this, it would be a suicide mission.

And yeah, he's determined.

(people chanting)

When you were in The Academy you got a name.

The other volunteers were given names, but I chose my name,

because there was a Pakistani man that I worked with

when I was 18.

My father had just died and this guy sort of became

a little bit of a father figure in a way.

His name was Mustafa.

So, in honor of him, I named myself Mustafa Rojava,

because the part of Syria I was in,

the Kurdish part is called Rojava.

Where do you come from?

What's your family situation?

What's your story?

What's my story?

How many hours do you have?

My name is Michael Enright.

My Kurdish guerrilla name is Mustafa Rojava.

How do you volunteer, how you found out

about the situation here?

What's going on in Kurdistan and the Middle East?

I don't like bullies.

I never liked bullies.

And to see them with a man with his hands tied behind him,

who has no hope of defending himself.

And then some man come along and slice his head off.

What is your conviction?

What do you feel while you are here

and what do you want to achieve being here?

I want to stand up like a man and kill them.

And help to eliminate them.

And you know, in whatever small part I can play in that.

I want to do that

with all the hevals and with everybody,

not just the Kurdish people,

'cause this is not just a Kurdish fight.

This is everybody's fight.

My name is Jeremy, Kurdish name, Seapand Ahmed.

(man speaks French)

My Kurdish name is Gabar Ahmed.

The international volunteers, they're a broad church

of political ideals.

They all go to Syria for different reasons

to join the YPG and the YPJ.

Before this, I was a student and I studied philosophy.

I came out here because I believe in revolution.

We are here to defend Rojava against whatever

the biggest threats it faces.

These people were exceptionally strong-willed

and willing to lay their life on the line.

John Galar was probably the smartest guy I met out there.

And very philosophical kind of person.

My name is John from Windsor, Ontario.

I served in the military for three years

and a few of my good friends got killed.

So, I suppose I've been living with that

for the last 10 years or so.

Yeah, psychologically, I guess that makes it

pretty easy to explain why a lot of us are here.

There was an Australian, Reece Harding,

who was a friend of mine.

He was by far the best looking

of all the westerners anyway.

I told him, I said, "You was in LA, mate,

I'd put you in touch with a couple of

modeling agencies I know."

He was so handsome and such a sweet person.

The Kurdish people are lovely people.

I've never met such a nice group of people.

If anything happens to me, parents, I love you,

brother, I love you, and Isabelle, I love you, thanks.

There are a lotta guys that sacrificed a lot

when they went over there.

There were guys that sacrificed their lives

to go over there.

Sometime after The Academy,

the YPG found out I was an actor and they said to me,

"We want you to film your time with us."

They said, you know, "Can you carry the camera?

Can you do some media for us?"

And I said, "No, I came to shoot, but not with a camera."

And they said, "You can keep your gun,

we're not taking that away, but England isn't helping at all

and because you're a famous actor."

I'm not a famous actor, but that's what they perceived.

They said, "We think you can help us."

I said, "Okay."

The YPG and YPJ, they always encouraged

international volunteers to speak up,

to talk their mind, to write articles, to go on the press.

Many international volunteers didn't want to do that.

Oh, no video for me, man.

Others didn't want to draw attention to themselves.

For an operation, I'll have my camera like that

and then click, safety on and then boom, in we go.

After training, I was with a Kurdish unit,

all Kurds, which I liked.

I liked it a lot, actually.

I'm traveling with these boys.

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

(men speak a foreign language)

And then our driver, who's an excellent-

(man speak a foreign language)

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

Yes.

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

Well, I could change units.

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

And I would change.

Literally I would do an operation with one in the morning

and I would see them going on another one

in the afternoon, and I would just leave

and go with a new operation.

I was really hyped up.

'Cause I played those guys in films.

It's like you're about to go on a raid, you're a SWAT member

and they're all.

You know, I always played it like, you're ready to go.

And in actual fact, that's not how it is.

You're having a laugh, you're totally relaxed.

Say, hi boys.

Hi. Hi.

Look at that handsome man there.

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

Sometimes I'd make jokes.

Hello, it looks like you're the only Daesh we've met.

ISIS in that part of the world is called Daesh.

And they hate being called that.

That's why I prefer Daesh to ISIS, you know.

How are ya?

Everyone good?

Looking a little sad.

Yes, we took your village.

You know, a lot of war is doing nothing.

It's hour after hour, day after day, week after week

of doing nothing.

And it's really boring.

Most of the time you weren't on some sort of offensive.

You were slowly taking ground and holding it.

Slowly taking ground and holding it.

And that was the majority of the experience.

So, our food didn't arrive.

So, we're gonna try and see if we can find some food.

I think some of the gentleman have found some.

Oh, I say, how uncivilized.

Oh, well, if you can't go through the door,

I guess you can always go through the window.

And I remember going in one store and I saw a mirror.

And it was like, whoa, yes!

A mirror.

Oh, wow, we've got a mirror.

A little "Saving Private Ryan" action.

Break that off.

Put that fit in there?

Yep, very nicely.

There you go.

So when Daesh comes, I can look 'round the corner.

"Saving Private Ryan," I've watched it about 50 times.

I've only got two films downloaded, "Saving Private Ryan"

and "Schindler's List."

Tom Hanks goes like that, so I thought, hm.

I like your style Tommy, I like your style.

Do you know when you're at war, most of your time

is spent doing your, not fighting.

So there is a lot of boredom.

It's day five now of this place.

It gets frustrating.

You're doing absolutely nothing, you know, for a long time.

And then you get the word, you know

that you're gonna go on an operation

and then it's like, boom.

Then it's go time and you're switched on.

(guns blast)

(man yells in a foreign language)

(guns blast)

So, they've got a sniper shooting

right at that location we was at.

The first time I got shot at, that was a trip.

We had Daesh completely surrounded

and we'd just be bombing 'em.

(guns blast)

Fuck me!

We were shooting back and forth and then.

(gun blasts)

There was two shots. (gun blasts)

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

The ISIS sniper hit the rock right next to my face.

And the rock hits me in the face from his bullet.

That was the first time that had happened,

that specifically for me.

(guns blast)

And that pissed me off.

But the adrenaline was in and I was so angry

and I thought at least give them something back.

So I just took aim and I just held it up.

And I just went. (gun blasts)

So at least he was getting something back.

At least he knew we knew where he was.

'Cause that'll make sometimes make a sniper move.

Sometimes the best way to kill an enemy

is to hold them in place with suppressive fire.

Then call in air support from the Americans, the Brits,

the French, and they'll come and drop a bomb

right on their lovely heads.

(guns blast) (bomb blasts)

(dramatic music)

Get on the end of that.

