American mother of three joins Kurdish militia fighting Islamic State jihadists

Samantha Johnston 

       The 25-year-old mother of three from Emerald Island had joined the US military but never served overseas. Instead, she travelled on her own initiative, posting on her Facebook pictures of herself bikinis from beaches in Japan.

 

 

Samantha Jay 7 hrs · Don't think this decision was easy for me.... To say I'm a selfish mother is your opinion but what are you doing to help this war against isis? She had barely returned to her North Carolina home, before she was packing again: this time to join a Kurdish militia fighting Isil jihadists in Iraq. Posting a Kurdish propaganda video on her online profile, with the comment 'who are the Kurds', she booked her plane ticket. “It was extremely hard. I cried on the way to the airport and almost decided not to go," Ms Johnston told the Daily Caller. "But if I did then I’d never forgive myself." Ms Johnston is a recent addition to a trickle of Western volunteers who have joined the ranks of the Kurdish militias, the Peshmerga and the YPG. Profile Samantha Jay - Heval Viyan with Samantha Jay Public Figure · 3,120 Likes · 8 May at 06:28 · Keep on Training.... 396 Likes · 23 Comments · 31 Shares Comment As many as 100 foreigners - many of them from Britain and the United States are said to have joined the fight in Iraq. They are an eclectic bunch: whilst some were soldiers in a national army, others are teachers, painters, and born again Christians with no battlefield experience. Posting almost daily updates, both on her private Facebook page and on a new public profile, Ms Johnston has provided an insight to the emotions and experiences of the eccentric foreign recruits. Thin, with long brown hair, and wide eyes – and a fan of selfies - Ms Johnston has become somewhat of an internet sensation, her posts being commented on hundreds of times. In one image, posted on May 8 she sits in the back of a pick up truck, wearing a Palestinian kuffiyah headscarf - used often as a symbol of resistance, whilst holding a gun. "Yeeeeah I stand out," she writes above the photo. "Sunscreen please? My Kurdish girls are so use to this sun but me... I'm a ghost." Others show her flashing a smile at the camera as she poses in full military gear under the caption 'keep on training'. According to US army military record, Ms Johnston served as a geospatial engineer from 2008-2011, but was never engaged in active combat. Most of the posts focus on the humanitarian fallout of the war in Iraq, which has seen hundreds of thousands of people displaced since Isil took control of swathes of the north of the country last summer. Ms Johnston joined the Kurdish troops, which include female fighters, after Isil overran Sinjar province in Iraq, home to the Yazidi minority groups. Massacring the men, Isil took thousands of women hostage, later trading them among themselves to used as sex slaves. Explaining her motives for volunteering Ms Johnston said in an interview: "These children here who are homeless, orphaned; mothers and sisters have been raped and sold, fathers who have been killed … They are suffering, and I knew that I couldn’t just sit and do nothing. I couldn’t look my children in the eyes and say, I didn’t do anything to help.” The American is a divorced mother of a five-year-old child, and three-year-old twins. “I already want to fly back to my babies but I have a purpose and a goal," she said in an interview. One image shows Ms Johnston in a khaki bulletproof jacket standing amid a group of local children who hug packs of food aid she says she has distributed. The person sharing the image commented: “Kicking some ass one terrorist at a time over in Kurdistan. Making sure the world is a better place for everyone.”   Messages promoting her cause are intermingled with posts showing Ms Johnston's nostalgia for her family. Under a picture of a chunky necklace, emblazoned with the word 'Mom', she writes 'always in my heart'.