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Islamic State Jihadi Wives

"You’re the first infidel I’ve seen in four years."
"The brothers are lions. They will fight on."
"The Islamic State remains. We are weak now but we will come back again."
Umm Hamza, 21, ISIL wife, from Baghuz, Syria former ISIL stronghold

"We stayed in the Islamic State because we want heaven. And we buy heaven with our souls and our children’s souls."
"God didn’t create us for this life, he created us for the next life."
:Our tents were like palaces because they were in the Islamic State."
"Everyone here [all the evacuated women and children] is from the Islamic State. Every one of us. Anyone who says they are not is a liar."
Umm Mohammed, 37, from town of al-Bukamal, Syria

US-backed fighters trucked out civilians from the last speck of the Islamic State group’s dying “caliphate” in Syria on February 22, eager to press on with the battle to crush the jihadists. More than four years after IS overran large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, and declared a “caliphate”, they have lost all of it but a tiny patch in the village of Baghuz near the Iraqi border. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

“We are fighting a terror group. Either they surrender or they have to fight and die."
Adnan Afrin, an SDF commander

While the Kurdish-led militias of the Syrian Defence Forces were busy battling the remainder of the Islamic State terrorists in their last hold-outs, the evacuation of ISIL families, their wives and their children took centre stage as the women were searched for possession of explosives and documentation of the civilians proceeded, along with transferring them from the temporary holding centre to the refugee camps that had been set aside for the ISIS women and children.

Some of the women, fearful and frantic, repeated time and again that they were innocent bystanders, had nothing to do with Islamic State, were merely in the wrong place at the wrong time. Umm Mohammed (mother of Mohammed) viewed them with contempt and advised the Kurdish command that they were all with Islamic State but hadn't the pride and the courage to defy their fears. Fears she had none herself, the mother of seven children, her two oldest boys fighters, both now dead.

Her remaining five children surrounded her, faces immobilized by dread of the unknown, large eyes reflecting uncertainty and fear. They were dirt-encrusted and unhappy children. Their mother was nothing but proud of the sacrifice of her two oldest sons who died as martyrs for the Islamic State. She was defiant and unafraid to speak to her Kurdish interlocutors, much less members of the foreign press, emphasizing the perfection of Islam and jihad, inseparable, implacable, triumphant.

The latest exodus of civilians from the embattled town of Baghuz numbered around a thousand people, women and children, bedraggled and hauling whatever they could of their former lives with them, through the muck of the fields, ordering their children to remain nearby. The situation has reached the point that the SDF estimates around 5,000 civilians and 1,500 fighters yet remain in Baghuz, a larger number than expected but that the black banner of the jihadists commanded.

Most of the women exhibited the same level of fanaticism as the men they left behind. None expressed a vestige of remorse for the unspeakable atrocities committed in the name of Islam and clearly they all felt entitled to respect for their beliefs. Their current situation as prisoners of inferior beings was merely temporary until such time as their Islamic State husbands, brothers, fathers and sons reversed the situation with the fervour and favour of Allah.

Eventually order prevailed, the searches were completed, the questioning done with, the documents put in order and the trucks to carry the women and children to the camps that would house them until such time as their disposition would be more clear, were pulling up, awaiting their boarding. The Kurdish fighters patiently took it all in stride as they worked for hours to accomplish the task. While they waited, one of the woman said the ISIL fighters had informed them the UN would be there to greet them once they left Baghuz.

What a disappointment, not to be recognized by the United Nations as heroines, to be feted and congratulated, housed in luxury to await reunion with their heroic husbands. Only Kurdish fighters, their enemies, and inquisitive Western reporters with their endless questions awaited their presence. However, she hadn't been misled to entice her to leave the war zone: "There is no betrayal in the Islamic State", she averred with placid certainty.

Women and children who fled the Islamic State (IS) group’s last embattled holdout of Baghuz wait to evacuate the area in Syria’s northern Deir Ezzor province, on February 22, 2019. Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP

Labels: Children, Islamic State, Kurds, Syria, Syrian Defence Forces, Women

posted by Pieface @ Wednesday, February 27, 2019