Denis Cuspert, aka Deso Dogg, is a German who joined the Islamic State. He's become a household name for many. However, in this war – in which Germany has been directly supplying weapons to the Peschmerga forces since the attacks on Paris and is more than indirectly involved with Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and other Gulf states – hardly anyone is talking about the German civilians in northern Syria that are fighting terror militias. While the German government sends its Tornado jets to Syria without a mandate under international law, we discovered German civilians, as well as other international volunteers fighting with and assisting Kurdish commandos. With AK-47s in hand, they are trying to halt the advance of the Islamic State and set up their own in its place. They’re trying to promote a societal model in which there’s no death penalty, men and women have equal right, freedom of religion exists. The far-left scene in Germany sees this as the most important leftist political project in the world and has therefore pledged its support. VICE journalist, Sebastian Weiss, met up with a German ex-soldier and former Foreign Legionnaire, a 19-year-old Canadian fighter, a mother of four from Poland, an ICOR brigade member, German social workers and a 25-year-old from Saarbrücken, who are deployed under the command of the People’s Protection Units, directly on the front and only 50 kilometers from the IS stronghold, Raqqah. Click here to subscribe to VICE: http://bit.ly/Subscribe-to-VICE Check out our full video catalog: http://bit.ly/VICE-Videos Videos, daily editorial and more: http://vice.com More videos from the VICE network: https://www.fb.com/vicevideo Like VICE on Facebook: http://fb.com/vice Follow VICE on Twitter: http://twitter.com/vice Read our Tumblr: http://vicemag.tumblr.com Follow us on Instagram: http://instagram.com/vice Check out our Pinterest: https://pinterest.com/vicemag