Why would you go be an insurgent

in somebody else's civil war.

There's gotta be something else that's motivating people

to go travel to these countries where they have never been,

don't know anybody, to go fight as a rebel.

I think Michael's psychological state at the time

is simultaneously one of great clarity

and one of a great fog.

The clarity of purpose,

the fog of not understanding the consequences.

The common theme that I encountered

in studying both fighters for ISIS

and against ISIS is motivation.

Motivation, motivation, motivation,

for self-sacrifice, for adventure.

Michael Enright had this motivation

to a very high degree.

Despite the hedonistic life that he had in Hollywood,

there was something missing, a gaping hole,

and for him it meant something very, very specific.

The motivation for significance, to matter, to be somebody.

Michael is the product, by his own account,

of a very unhappy childhood home.

He describes his father as a tough guy, abusive.

I first met Michael at a really young age.

Growing up in Manchester was extremely violent

for me and Michael, especially when you come from

a violent upbringing and you're being physically,

emotionally, and mentally punished.

Yeah, I got hit a lot.

I got sometimes put in hospital.

My dad would go too far.

I'd go to school with lumps on me head.

Sometimes my dad would black my eye,

break my fingers and stuff.

So it was tough.

I would be crying from the emotional pain of that happening.

Somebody who loved you, who was supposed to protect you

was abusing you.

And I was getting hurt every day.

So when I was 16 years old, I moved out of that house.

Michael's father like mine beat him severely.

I think that's one of the reasons

that makes us the hard characters we are.

And also being there for people who are vulnerable,

needy, and bullied.

Michael Enright, his father punished him.

He was tough.

He wanted to show that he's just as tough,

but he's tough in a very positive way.

He adapted an ideology of protection,

of standing up for the weak and downtrodden.

That was one of the biggest reasons I'd gone

is because they were raping these women

and these little girls.

These Daesh fighters we're bidding on

one of the little Yazidi girls.

I used to keep that on my phone

and before we'd go on an operation I'd watch it,

just to sort of go, ah ha.

That's who we're going for, that's who we're going for.

You know, that's who I'm gonna fight.

So I was ready, I was absolutely ready.

(men yell) (dramatic music)

People that joined the YPG, I would give them credit

that they wanted to fight something

that we all want to fight.

I mean, I don't ever wanna pick up a gun,

but I certainly wanna see ISIS defeated.

So I'm thankful to whoever did pick up guns to defeat them.

Band of brothers, this idea of band of brothers

who die together, who are facing death together,

this is a kind of fusion, the kind of glue

that keeps people together more than anything else.

As far as my experience, as far as it comes to the YPG,

yeah, they all loved each other.

It was like a big family.

This one I love him.

I love you.

Remember Michael is someone that wasn't appreciated

in his own family by his father.

He's found a new family.

And this family is a family of heroes.

There was one person who became really close to me.

You know, he was almost like family.

His name was Ciya.

Ciya was my commander.

And he put me under his wing.

He was great.

He used to wear a cowboy hat.

He was this insane Kurd.

Was insane in so many ways.

He was so funny.

He was a rapper.

This is our commander.

This is Heval Ciya, but he's also known as a rap star.

He's the Kurdish rapper.

Rap baby, go.

(Ciya raps in a foreign language)

Wow, that's how we do it Kurdish style.

And he was so funny because we'd be on the front

and all hell would be breaking loose.

We just heard a mortar go off.

So we're waiting for, here we are.

Except brave man over there.

Get down!

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

Here we go.

(mortar explodes)

Everyone's like (Michael speaks in a foreign language)

Get down, get down.

And we'd all be running for cover.

So you get as close as you can.

Oh, I can hear it.

(mortar blasts)

And Ciya, he's walking 'round on his radio,

like, ya, bada, bada, bada.

I'm like, hey.

Mr. Cool, Cool Hand Luke, he was just like Robert Duvall

in "Apocalypse Now."

Everyone else is freaking and he's just walking

like down the beach, like, Charlie's not gonna get me.

Charlie doesn't see.

He was so cool.

(mortar blasts)

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

That'll wake you up.

So, everybody knew Ciya

and everybody really looked up to him.

He was one of those commanders

that really led from the front and the Kurds did that a lot.

Our commanders that's one of the best things

about the YPG was the leadership.

I really respected them.

I really respected them so much.

One thing that a lot of people don't know about the YPG

is that much of the leadership of the YPG is women.

And they called it a feminist revolution, it really was.

Up to that point, I always thought that women

shouldn't be on the front line.

Not because I'm macho man and we'll do the fighting.

No, because I care about them.

And I don't want them to get hurt.

And it's like, if someone's gonna take a risk

of losing their legs or getting shot in the face,

I don't want it to be in your pretty face.

I'll take that risk.

And then, you meet the YPJ

and it totally turns that on its head.

Because all of a sudden those thoughts just leave you

because they sure as hell don't need me to protect them.

The YPJ don't need my protection.

(machine gun blasts)

I can remember one time in Tall Tamr we got ambushed

by the Islamic State as we were trying to take a position.

And I was hiding in the dirt because I was terrified.

Bullets were smacking into the ground around me.

They were screaming at us.

They knew they got us.

And I can remember turning to my left

and seeing a young girl, who I knew was only 18 years old,

stand up with an RPG, fire it at the Islamic State,

swear at them and then obviously hit the dirt again

and she didn't get shot, it was remarkable.

And I can remember being shamed by it,

thinking to myself, wow, these girls are brave,

fighting and putting the fear of God

into the people they were fighting.

Because the Islamic State believed that if they were

killed in battle by a woman they wouldn't get

the rewards of a martyr.

They wouldn't get the 72 virgins that was due them.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

I think one of the reasons why I had a bond

with the Kurds is because they have

such self-respect for themselves.

If someone has self-respect and shows you respect,

how can you not fall in love with that?

So I was committed to this fight

and I never wanted to go home.

I mean, I never wanted to go home until we'd taken Raqqa

because that's their capital.

That's like you invade in England and you take London.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

But by the end of 2015, we hadn't taken Raqqa.

We'd been in a sort of hold

and there was gonna be many, many months of doing nothing.

So I had already completed my six months tour.

So I thought this would be a good time to take a break,

to go and see my mother and my sister.

And then my plan was I'd come back

in time for the Raqqa operation.

(dramatic music)

When Michael flies to Mexico,

this undeniable problem sort of dawns on him

as he's coming home.

That he has been living in the United States

for three decades on a tourist visa

that has been expired for three decades.

And he has to figure out a way to come back home.

Think about that.

He figures that the San Ysidro border crossing

is the most busy border crossing in the United States.

