What are the odds Obama and Kerry are upset about this?

Arbil (Iraq) (AFP) – After fighting with rebels in Libya and embracing the revolt in Syria, Matthew VanDyke has rolled up in northern Iraq, but the celebrity American revolutionary-cum-filmmaker has traded his fatigues for a three-piece suit.

VanDyke, who rose to fame as a foreign fighter backing Libyan rebels against Moamer Kadhafi, has just finished leading his new military contracting firm through its first assignment — training Christian volunteers to take on jihadists.

Funded by Christian groups from abroad, mainly from the United States, the Nineveh Plains Protection Unit (NPU) aims to bring a local Christian militia to bear against the Islamic State group that has seized swathes of Iraq and Syria.

VanDyke is one of the best-known — and least camera-shy — figures in an expanding and complex constellation of foreign fighters, organisations and donors getting involved in a private war against the jihadists. […]

The Nineveh in the NPU’s name refers to a northern region which Iraq’s Assyrian Christians and other religious minorities consider their ancestral home.

It claims to have raised more than $250,000 for the NPU — which has not yet seen combat — since December through an initiative dubbed “Restore Nineveh Now”.

More than 80 percent of the donations come from the United States, the group’s chairman, David Lazar, told AFP by telephone from the United States.

He says telethons on the Assyrian National Broadcasting satellite channel generated donations “as high as $50,000 from one person”.