The Islamic State Caliphate at Al Hol Camp, Kurdistan
"According to the investigation, Ms.Chouay allegedly travelled to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State terrorist group."
"In Syria, it is alleged she participated in terrorist activities in the name of the Islamic State."
"We have taken extensive measures to ensure they [the woman's two children] receive the proper support; at this point they are in the care of the CIUSSS (regional health board) and also the family has been solicited to take part in the response to ensure they get the best support possible."
RCMP Inspector David Beaudoin
On September 8th, two SDF members were killed in engagements with ISIS fighters in the camp during the operation.
"ISIS preys on the weak and disenfranchised and is trying to exploit
the conditions in the camp to help regenerate its forces," said General
Michael "Erik" Kurilla, commander of U.S. Central Command. “The
situation in al-Hol is an international crisis that requires an
international solution, and the only permanent solution is the
repatriation, rehabilitation, and reintegration of camp residents."
A general view of al-Hol displacement camp in Hasakah governorate, Syria, April 2, 2019.
The arrest, explained Inspector Beaudoin, resulted from an investigation by the force's integrated National Security Enforcement Team, ongoing since November of 2014. In November 2017 Chouay was identified as a member of Islamic State by the Syrian Democratic Forces and taken into custody, installed in in the Al Hol prison camp set up to contain family members of Islamic State terrorists. The male terrorist members of Islamic State were also taken prisoner but installed in a separate prison camp.
Both camps became hotbeds of Islamic State fundamentalist agitation. In the women's camp a hierarchy of committed Islamist females gained control of the camp to enact the same kinds of strict Sharia law and adherence to the concept of an Islamist caliphate that had prevailed before the Islamic State group had been ousted from the large swaths of territory they occupied in Iraq and Syria that they named the Islamic State Caliphate. In the women's camp, any women not completely committed to Islamic State were murdered by the unofficial and lethal camp controllers.
It is entirely likely that Oumaima Chouay, now back in Canada and under arrest, was one of those ISIL enforcers, with blood on her hands. The fact that she is a mother of two young children, both born in Syria, possibly in Raqqa which had become the ISIL Caliphate headquarters, saw some kind of empathy in her direction from outside sources. Concern for the welfare of the children, their well-being in the squalid, dangerous camp.
An image obtained from the media office of the
Kurdish People's Protection Units in Syria (YPG) March 29, 2021 shows
YPG forces conducting a security operation the previous day at the
Kurdish-run al-Hol camp.
The camp was operated for all those years by members of the Syrian Democratic Forces comprised for the most part of Kurds the only Syrian fighters that committed themselves to the overthrow and detainment of Islamic State terrorists, and supported by the U.S. military. Kurdistan had neither the manpower nor the resources to continue holding the Roj camp prisoners. They repeatedly appealed to the outside world to repatriate their citizens, since the camp held European, North American and Australian nationals as well as those from Syria and Iraq.
The Government of Canada finally heeded the appeal and made arrangements to repatriate Chouay, 27, from Quebec, and another Canadian, from British Columbia, Kimberly Polman. Polman spoke of mistreatment by Islamic State, of her disappointment and fears. Charges have not been laid against Polman and she has been given bail. Not so for Chouay, who has been charged with leaving Canada to participate in the activity of a terrorist group, participation in the activity of a terrorist group, providing property or services for terrorism purposes, and conspiracy to participate in the activity of a terrorist group.
Children gather at the al-Hol camp, which houses families of ISIS members, in Syria's Hasakeh province in May 2021.Baderkhan Ahmad / AP file
Canada's federal police force thanked the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Kurdistan) for "its cooperation and recognizes its efforts in providing care for the detained individuals under an extremely difficult security situation and adverse circumstances".
“The security situation in the camp is alarming with the reported
killings of 40 adults and two children since the start of the year, 16
of them during March alone."
“With nearly 40,000 Syrian and foreign children living in Al-Hol
camp, UNICEF calls upon the authorities in charge of the camp to secure
the safety of children and all residents in the camp."
“This recent increase in violence in the camp highlights the urgent
need for longer term solutions for children in al-Hol. Syrian children
should be safely reintegrated into their local communities and foreign
children should be repatriated to their countries of origin in a safe
and dignified way."