And he figures that he can do what he always does,

which is act.

And he will just blend in with the crowd.

And of course it does not work out.

Of course he is caught.

I was stopped at the border

'cause I'd over stayed my visa and they took my phone.

And I remember an immigration officer, a young guy,

came back and went, "What's this?"

And he showed footage from my headcam

from my first tour, when we fought Daesh.

We just put all the bodies together.

And I had footage of that.

And he said, "What is this?"

He said, "I just, what's all these dead bodies.

You got footage of dead people on your phone."

I went, "Oh yeah, I was a soldier,

I just came back from Syria."

And then boom, so Homeland Security came immediately.

(dramatic music)

I told them all I could.

Told them everything.

He is detained.

And he is put in one of these horrible detention centers,

where the lights are on all day

and you're stuffed into a small cell with many, many people.

And it is there that he says that he had

this very special encounter

with U.S. law enforcement officials.

I remember there was one interview

and I went in there and there was an intelligence officer.

She was blonde.

And she said, you know, she'd try and help me solve,

work it out with them.

And we had a long conversation about it.

And that's when I started to hear about the deals.

Michael says that he was given this extraordinary offer.

An offer to have his immigration problems disappear

if he was able to go back to Syria

and provide actionable intelligence about ISIS.

And they said, you know, "If you can help us

get a bad guy, we'll let you come home."

I said, "Well, how are you gonna do that?"

And they said, "We're the American government,

we can do anything we want."

I said, "Okay."

The most elusive character in the Michael Enright story

is the woman he calls Laura, the blonde lady.

She is the woman that he says offered him this amazing deal.

There's no video documentation of that.

There's no paper documentation of that.

The question is whether it's his naivete

or is there a deeper psychological reason

why he believed the woman that allegedly made him the offer?

It all hinges on his great motivation to be recognized.

What the woman was suggesting to him,

do this one thing for America

and you will be recognized and probably welcome,

given a hero's welcome, or at least a visa

in recognition of your great contribution

to our fight against terrorism, against ISIS.

So that's when I decided to return to Syria

and gather intelligence about the Islamic State.

And the next thing I knew I was being put on a plane

with three Homeland Security agents

and I was escorted back to England.

And then there was this other really crazy thing

that I had significant doubts about.

And that was that his deportation

had this very unusual element to it.

That he was flown to England by three

law enforcement officials of the United States.

To me, that sounded really off the charts.

But guess what?

That checked out, that was something

that we were able to confirm on the record,

officially from the United States government.

I went back to England.

I spent some time with my family

and then in June, 2016, I went back to Syria

to try and get a bad guy just like I promised.

Hey!

(Michael speaks a foreign language)

It's so good to see you.

Ah, I missed you so much.

(dramatic music)

The second time really was about Raqqa,

because I wanted to go to Raqqa.

But also, that was an ingredient in it.

If I can get intelligence.

We just found this, which is obviously some type of mine.

This is a training.

This is what they designed for their training center.

I wanted to search for intelligence

so I could go home to America.

I went to fight at the front

and I had been without any internet access.

I got back from the front, went on to check my Facebook

because that's the only way I was in contact with people

and I read this Facebook post that Jordan Matson had done.

Jordan Matson said Michael was unstable.

That he was a danger to himself and to others.

That the Kurds did not like him

and that they had taken off the pin of his Kalashnikov,

that he had tried to commit suicide,

and that authorities should do something

to remove him from Aujerby.

He had posted this on his Facebook page.

Let's talk about your boy, Michael Enright, all right.

They tried putting him in four different actual combat,

we're called tabors, or tacoms, which are smaller platoon

and company levels.

And he was systematically kicked out of each one

for being mentally unstable.

When you go into an army you get close

with your other soldiers, and he was another soldier

and I just couldn't believe it.

Jordan Matson is one of the more interesting

of the American volunteers who joined the YPG,

first because he was among the first.

He went to Syria, I believe in 2014.

He was all over the media.

And he was on Fox News all the time.

They really put him up there.

(upbeat music)

My next guest is an American veteran

and a Christian who traveled to Iraq

to fight with the Kurds in Northern Iraq, against ISIS.

I was looking for a way to join

one of the militias fighting against ISIS.

I just had enough off of it.

And I decided if my government

wasn't gonna do something I was.

Me and several others are gonna stay here

'til this fight is over with and see it through.

And I thank you all for your support and your prayers.

The YPG have been using him

as their face for the westerners.

And so he was all over the media.

And they even gave him the nickname Captain Kurdistan,

instead of Captain America, they gave him Captain Kurdistan.

Beating the Islamic State required

having competent forces on the ground,

willing to engage in close combat with the Islamic State.

And the United States was not willing to do that,

which is why we depended so heavily upon the YPG

and the western volunteers of the YPG.

Jordan, he was the first one that actually recommended

helping the Kurds.

He really, really, really has been essential

to helping guys get over there.

And yeah, he's a good guy.

I have a lot of respect for him.

He had 30,000 fans following him on Facebook.

And hundreds and hundreds of people

that liked and commented on this story.

The Daily Mail and other newspapers wrote

more articles, negative articles.

That's how I got involved with Michael's story.

I was following it 'cause I knew him before he left.

We were friendly.

And then I read the articles

and it was ridiculous I thought.

They have these accusations by Matson, they were a lot

and they went viral.

And it was clear to me that you really gotta step through

each accusation one at a time and look into it.

Right now, basically from what I'm told

from our chain of command, is he travels with them

because he says he's making a movie or a documentary.

I had heard that some people were thinking,

ah, he's a movie star coming here for publicity.

We ended up talking to all of these people

who have nom de guerres and come from places

all over the world, not just the United States,

Spain, other parts of Europe.

This is a really kind of eclectic group

of very interesting and unique people.

Some of these people think that he was not sincere

in what he was doing.

So this is my first day, Heval, here, camera here, no.

Even among his fellow volunteers,

they saw a guy from Hollywood.

They thought maybe he was trying to enhance his career,

give himself a boost, get better roles.

Move from being the supporting cast in the movie

to being the star.

Film this, are you filming?

Are you filming?

Heval, are you filming?

The accusation would have been,

oh, you're just here to make a film.

You're here for the glorification.

Surviving in being a successful Hollywood actor,

or semi-successful Hollywood actor flying in for six months,

get the story and then bug out the other way.

See you later, boys.

I think throughout history you can find foreign fighters

who have inflated their battlefield resume

or whether it's to sell memoirs

or because they like to tell tall tales.

There are always incentives for people,

especially maybe the extreme personalities

who go off to become a foreign fighter.

