Washington : Months before his arrest by the National Investigation Agency in Kolkata for allegedly training ethnic militias in Myanmar, Matthew Aaron VanDyke was urging an associate to visit that country. The Kachin and Chin peoples, VanDyke said in a text message, seemed “really serious about Christianity” and fighting the “mostly Buddhist military junta”. Pastor Dr William Devlin, an associate who kept in touch with the self-styled American freedom fighter, told HT he knew VanDyke was in Myanmar and “wasn’t surprised” by news of his arrest.. Indian agencies are now focused on identifying those who may have assisted the American citizen, Mathew Aaron VanDyke, and the Ukrainian nationals (ANI video grab). “I knew he was there (Myanmar). I wasn’t totally sure what he was doing. He just happened to mention he was in Myanmar training people,” added Devlin who has known VanDyke for a decade and visited Ukraine with him.. VanDyke and his Sons of Liberty International (SOLI) have spent much of the last decade deployed in warzones, training Assyrian Christian communities in Iraq to resist ISIS, and working with Ukrainian civil defence units grappling with Russia’s invasion of their country. Through that time, VanDyke has fashioned a public image that is part humanitarian, part crusading revolutionary.. HT spoke with VanDyke’s associates such as Pastor Devlin and scholars who have studied SOLI to better understand the organisation and the man behind it.. After graduating from Georgetown University, a training ground for America’s foreign policy and intelligence elite, VanDyke spent years travelling through West Asia and North Africa as a documentary filmmaker, a vocation that gave him easy access to countries in the region. That changed in 2011 when the then 31-year-old was swept up as popular protests and mass uprisings against autocratic rule swept across West Asia in what became known as the Arab Spring. With no military experience, VanDyke signed up to join Libyan armed rebel groups fighting to bring down strongman Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled the country for over 40 years.. “My ideological belief in freedom and democracy, formed by years in the region, combined with my strong friendships in Libya compelled me to take up arms as a freedom fighter. I would not have gone if it weren’t for my friends,” VanDyke wrote in 2012 about his reasons for joining.. However, shortly after signing up as a rebel fighter, VanDyke was captured by Libyan government forces and spent close to six months as a prisoner of war before eventually escaping Abu Salim prison in August 2011. His time in prison, VanDyke later said, also strengthened his Christian faith. A few months later, Gaddafi fell from power and VanDyke boarded a flight back to the United States.. But VanDyke’s capture and subsequent escape in Libya gave him something deeply valuable: a public profile. This was enhanced further by “Point and Shoot”, an award-winning do
