Decisive Consequences
"My husband came here first in 2012. He tried to convince me for two years to come, but I said, no, no, I don't want to."
"Then finally he said you have to come, but I was studying."
"It was an easy life [in Raqqa, Syria, the capital of the Islamic State caliphate]. It was a city. It was stable."
"You're there and you're eating Pringles and Twix bars. You're just there. You don't feel like you're in a war."
Dura Ahmed, 28, mother of two, al-Hol refugee camp, Syria
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| Displaced peopleat the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria on Feb. 6, 2019. |
Syrian Democratic Forces with the support of the United States' military advisers still remaining in Syria had launched a final assault to eliminate ISIL fighters in the village of Baghouz, close by the border with Iraq. Where ISIL terrorists are not surrendering their dream of conquest, despite fighting from their last geographic foothold in eastern Syria. Their fighters are responding with suicide car bombs, at which they excel, with snipers posted at key positions, and booby traps -- all of which have slowed the Kurdish advances in their dangerous cleaning-up operations.
It is unknown how many ISIL fighters remain in the narrow bit of territory now under attack; most estimates are in the hundreds, and mostly comprised of foreign fighters. U.S. military put the numbers in terms of thousands and tens of thousands, just not at the point of conflict, but scattered throughout Iraq and Syria awaiting the opportunity to return but in the meantime replenishing their numbers with still-eager recruits to train and assembling arms for future re-conquest and the atrocities which accompany them, their infamous hallmark.
The Kurdish operated camps where humanitarian conditions, given the numbers fleeing conflict and the situation of meagre resources alongside a cold season, give little comfort -- continue to fill up with civilians trucked away from the fighting and toward haven. Conditions are stressed, with 35 children having perished from cold or malnutrition. The camp has been renamed the "Camp of Death". The Canadian woman quoted above has made some disquieting statements to journalists writing about the sad situation. Statements to the effect that she had heard some 'rumours' of atrocities.
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As for the deadly persecution of minority Yazidis, and the rounding up of women and children by Islamic State confreres of theirs, well, Sharia does make it quite legal and in fact an imperative and booty of war to take slaves. “Briefly, just briefly I heard about some executions taking place. When I came here I heard [of the Islamic State atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority]. I haven’t seen one but…. Well, having slaves is part of Sharia [Islamic law]. I believe in Sharia, wherever Sharia is. We must follow whoever is implementing the way, the law."
It tears at the heartstrings in the West to hear of women and children in such parlous straits. It somehow becomes the responsibility of Western democracies to look after their interests. The Kurds, fighting a battle to dislodge absolute human evil, are left to pick up the pieces of humanity's trash. Kurds are making an effort to treat this human flotsam supporting Islamic State and Islamist principles of conquest and death deliverance, mass rape and flows of refugees, to the best of their abilities. They await with great patience moves on the part of foreign governments to reclaim their terrorist citizens.
Somehow European and North American countries and other Western democracies seem none too eager to repatriate their citizens and their offspring through Islamic State connubial bliss. Where life was good in Raqqa when you were part of ISIL, and perhaps less than ideal when you were prisoners of ISIL in Raqqa, unfortunate enough to have lived there before it was selected as the ideal capital for the new world order of the caliphate. Those ISIL wives bereft of their husbands, left with their children gave no thought of Yazidis desperately fleeing death and rape to take their children to Mount Sinjar where they faced deadly cold of winter and starvation.
The deaths, mass rapes, atrocities, torture and refugees that Islamic State was responsible for during its years of conquest and threat appear not to weigh at all on the consciences and absent compassion of those who monstrously strode the area in violent militaristic jubilation in the business of death-delivery, celebrating jihad and the scriptural commands to infect the world order with terror until submission to Islam resulted. Nothing quite concentrates the mind like one's own suddenly desperate situation of survival, however.
Al Hol refugee camp and the nearby Roj camp hold an estimated 3,100 foreign ISIL women and children separated from husbands and other foreign men detained in prisons in northern Syria. Those women and children are short 2,000 tents leaving those without sleeping in an area exposed to rain and cold. There are not enough toilet facilities to accommodate them all. Women in black abayas only their eyes visible clutch their children, inadequately dressed for the weather. Echoes of Mount Sinjar where many of those refugees years later, still languish, victims of Islamic State.
Officials with the Syrian Defence Forces note that while some women are no longer interested in the ISIL ideology others continue their practise of fundamentalism in the camps as they grow in size become increasingly lawless. "We thought we could put them [the foreigners] together with the Syrians and Iraqis and they would adapt. But some of them are very extreme and called them infidels and burned their tents", Mohammed Ibrahim, head of camp relations, explained.
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| A woman and children who fled fighting between Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and Islamic State jihadists in the frontline Syrian village of Baghuz, await to be screened and registered by the SDF. |
Labels: Camps, Conflict, Islamic State, Kurds, Refugees, Syria, Syrian Defence Forces
posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 13, 2019
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