There are stories of people that joined the YPG

that just went there to have a picture of themselves

with a gun, and they joined for good and for bad reasons.

And you know, sometimes it was a photo op.

So, get us both in.

Okay, okay, so get us both in.

Yes. Yeah.

Some people come with diaries and GoPros

looking for fame, you know.

I was given the task by Michael Enright

to find him a camera in Sulaymaniyah in Iraq.

A GoPro camera that was able to shoot

the quality of footage that he was after.

And this camera was just absolutely crucial

in getting his story out to the world.

Thank you, this is my cameraman.

Shukran.

(kids yell)

There you go.

Looks like Daesh is finished here.

You come there with all these things

to record what you're doing,

and you're not really there to fight.

I mean, maybe part of you is,

but that's not the main reason you're there.

Heval.

Not the first time I've been miced.

They want to ask you about YPJ.

I think there was animosity towards him

because he was an actor.

Lot of the people that were coming there

were ex-professional soldiers.

And they had a tendency to consider people

that were not as wannabes.

I guess they were saying that he was in places

where there were never, where he was never even fighting.

And it was just like, what are you doing?

On the right, this is close to where I was.

This is close to where we were fighting.

Some of the bullet holes in this building

are from my Kalash.

When you have certain people that show up

and come over there for the wrong reasons,

they can tarnish what it is that the rest of us are doing.

You know, I'm going to the front again.

And you know, if you go, you go, that's the way that is.

Yeah.

I don't even understand what you're talking about.

Go over there and go frigging

and fill up a water pail or something.

You know what I mean?

The big boys are here now.

(Anthony chuckles)

If you wanted to throw on a YPG uniform

and sort of hang around in the rear area

with the headquarters, you could have done that.

And it makes it look like you're really involved,

but not be.

Michael was doing lot of filming,

so it could have looked to some people

like it was a career boost to build his ego.

The difference between me and a lotta the guys that join,

a lotta the guys don't have prior military training.

Obviously, he wasn't a trained fighter,

but is he a danger like Jordan Matson claimed?

There were a lot of guys that weren't

ex-military or whatever, but they definitely

had to get their shit together rickety tick.

I had a lot of laughs with Mike, you know what I mean?

I don't know if I'd wanna, you know,

be in a combat situation with him.

I wouldn't mind being at a bar with him, I'll tell ya that.

I don't know if I want him, you know,

watching my back during a firefight.

Michael Enright kinda has like a loud personality

and maybe a lotta guys felt like,

who's this old British dude, you know,

that's never been in the military.

I guess people resent that kind of stuff.

You know, and you're not gonna jeopardize my life

and you're not gonna jeopardize anybody else's life.

This was the main issue for people

with no previous military experience

is that they were too eager to fight.

They didn't understand what it really meant.

And they didn't realize that it was not the game

and you're gonna get killed, or you gonna

get the other people in trouble.

(gun blasts)

Stop, stop, stop.

(gun blasts) No, no, no.

What do you mean, no, no, no.

Every time Mustafa, no, no, no.

Everyone else (Michael speaks a foreign language)

(guns blast)

Some of these guys being the one that you are gonna

be fighting alongside of, you are gonna have to depend

on him to return fire while you reloaded your magazine,

or spotted, you know, movement coming towards you,

or any kinda situation like that,

it was definitely a concern that some of those guys

that were there for the wrong reason,

being able to perform like that under pressure.

Hold it for me.

Stay still, Jesus.

At the moment, I'm doing security for him.

Which is kind of weird 'cause I mean,

I'd like to smash the, fucking smash the shit out of him.

I would've liked to kick him right in his fucking mouth.

So, why'd you start fucking bullshitting me motherfucker?

Huh?

How many fuckers did you rape?

Bitch, how about that?

Now, which do you wanna fucking do, motherfucker?

You wanna start telling the truth,

or do you wanna start fucking lying?

Which do you fucking want?

They were going to war,

let's not make bones about this.

There's one air strike.

You know he had no formal military training, at all.

And you can't guarantee what your mental status will be

in a situation like that, until you've actually been

in a situation like that.

(gun blasts)

We killed a lot of people fighting Daesh.

And we just put all the bodies together,

just left 'em there to rot.

And the dogs would come very often and eat them.

Which is rather fitting for them to go that way,

actually if you ask me.

He thought it was just perfect that the dogs

were eating the heads of the ISIS fighters.

So here you see that within this man is some real rage.

It's not exactly the reaction that everyone would have

to seeing a human being's head being eaten by a dog.

Yeah, Raqqa.

Me and you, you fucking dirty motherfucker.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

Oh, oh, you forgot the piece of shit.

You forgot the piece of fucking shit.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

Jordan Matson said that Michael Enright

was bragging about taking part of combat,

which he never did because he didn't have a weapon

he could actually use.

Did they really take the bolt out of his AK?

Yes, sir (beep) a man from New Zealand,

he will confirm that to you as well.

He just went on, it was never ending.

These accusations that the Kurds wanted to kill him.

And then he'd say that Mike was disrespecting

other westerners for his own gain.

I was told he sold the story of Reece Harding,

who recently died, he sold some pictures

to Australian Channel 7.

Reece Harding was a friend of mine.

And he steps on a mine.

And I had this footage of him and he'd just been killed.

Matson had said, I got paid to give that.

And he just wouldn't stop.

So the question is, are all these accusations true?

(dramatic music)

I met Jordan Matson on the way over to Syria.

He found out that I was an actor

and he said some disparaging remarks about that.

"Oh, that's all we need, you know, an actor out here."

And it was no big deal, and we went and we played chess

and he beat me, which means he's good,

'cause I'm quite good chess player.

Matson had a little bit of military service.

I think he served for about a year.

It's a little unclear of why he was

no longer in the U.S. Army.

It sounds like the U.S. Army put him out of the army.

After just a year in the army,

Matson says he was forced to leave in 2007

due to emotional stress.

I couldn't go back because they said I had PTSD.

You have to understand Jordan Matson

was someone who were in the American army,

but was never deployed and was there

for a short amount of time.

In 2014, when we created this new

international volunteer slide,

Jordan Matson was the face that we used

in the international media.

On the ground tonight is Jordan Matson,

a former U.S. soldier who went to fight against

the Islamic State with the Kurds in Northern Syria.

So how did people react to you when they see you

and realize you're from the U.S.?

They ask me if I'll come over for dinner

and stay the night at their house.

And this guy has started to spread lies

about Michael, saying that, oh, you're an actor.

You're just here for the photos

and the Kurds did not like him,

or that he was an unstable person,

that they had taken the bolt out of his gun.

The danger of not having a firing pin in your weapon is,

hell, you think you have a functional weapon.

