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Sons of Liberty International - Fighting ISIS and Supporting the Christian Community of Iraq
Image source: Sons of Liberty International

Sons of Liberty International - Fighting ISIS and Supporting the Christian Community of Iraq

Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) recruits U.S. military veterans to provide free training, advising, and supplies to help local forces combat terrorists and insurgents. We are currently training Iraqi Christian forces to fight against ISIS.

By Matthew VanDyke

Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) is the first security contracting firm run as a non-profit. We recruit U.S. military veterans to provide free training, advising and supplies to help local forces combat terrorists and insurgents around the world. SOLI is changing the course of history by providing assistance to communities that otherwise would never be able to acquire the skills and resources they need for their own defense.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

We work with communities, like the Christians of northern Iraq, that have been left defenseless and have not received adequate defense funding from government or international sources. SOLI steps in where government and the international community have failed.

I founded SOLI in 2014 after the beheadings of two of my friends, American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. Their deaths had a profound impact on me, inspiring the creation of an organization that would have a real, significant impact in the fight against ISIS and in other conflicts around the world.

My expertise as an international security analyst, years of living and working in North Africa and the Middle East, experiences in combat and as a POW in Libya, and my contacts in the U.S. military veteran community combined to quickly make SOLI a highly effective and efficient organization.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

Giving You the Opportunity to Have a Real Impact in the Fight Against ISIS

Since 2014, SOLI has been working with the Assyrian Christians of northern Iraq. SOLI has worked with two Assyrian Christian forces in the Nineveh Plain region, preparing them to effectively fight ISIS and provide lasting security to Iraq’s Christian community.

SOLI is unique, as it is funded entirely by financial contributions from the public, not by tax dollars or by charging fees for our services. Those who believe in our organization and wish to support us or a specific mission we are undertaking can simply go to our website at www.sonsoflibertyinternational.com and make a contribution online or by check.

People in more than twenty countries have helped fund our efforts, but the majority of our support comes from Americans who have seen that our approach to the fight against ISIS and other threats is far more effective than the government’s repeated failures in the region, and who want to support the efforts of U.S. military veterans who are volunteering their time and risking their lives to ensure that local communities can fight these wars for themselves and create real, sustainable solutions for the security problems in their countries.

Our Record of Success

In December 2014, we began training our first force, the Nineveh Plain Protection Units (NPU), an Assyrian Christian force based in northern Iraq. Assyrians are the indigenous people of Iraq, who have been in their ancestral homeland of the Nineveh Plain region of Iraq since before the arrival of either Arabs or Kurds, and who converted en masse to Christianity within the first few centuries of the faith. Assyrians speak a modern version of Aramaic, the same language spoken in the time of Jesus.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

We trained the entire NPU force of 330 men in 2015, and by the end of that year we provided more than half the funding for the construction of their military base in northern Iraq. This is the first Christian military base in Iraq. SOLI was able to provide this funding in large part due to the contributions made in 2015 by Glenn Beck’s generous audience.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

In 2016, we began working with an additional Assyrian Christian force, the Nineveh Plain Forces (NPF), which is aligned with the Peshmerga of Kurdistan. We are currently training, advising, and providing some supplies to them in an abandoned Christian town near the front line, within walking distance of ISIS positions. In April, the NPF completed our basic training and their leadership graduated from a tactical leadership course taught by a retired U.S. Army Special Forces Lt. Colonel recruited by SOLI.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

If SOLI were not operating in northern Iraq, there would not be properly trained and combat-ready Assyrian Christian forces in the fight against ISIS. Our mission in Iraq is giving Iraqi Christians the skills and ability to participate in the liberation of their lands from ISIS and to ensure that what happened to them when ISIS first attacked in 2014 – killing, rapes, and kidnapping – won’t happen again.

Through their efforts and with our support, Assyrians will be able to remain in their ancestral homeland and Christianity will not perish from a country where it has existed for nearly two thousand years. Every one of our volunteers and financial supporters has been and continues to be a part of this remarkable success, changing the fate of an entire people and the Christian faith in Iraq for the better.

Current Mission: A Report from Iraq

Our current mission working with Iraqi Assyrian Christians continues and is expanding. As I write this, sitting in an abandoned Christian home in an abandoned Christian town, I am within walking distance of ISIS. I can see the remnants of the lives of the thousands forced to flee, the family photos, the dishes, the crosses hung on the walls. And every so often, I can hear or feel the impact of mortar fire coming from ISIS.

[sharequote align="center"]"As I write this, sitting in an abandoned Christian home... I am within walking distance of ISIS."[/sharequote]

SOLI is training the Nineveh Plain Forces (NPF) near the front line in Teleskof, a town that was abandoned after ISIS swept through in the summer of 2014 and is now controlled by the Kurdish Peshmerga forces and the Assyrian Christian forces.

We plan to continue our training and advising of the NPF throughout the year, to make them among the best trained forces in Iraq by the time they are called to the front line to fight ISIS.

As our current mission in Iraq continues, we will provide periodic updates and information from the ground to the readers of TheBlaze. We’ll be posting commentary, photos, and video of our work, to give you an inside look at the fight against ISIS and to show how the generous support we receive is producing real results and changing the course of history.

Image source: Sons of Liberty International

SOLI's efforts to help Iraqi Christians in the fight against ISIS rely on support from readers like you. Visit www.sonsoflibertyinternational.com to learn how to help.

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