A Canadian volunteer who has spent the past six months fighting ISIS alongside Kurdish forces has been arrested in northern Iraq, Canadian officials confirmed Monday.
Michael Kennedy, 32, a former Canadian soldier, was on his way back to Canada, trying to make it home to Newfoundland for Christmas, when he was taken into custody by Iraqi Kurdish authorities, his mother Kay Gibbons Kennedy told The National Post.
“All I know is he’s been arrested and he’s in Erbil,” she said from Saint Vincent’s, in southwestern Newfoundland.
A Kurdish friend of her son’s told her that “nobody knows the reasons” for the arrest, she added.
Canadian officials provide consular assistance
Officials at Global Affairs Canada said they were aware of the case of a Canadian citizen currently detained in Iraq.
“Canadian officials are providing consular assistance to the individual and are in contact with local authorities,” Kristine Racicot, Global Affairs spokesperson, told RCI in email.
Due to privacy considerations, officials refused disclose any further information.
“Global Affairs Canada advises against all non-essential travel to Iraq, including the provinces under the control of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Dohuk, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, as the security situation could deteriorate quickly,” Racicot wrote. “All Canadians who travel to Syria and Iraq must do so at their own personal risk. Due to the unpredictable security situation, providing consular assistance in all parts of Iraq and Syria is severely limited.”
Gibbons Kennedy could not be reached for comment today but on Sunday she told The National Post’s Stewart Bell that the ordeal has been hard on her, especially since she lost another son, Pte. Kevin Kennedy of the 2nd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, to a roadside bomb in Afghanistan on April 8, 2007.
Fighting ISIS in Syria and Iraq
Michael Kennedy is a 13-year veteran of the Canadian Forces. Three months after leaving the military in March, he made his way to northern Syria.
“He decided to go over there in June. He decided to go fight ISIS after reading about what those Kurdish people were going through,” his Gibbons Kennedy told The National Post. “Michael decided to do this as sort of a humanitarian thing.”
Initially Kennedy fought alongside the YPG militia in northern Syria. About a month ago, he crossed into Iraq and has been fighting around Shingal, where ISIS conducted a genocidal campaign of ethnic cleansing against the minority Yazidi community.
Rivalry among Kurdish militia
There have been several reported cases of the Iraqi Kurdish forces of Massoud Barzani, the leader of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in northern Iraq arresting Western volunteer fighters, especially those who fought alongside the rival Kurdish YPG militias in Syria.
The Syrian Kurdish militias of YPG are closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), Barzani’s long-time rivals. The PKK has set up bases in the mountains of northern Iraq from which it has waged a decades-long campaign for an independent Kurdish homeland in southeastern Turkey and northern Iraq.
Barzani accuses the PKK, which Canada considers a terrorist organization, and its Syrian cousins in YPG of undermining his efforts to create an internationally recognized Kurdish entity in northern Iraq by constantly provoking Turkey into military operations in Kurdish-populated areas of Turkey and Iraq.
The PKK and YPG in turn accuse Barzani of collaborating with the Turkish military and security forces and betraying the larger goal of creating a unified Kurdish homeland, spanning parts of northern Iraq, Syria and southeastern Turkey.
The feud between Barzani’s forces and the YPG means that the volunteers who want to fight ISIS in Syria have to be smuggled into the country covertly, but face detention when they return to Iraq.
In February, another Canadian volunteer, Robert Somerville, was detained by Australian immigration authorities in Queensland because he had recently travelled to Syria to fight ISIS militants alongside Kurdish forces.
In early November 2015, Canadian volunteer John Gallagher was killed in northeastern Syria when an ISIS fighter detonated an explosive belt.
In late October 2015, Canadian volunteer Hanna Bohman posted on her Facebook that a Canadian volunteer was arrested in northern Iraq by Barzani’s forces along with five other Westerners as they tried to leave Syria.
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