It would be essentially driving your car

and your brakes don't work.

I mean, you basically send someone in a lion's den unarmed.

We don't send anyone to the front lines

without a bullets which they can use to kill

and to protect themselves.

We don't send, especially an international volunteer

from Hollywood.

So, first thing he did, he came to check in,

he showed me his gun.

And I checked it, the bolt was there,

detonation was there,

so it was a fully functioning Kalashnikov.

And this story was bullshit.

As for Matson's claim that Michael

was there for a career boost

or to film himself doing cool stuff,

you have to remember it was the YPG

that asked Michael to film.

When I first came here in March,

beginning of March in 2015,

one of the leaders, he asked me to do this job,

which was to work with a headcam and to film.

And I said, "I came to fight."

I said, "Do I get to still fight?"

And he said, "You have a gun.

It's not a violin."

I thought, I said, "Where would you like me to film?"

He said, "Anywhere there's fighting."

And I knew from talking to some of the westerns already

that one of the frustrations that the westerners had

is that they didn't get to fight sometimes.

I said, "Am I going to different tabors?"

You know different units.

He said, "Yeah, one unit is not fighting,

you go to the other one."

I thought, oh, ding.

But to do it, he gave me a note.

And what that note says is allow me to go

back and forth to the front.

And so it gives me freedom of movement

that really no other westerner has.

I'm not surprised at all that Michael was given the task

by the YPG and YPJ to actually utilize his skills,

tell their story.

And I'm very glad he did.

(Nuri speaks in a foreign language)

Michael's reputation with us at the YPG, us Kurds,

was actually very good.

And to see that you have left Hollywood,

you have left your name that you have created

throughout years to come to just give it away like that

for people who doesn't even know your face and name,

that's honorable.

So tell us what happened.

You was just walking along and you

and your mate found this mine, huh?

And how about the accusation that Michael had profited

by selling footage of a fallen Australian soldier.

New video has emerged showing the Gold Coast's

Reece Harding in his final days.

Clearing landmines placed

by Islamic State militants in Syria.

Obtained by 7News, this soldier's helmet cam

records the 23-year-old Australian

known to his Kurdish mates as Heval Bagok.

When I had that footage of Reece,

I find out he died and made a lot of inquiries,

and I find out his mom and dad they live in Australia,

Michelle and Keith.

And I've got footage of her son

and I found out her details and ask her

if she wants this footage or not.

And I sent it to her and she got back to me,

thank you for that.

And I said, "Listen," I said,

do you want me to release this to the media in Australia?

Because I think he's an Australian hero."

I said, "Well, if you don't, I won't."

And she said, "Honor him everywhere."

I said, "Okay."

So I gave it to, I think it was Channel 7 over there.

I just gave it to them and said,

"The only reason you've got it is 'cause

she gave me permission to give it you."

(Nuri speaks in a foreign language)

I am very glad for all the volunteers who joined us,

but there are also a lot of difference between them.

From what I have read,

the reports from my own fellow commanders,

Jordan is not someone who was known by us

as someone who was truthful.

And Jordan Matson's lies it still sticks

with a lot international volunteers,

and unfortunately the news, especially in the western light,

what they see.

So you have one guy who's tall

and who looks handsome in the news,

and people fall for that.

Then you have someone who is more older

and people like, oh, you haven't done

what this Rambo-looking guy has done.

Well, the truth is it's totally opposite.

I wrote the Daily Mail a long letter

about how they got the story completely wrong.

And how in the world could they take a Facebook post

and destroy somebody's life with it.

(men laugh)

I just started to pray for him.

And I didn't stop praying for him.

I never stopped praying for Jordan Matson.

I prayed for him all the time.

I prayed every day.

I don't think Matson knows Michael.

And if he did, he wouldn't be saying those things about him.

I'm glad to see that Matson's story

has been completely dismissed

and found to be the outright lies that they are.

Just because Mike may have dimmed his shine

or may have put him in the back seat or the back burner,

it does not give him the right to say the things

that he said and to do what he did.

I think the guy's personally just a piece of shit.

I'm a veteran in the U.S. Army.

And we don't talk about each other in the press.

We don't talk about each other on social media.

This is a brotherhood and I may be retired,

but I still know how to work my hands.

So if you talk shit about people that I know, that I love,

then you must be prepared to back it up.

And if you fall on your sword for some bullshit

then you gotta be prepared for me

to walk over your fucking dead body.

And that's how I feel about people talking shit about Mike.

But you know what really pissed me off

about the Matson thing is it ended up it was just jealousy,

and pettiness, and gossip.

And it just distracted from the real crisis,

the real reason I was over there.

The fact that ISIS was killing these

innocent Kurds and Yazidis.

I wasn't there to do tittle tattle and internet gossip.

I was there to kill ISIS.

The fighting in Syria was horrendous.

It was dark.

It was confusing.

It was nightmarish.

It was chaotic.

Our nostrils were full of the smell of the dead,

the smell of the air strikes.

The mortars were just constant.

The snipers were everywhere.

It was pretty full on.

And this was the start of the big push into Raqqa.

(mortar blasts)

And number one operation we were moving out

and I was in the mortar pit.

We were firing mortars and trying to get their position

and they were mortaring trying to get our mortar pit.

And some of the Kurds were going 'round the corner

to start an operation, they were walking past.

And one of the YPJ said hi to me.

She said, "Hey, Mustafa."

And I recognized her.

She went, hi.

And I said, "Oh, hey."

And I said hi to her and within five seconds

of her saying hi to me

(mortar blasts)

one of the ISIS mortars came in,

injured one of them very badly

and killed the guy in front of her.

So, that was a mortar that just came at us, this time.

So we're gonna move out of the way here.

Someone just got injured.

Oh, we just got a really bad injury right now, fuck.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

And Ciya, boom, was right over there.

Picked up the guy.

We didn't know, 'cause you don't know whether he's dead

or he's just badly injured.

Ran him back.

(Ciya speaks in a foreign language)

(man speaks in a foreign language)

(Ciya speaks in a foreign language)

You never get over that.

I mean, one minute there's your heval,

who's been in the trenches next to you.

And then next minute, they're carrying his body out.

He's dead.

It gets to you, you know.

And it got to everybody, I think.

But Ciya was the guy who knew what to say,

to all of us.

(Ciya speaks in a foreign language)

Speaking with Michael about some of his time in Syria,

I mean, some of the things he saw,

I don't know how he coped with it.

I don't know if I could have coped with it.

So, two children have just been killed an hour ago.

They found some unexploded mines.

You could hardly tell, can you imagine.

It's no wonder kids, you know,

they're playing in their streets that they live in.

