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 documentary released in 2014 that tells the story of Libya and the tumultuous months that led to the fall of a regime through the eyes of VanDyke.

Soon enough, VanDyke became a familiar face on television news, invited as an expert on international security and conflicts in West Asia at a time when America had entered a new struggle in the region to contain the rise of ISIS. In 2014, VanDyke announced he was abandoning his career as a filmmaker to raise a “Christian army” in Iraq that would push back against ISIS, which was making stunning military gains in Iraq and Syria at the time. That was the beginning of SOLI, which recruited former US military personnel to train Assyrian Christian communities to resist the ISIS onslaught. Yet SOLI takes pains to stress that it isn’t a mercenary group.

“Groups like SOLI are unusual organisations that sit somewhere between classic humanitarian NGOs and private military companies. They present themselves as non-profit “combat charities”; they raise money from donors, then use it to provide military training and advice to local forces they see as victims of aggression (for example, Assyrian Christian militias facing ISIS in Iraq), rather than working for paying state clients,” says Pavol Kosnac, a researcher at the Slovak Academy of Sciences who studied SOLI and interviewed VanDyke in Iraq.

Unlike major private military contractors, SOLI has been registered as a tax-exempt, non-profit organisation since January 2015. According to returns filed by SOLI with the US Internal Revenue Service, the group states that it receives all of its income through contributions and grants.

In Iraq, SOLI trained over 300 personnel for the Nineveh Protection Unit (NPU), a small local militia composed of Assyrian Christians, who were recruited to resist ISIS at the height of its power in 2014. According to Kosnac, VanDyke and SOLI provided training equipment, protection gear, body armour, walkie-talkies and other military assistance to the NPU and the Ninveh Protection Force (NPF), another militia.

However, SOLI stirred up significant controversy during its time in Iraq.

The group never clarified whether it had received relevant permissions from the US State Department to train foreign militia groups, which it was legally required to do. VanDyke told US media outlet Mother Jones that the State Department approved of his activities in Iraq, a statement that was subsequently contradicted by US diplomats in Iraq. A number of the former US military trainers recruited by VanDyke quit amid worries that they were operating in Iraq illegally.

The State Department did not respond to a query from HT on whether SOLI had received permission to train foreign military groups.

Despite these controversies, VanDyke and SOLI have continued to operate. VanDyke’s following has only continued to grow, with his public social media profiles boasting nearly 1 million followers across platforms. Meanwhile, SOLI claims it has been active in Venezuela in 2018, raising funds to oust the government of President Nicolas Maduro. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, VanDyke and SOLI deployed to Ukraine with a team of 10-12 trainers and initially provided military training to civil defence forces, including the use of “non-lethal equipment”, according to the group’s website. Now, SOLI says it is helping Ukrainian defence forces develop prototypes for battlefield technology to aid in their fight against Russia.

Pastor Devlin says the SOLI founder who is now in Indian custody is motivated by a desire to fight for the underdog.

“His motivation is always to serve the underdog as he’s done in Libya, Iraq, Kurdistan and as he was doing in Myanmar. He wanted to work alongside those fighting for freedom against oppressive draconian governments.”

But it’s also clear that VanDyke, and those funding SOLI, are motivated by a desire to support Christian minority populations globally.

“A lot of our supporters are people who care about Christian persecution and what’s happening to people of their faith,” VanDyke said in a 2016 documentary.

Myanmar, Devlin adds, has attracted increased attention from Christian advocacy groups in the United States as the country’s brutal civil war continues to rage. The US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) has alleged that Myanmar’s military authorities have destroyed churches, exacted forced labour from Christians and occupied areas in the Chin and Kachin states, where many of Myanmar’s Christians live.

“The issue of Myanmar and the persecuted Christian minority there is always a focus for all of us volunteers, who, at times, are not only made up of non-governmental organizations and civil society organizations. We also have US government people and State Department people on the phone,” says Devlin.

Despite SOLI’s varied operations globally, it’s unclear whether the organisation has the resources it needs. Documents filed by SOLI with the US Internal Revenue Service show that the group has struggled with inconsistent fundraising. For example, while the group received roughly $250,000 from donors in 2017 and 2022 this number fell to roughly $62,000 in 2024, the most recent year for which data is available. Further, the group’s expenses have frequently outstripped donor contributions.

In 2024, SOLI’s expenses stood over $104,000 which left the organisation with a shortfall of over $40,000. The same was true in 2023, when expenses exceeded donor contributions by roughly $118,000. VanDyke frequently said he had very little money, Devlin recalls.

Little can also be said for certain about VanDyke’s relationship with the US government. His arrest in Kolkata last week kicked off some speculation that Indian authorities were concerned about the possibility of espionage in India’s Northeast and Myanmar. Kosnac says he isn’t aware of SOLI’s ties to the US government.

“In Iraq, I did not find evidence that SOLI was an arm of the US government or military. They operated in a grey zone: US authorities were aware of them, but there was no sign of official sponsorship or command.

Their resources or access also did not indicate such a support — they often struggled in the areas one imagined a sanctioned US operation wouldn’t, such as getting access to local Kurdish authorities, getting material through Erbil airport, funding, etc. That said, many things can change in 10 years, especially if US foreign policy has seen serious changes in the last few years,” Kosnac told HT.

Yet, VanDyke did claim that he was in contact with US diplomats. In a 2016 documentary, VanDyke is filmed arriving in Washington DC for the ostensible purpose of meeting diplomats in the US State Department.

Kosnac’s study of SOLI operations in Iraq also found that SOLI members accompanied Assyrian delegations to meetings with State Department officials on several occasions.

In response to HT’s queries about VanDyke’s arrest, a State Department spokesperson said Washington is aware of the situation but wouldn’t comment further due to privacy concerns.

In the absence of hard facts, concerns, controversy and questions about VanDyke and SOLI’s activities in Myanmar have only grown since.