And they got an eight-year-old

and a four-year-old who are dead.

One hour ago were quite happy, were playing.

And then, you know, they stand on the Daesh mine.

Just the pain that the Kurds

and the Arabs of that region have had

is unbelievable, unbelievable.

Look at that, little baby.

Look at that, little baby.

Oi!

Woke up this morning, playing.

Have a good look at that Daesh.

Have a good look at that.

That's the grandfather there, that's the grandfather.

Have a good look at that.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

That's what you did.

Now we're gonna go outside

and see all these female relatives.

And it just, the pain that they receive is just,

it's insurmountable and it breaks your heart.

You know, it breaks your heart.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

Oh mama.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

Mama.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

Oh, ma, mama, mama.

God help you, darling, God help you, God help you.

And I looked at her and I just was like, wow,

just like, wow.

What do you say to somebody like that?

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

Oh, bro, I don't have any words to say to you,

but brother, God bless you.

God bless you, man.

Oh Lord, help this, help this fella right now.

Oh Lord, help him.

In the name Lord, help him.

(Michael sighs)

When something like that happens makes you really determined

to end Daesh, to kill them.

An integral part of understanding

the Michael Enright story is understanding the love affair

that he ends up having with the Kurdish people.

And when he's over there in Syria,

he is going to his default, which is to entertain people.

So in these quiet moments, in between battles,

he's doing magic tricks for the kids.

Watch, watch.

And they laugh.

That was for him, this huge victory,

because he didn't just want to go over there

and fight for the Kurds.

He wanted them to appreciate it and to like him personally.

Hocus pocus.

(children giggle)

Wow!

Give me five.

Give me five.

Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Sometimes you see little glimpses of Michael,

perhaps trying to right some historical wrong.

Salamu alaykum.

And provide this happy place for these children

in very dark circumstances,

that he didn't have in his own childhood.

He was treated violently by his father,

so when he saw other victims,

when he saw the foul acts of ISIS,

he was saying to himself and to the world,

no, I won't let this happen.

I will stand for justice.

I will stand for victims.

I will be a man.

And a man not like my father, I will use violence for good.

Mike is a real frontline soldier.

The proof's in the pudding.

I mean, he has a headcam, I mean there's footage out.

You can't fake the funk on that.

And there's something else about this.

He in his own mind decides that he's willing to die,

not just willing to die, but expects to die.

It's a very different thing to be scared of dying

and to expect to die.

Michael expected to die.

I was on an operation once, we'd taken Mahmoodalay

and we were going into Sudea and it was a big village,

and there were civilians,

which always complicates things.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

(man speaks in a foreign language)

I keep walking and I see a little boy.

And he was white.

He's scared this one, he's scared.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

But everything about this, my intuition was saying,

there's something wrong here.

And one of the soldiers puts his gun down.

Well, if you're a soldier and you put your gun down,

that means it's okay.

So I go over and I see this beautiful little boy.

So I put my gun down and I tried to do

a magic trick for him.

And he's not having it and he's crying.

And so my intuition was going, there's a problem here,

there's a problem here, there's a problem here,

there's a problem here, and it kept on getting louder,

but I would see them asking for water.

And it was just like, well, maybe it's okay.

And I start telling him in Arabic,

I ask her, his mom, his name.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

And now, I'm a little further from my gun.

Huge mistake.

When I saw the other soldier put the gun down,

I shouldn't have done it, mistake.

So I turn the camera off and literally within four seconds

of me turning the camera off all hell lets rip.

Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar!

And all the civilians go, argh!

All the women run, all the civilians freakin' run.

So it's an ambush, we got ambushed.

And I can't get to my gun

because all the machine gun bullets are all coming

right around my gun.

And my unit have looked up and they just go wham.

And they run.

So I just went inside this little room.

Well, now, I'm in an ISIS house,

with ISIS soldiers all around me,

and my Kalash is outside.

And it was the scariest time of my life.

Not that I was gonna die,

but I knew I was gonna get tortured.

Had Michael been captured

at any point during his involvement with YPG,

his certain death would not been a quick one.

The media was full of orange boiler suits and beheadings,

and to put it lightly they were getting

quite imaginative towards the end.

He would have been a showcase.

It was all emotion, I was just petrified of torture.

But then something happened.

The Brits and the Americans had not give us enough equipment

so that we could all have a grenade each,

but I'd taken one off ISIS.

All of this is all from Daesh, including those grenades.

And so, I'm gonna nab one of them.

We'd come across ISIS, and I'd taken a grenade.

And as soon as I realized that I pulled the grenade out.

You'll have to forgive me for those people who are atheists

or agnostics, but I felt the grace of God

just go shh, all over me.

And I wasn't scared anymore.

I remember at one point I actually

turned the camera on myself

because I thought I might not make it out of here.

But I thought even if they come in,

maybe the SD card from the camera might survive

and at least people get to know what happened to me.

So I just held the grenade under my head,

put my finger in the pin and I was gonna time it,

so that by the time they got over to me,

it would have been Allahu Akbar, God is great,

and you're going to hell you bitch.

What might have been going through Michael's mind

as he was hiding with a grenade to his throat,

and why would he do that?

Why would he think of taking his own life?

It's one thing to die.

It's a quite another thing to die in the way

that ISIS would have you die.

That's a much worse alternative than letting the pin go

and blowing yourself up.

Dying in a full consciousness that you've done

what you set out to do.

That's not a bad way to die.

Altogether, I was trapped in that house

with a grenade at my head 19 hours.

And then the next morning sunrise.

6:30, they're not coming in yet.

Seven o'clock, they're not coming in yet.

7:30, they're not coming in yet.

Eight o'clock, they're not coming in yet.

I just thought I gotta go, I'm gonna make a run.

And I got not very far down and I saw them.

And they looked like they were in black.

And they were so far away.

And I heard 'em go, taeal, taeal,

which is Arabic for come, come here.

And so I knew what they was asking me to do

was come to them.

Well, that's ISIS, so I'm gonna get tortured

and killed there.

So I put my hands up and I started waving my hands

above my head, but it didn't work.

(dramatic music) (guns blast)

They opened up on me and they started shooting.

And I don't know which way's home.

So I run and then I'm just running for my life, you know.

I've no fucking idea where I'm going.

And then I make a mistake

because I turned down the wrong street

and I hear, taeal, taeal.

Now they're much closer and it's the same men

who've just shot at me, and they're only about

300 meters from me now.

And I see two big Cs, two machine guns.

And so I just immediately turn towards them

and I'm waving my hands, but I'm walking towards ISIS.

I'm walking towards Daesh.

And about 20 yards, I hear from the top of the roof,

Mustafa, Mustafa.

I said, (Michael speaks in a foreign language).

It was my men, my own men had been shooting at me.

Well, those people who were asking me to go over there,

I didn't trust 'em.

They're my friends.

So, I've arrived.

Can you fuckin' believe that?

Shit, whew!

I couldn't believe I had done it.

And immediately, as soon as I knew I was safe,

my thoughts went, bang, I'm a soldier again.

And you know what I wanna do now?

Get a new gun and go straight back into

those dirty motherfuckers.

That's what I'm gonna do.

Fuck you Daesh.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

Hey, hey, hey, hey.

Hi, ya bugger! (Michael chuckles)

(Michael cheers) (guns blast)

Yay, this is my group.

That's my group there.

They all thought I was dead.

That's the sign of celebration over here.

(man cheers)

I got in, and then as soon as I came back,

we captured three ISIS prisoners.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

And that's when I went straight back to soldier mode

and intelligence searching mode.

I started searching 'em for intelligence.

Hey, telephone, telephone?

He ends up grabbing the cell phones off of ISIS fighters,

who they encounter.

He becomes absolutely possessed by finding this information

that he considers to be the key to getting himself back.

We think this one is Daesh, yeah?

Yes. Yeah.

His phone.

So, we've just gone through his phone this one.

And we found Daesh on his phone, like Daesh videos.

And these are his friends.

And that would be one of the ways that you could tell

if someone was a Daesh soldier or not.

So we've got another one.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

We handcuffed him, we blindfold him

and we started interrogating him.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

(man speaks in a foreign language)

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

I always talked to them.

I always gave 'em crap.

And I would tell them, you've got a problem now.

You've got a problem.

The problem you gave them is your problem now.

(men speak in a foreign language)

And that particular one, my Arab friend,

he wanted to let him go.

I said, "Laesh," I said, "why?"

He said, "He's not Daesh."

And he pulled his trouser leg up and he had tattoos.

I said, "So what?

He got the tattoos four years ago

and he became Daesh three years ago."

I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no."

I said, "Take him to the second interrogation."

And they went, "No, Mustafa, we let him go

with the refugees."

And I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no."

And I really put my foot down.

Hey.

Come here, I'm talking to you, come here.

I'm talking to you, stay up.

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

And it was like I was listening to my intuition

and my intuition was screaming that this guy is Daesh.

He said, "Okay, Mustafa, we'll take him

to the second interrogation."

And he took him to the second interrogation

and Ciya came back and he said,

"Mustafa, ooh, Mustafa."

Like you're a smart one.

And he showed me the picture.

He was one of the wanted ones.

(Ciya and Michael speak in a foreign language)

That's one of their leaders.

He was one of the leaders.

So, that felt good because without me

he'd have gone to the refugee camp

instead of the soldiers camp.

And now we had him.

(Michael and Ciya speak in a foreign language)

Let me reiterate that.

They were gonna let that guy go.

Michael's the only one insisting he stays.

And he turns out to be an ISIS commander, an emir.

That alone should satisfy the DHS directives

to get them a bad guy

and Michael should be allowed to come home

to the United States.

You know, when I was stopped at the border

and they said, well, if you can help get bad guy,

we'll let you come back.

I helped get a lot more than one bad guy.

I helped to get a lotta bad guys.

And even then I never left focus of that.

I never left focus at all.

It was like, I'm fighting this fight until we get to Raqqa.

I just wanted to stay focused on that.

(dramatic music)

So, now we're pushing into Raqqa.

On the first day that any troops

have been in their capital for quite a few years.

And who knows, somewhere in this city right now

are a lotta Yazidi women who have been held and gang raped.

And salvation is on its way.

Salvation is on its way.

(dramatic music) (guns blast)

Raqqa was one of the worst fights

that the western world has seen for many, many decades.

Don't underestimate how important this is.

We're talking the capital of ISIS.

And the outcome matters to America, Europe,

and the people who live here.

Thousands and thousands of fighters died.

Thousands of civilians died.

And it was just a grind, a slow grind

to the center of the city.

(guns blast)

That's exactly where we went.

That's where the Assyrian Kurds went,

that's where the Yazidis went,

that's where the YPG went, we all went.

More than 6,000 ISIS militants

are still out there, ready to go underground, regroup,

fight, and die.

I ended up in an all Yazidi unit and it was for me

the icing on the cake to fight with them

because that's one of the reasons why I'd gone,

because of how they treated the Yazidis.

I fought with them and I remember fighting a lot

from this one house.

We're gonna go here, fourth story up.

So, that's where we're aiming for, right there.

And the Yazidis, they went on the roof.

And they put a big flag, Yazidi flag.

And they put it up, and in the morning,

when Daesh saw that their flag had been taken down

and the Yazidi flag was up, they hit us with everything.

(explosion booms)

(guns blast)

We were the point of the spear

and everything behind us, being us,

all of this was all enemy, everywhere.

So we were getting hit, left, right-hand side, straight on.

We got absolutely battered.

We would move forward and every group

would break into a structure.

We would go up to the rooftops with sledgehammers,

break holes in the little cinder block walls in there.

We'd stick our weapons through, set up a defensive position

and just start lighting up

whatever was in front of us to the north.

(gun blasts)

We'd fight, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, and then start RPG.

(guns blast)

We'd go in the back and we'd wait until the barrage was over

and then we'd come back out to give them a barrage.

(gun blasts)

And it was just bedlam,

absolute bedlam.

(explosion booms)

(guns blast)

Once it was dark, we would leave

the structures we were in and move forward

about two or three blocks and break into another structure

and do the whole thing over and over and over again,

until we cleared the city out.

(guns blast)

So that's where we met Daesh and we met them in Raqqa.

And they either ran or they ended up dead.

(guns blast)

Good morning, Raqqa.

(dramatic music)

We're going in.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

Tonight, Raqqa liberated.

The city that was the beating, black heart of ISIS,

finally free.

And at the center of the city, a traffic circle

where the extremists beheaded their enemies,

where women were sold into slavery.

Today, the center of victory celebrations

for the U.S.-backed forces.

So that was incredible feeling.

We were all so proud of what we did.

That when the devil came out and took a human form,

we beat them.

We beat them.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

We won.

Raqqa is clear.

(woman speaks in a foreign language)

I'm so happy that they're now free

and they can wear what they want

and they can show those beautiful faces.

(man speaks in a foreign language)

(Michael speaks in a foreign language)

I feel I'm a part of something very important

to take their capital off them, off of evil men.

Yeah, I feel something, something.

And now it was time to return home.

And my plan was head back with the intelligence

that I'd gathered and I'd be allowed to come back home

to the United States.

So I flew to Central America

and I went to the American embassy there.

And I told them about the deal

that Laura, the blonde lady offered me

and the intelligence I'd been sending to Angel Man.

Angel Man was supposed to be helping Michael

transfer material that he had collected from ISIS

to the United States government,

so the United States government could look at that and say,

"We're so thankful, Michael, you helped us fight ISIS.

We're going to welcome you with open arms."

I went to the consulate and said, "You know,

I'd like to come home."

They gave me like another debriefing.

And they said, "Do you have any more in intelligence?"

I said, "Yeah."

I said, "But you need to let me come home.

Let me give it you there."

And they say, "Well, you know,

we need to talk to your intelligence officer."

I said, "Okay."

And then ever since then, every time I call them,

they say, "We're working on it, we're working on it."

Angel Man was going to be his savior.

And now Angel Man has vanished into thin air.

(dramatic music)

How does this make you feel?

It makes me feel a little bit sad.

It makes me feel sad.

Why?

Because I'm not home.

You know, I'm not, I'm not,

I'm not where I wanna be.

I have been involved with Michael's campaign

to come home, and when I came back to the states,

I decided to engage the State Department.

You know, I had to write the sworn statement

of how I knew him and what my role was in Syria

and his role was, and I thought we were making some headway.

And then I never heard anything back.

And so I called and then, you know, this is nothing,

nothing, nothing.

I don't know who dropped the ball.

I know I did exactly what I was told to do.

And I know that I tried my best to do the right things.

And then I've spoke since then

to other intelligence officers.

And basically off the record, they said,

the person who made you the offer

didn't really have the, didn't have the right to do that.

(dramatic music)

Why would they do that, man?

We gave them everything.

We gave them everything.

They're something, aren't they?

These people who make these fucking decisions.

These pen pushers, you know, bureaucrats

who make these decisions about people's lives.

Yeah, it was very disheartening too,

because the Department of Defense has brought back folks

that have done way, and I mean way less

for the United States and the government.

This is not hard, which is so very frustrating.

The State Department people can literally say,

yep, that's Mike, yep, he lived here.

Yes, he did that.

And yes, he's here.

Put him on a plane and bring him home.

It's that simple.

We jumped through every hoop.

We applied.

They asked for more paperwork, we gave them.

They asked for one piece of paperwork, we gave them three.

It just is a very, very big,

it's a very hard pill to swallow

because we did everything that they wanted.

And it's just like, what more do you want me to do?

What more do you want me to give?

I think Michael has a ledger book in his head.

And in that ledger book is a debt,

a debt to the United States because it gave him this life

that he had dreamed of in Los Angeles and acting.

And the way that he was going to repay that debt

was to go fight an enemy of the United States.

And now he has tried to return to deliver that payment,

that final mortgage payment on that debt,

and the way he sees it,

the United States doesn't want to accept payment.

I'd just be very interested in knowing why.

(mournful music)

Anyway, it is what it is.

Thanks.

Now he has no home.

He has very little money.

His life has turned into a nightmare exile in Mexico.

British people that have returned from Syrian Kurdistan

to the UK have usually been charged

and certainly investigated

on various terrorism-related charges.

In at least one instance, there was a prison sentence.

And that's the kind of thing

that would probably happen to Michael,

should he return to the UK.

If I went back to England, I'd go to jail.

And I'd be charged with terrorism.

That's why I'm not going back.

I'm not being arrested for doing something honorable.

I'm not gonna have that, that's not right.

Michael's life is not the Hollywood dream anymore.

The country of his birth, he is afraid to return to.

He's a person really with no country.

(Nuri speaks in a foreign language)

You know, in many ways it's hard being this close to home

and not being able to get there.

But in other ways, I'm blessed

that everything I've been through and I'm still here.

I'm still alive.

Because many of our beautiful men and women

were lost during this conflict, like Reece,

and John,

and my female Captain Molech.

And of course my good friend, my commander, Heval Ciya.

Ciya was blown up by a suicide car.

That was a really difficult one

because I admired him so much.

(Michael sobs)

He was an amazing man.

The Kurds, they've suffered so much, man.

They've suffered.

The Americans pulled out.

All the American soldiers who was with us,

they didn't wanna pull out.

All of the American soldiers didn't wanna do that.

Because they knew what was gonna happen

when the Americans pulled out.

The Turks would come in and slaughter the Kurds,

and that's what they did.

I think where the Kurds felt really deserted by the west

is with the nature of Trump's withdrawal

in the autumn of 2019.

We defeated this group largely, defeated ISIS,

100% of the Caliphate, 100%.

There is no longer a need for a U.S. presence in Syria

because ISIS has been defeated.

The president's decision,

which was announced via a tweet is dangerous, premature,

and wholly inconsistent with the facts

on the ground in Syria and our own military's advice.

He didn't announce it even to his allies.

He didn't discuss it even inside Washington.

And it seems to do with the relationship with Turkey.

From the Turkish perspective, the YPG is affiliated

with the Turkish Kurds, who they regard as terrorists.

And it does look a little bit like the U.S. simply deferred

to Turkey's wishes on this.

ISIS is defeated, President Trump thought,

so why do we need to be there now?

We can leave.

And this pleases Erdogan and the Kurds were, I think,

as shocked as anybody else when it happened.

History will haunt us.

We are going to be complicit in the ethnic cleansing

that occurs as a result of this absolutely abhorrent action.

This is the anguish that only comes from loss.

The Kurdish people have already endured so much suffering,

and every day of Turkey's offensive brings new chaos.

I had major league problems with President Trump

abandoning the Kurds.

We shouldn't be abandoning our allies.

Here they are fighting on our behalf essentially,

without their own country,

doing some of this country's dirty work.

And part of being a patriot is recognizing those,

whether it's a country or a people,

the help that they've done,

or the help that they have given this country

to keep our soldiers from being shot and killed.

You don't leave your friends.

And I think that's something that Michael personifies.

The Kurds have a saying

that we have no friends but the mountains.

Well, they have a friend in me.

The Kurds are fighting for dignity and honor,

and a place to call home.

And to deny that I personally think

that's a sin against humanity.

Everybody deserves a home.

Every human being that's ever been born

deserves to have a place that he or she can call home.

And my documents might not say I'm an American,

but I feel like one.

The word heval means friend or comrade.

And the Kurds are my friends.

The men and women of YPG and the YPJ are my friends.

I hope sometime soon that I get to go home

and I hope that the world remembers what we did in Syria.

And will let the Kurds have a home too.

(inspiring music)

(dramatic music)

(inspiring music)

(dramatic music)