"I stopped eating almost a week ago. My body just can’t take this
anymore…this place guarantees you lost your sanity, your dignity, your
humanity one way or another…It’s exhausting trying to protect myself all
day, all night. I can’t do it anymore."
Kimberly Polman, 49, Canadian Camp Al Hol internee, Syria
"She was hoping she could go home, she was given reason to believe that
that might be the case from someone high up in the camp, especially
because of the snap election."
"She’s really
devastated [that she can’t come home], she’s been sick for a while, she
has broken teeth, she has kidney infections…she’s distraught and says
she doesn’t want to live anymore….it’s the last thing she has control
over."
"I am all for justice, and the choice she made has consequences beyond
anything that she could have ever imagined. But we don’t
have our Canadian citizenship on merit…even the most hardened criminals
and murderers are granted the rights of a Canadian citizen….they are
still human beings, they are still Canadians."
"I hate ISIS and everything that did, they stole my sister. But I believe that everybody can be redeemed if you give
them a chance, and that they should face justice when they get back…but
that doesn’t mean that they should be left to die out there."
Polman's sister, name withheld
"For over two years, dozens of Canadian ISIS suspects and their family
members have been unlawfully detained in locked desert camps and prisons
in northeast Syria."
"Most are young children who never chose to live
under ISIS. It’s deeply troubling that these
detainees and their families in Canada would have to resort to taking
their government to court to end this paralysis…"
"Prime Minister Trudeau
has the power to bring these Canadians home. He just needs to find the
moral courage to do so."
Farida Deif, Canada Director, Human Rights Watch
Women and children related to fighters of the Islamic State group wait
to board buses and trucks, leaving the overcrowded a an overcrowded
al-Hol camp to return to their homes on June 3, 2019, in Hasakeh
province, Syria. THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Baderkhan Ahmad
Eleven
families with Canadian citizenship who have relatives being held at the
Al Hol camp for relatives of members of the Islamic State of Iraq and
the Levant have appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada to order the
Canadian government to retrieve their relatives from the squalid camp
housing women and children in a repatriation move setting aside their
involvement with the Islamist terrorist fundamentalists whose litany of
vicious deadly atrocities shocked the world, but evidently not the women
who travelled from Canada to Syria to join ISIS and become 'brides' of
ISIS.
The
families, in the interests of maintaining anonymity, will not have
their names and identities published. Using a covering name of "Bring Our Loved Ones Home",
they are pursuing a law suit against Canada's government for refusing
to act on their appeal. Either to repatriate the Syrian-Canadian men who
travelled to Syria for the express purpose of joining ISIS and are
incarcerated in the Al Roj prison maintained by the Syrian Democratic
Forces, a Kurdish fighting group that would prefer to have the fighters
and the women detainees taken off their hands altogether.
The
Kurdish fighting groups were the only effective offensive against the
Islamic State terrorists. They offered protection to Shiite Muslims whom
the Sunni ISIS threatened, to the Christian and Yazidi minorities whom
they killed and enslaved, giving them haven in Kurdistan while
simultaneously battling the encroaching ISIS 'caliphate'. When their
collaboration with U.S. forces eventually led to the overthrow of the
ISIS stronghold in Raqqa the Syrian Democratic Forces ended up rounding
up and incarcerating ISIS fighters and their wives and children, holding them in separate camps.
US-led air strikes helped Kurdish and Arab fighters capture the IS stronghold of Raqqa Reuters
The
group's application describes camp conditions as "horrific", with "a
lack of clean water malnutrition, non-existent hygiene measures, an
acute shortage of medical care and facilities, violence and abuse". The
detainees, they point out, have never been charged with any offences,
and no trial dates have been noted. The government of Syria had
repatriated their own citizens from the camps and trials are ongoing,
the fate of the fighters who had captured a third of Syria for their
caliphate will no doubt suffer a fate similar to that they imposed on
those they took prisoner and committed atrocities upon from beheading to
crucifixion and other imaginative methods of death-dealing.
The Canadian families, most of whom arrived in Canada as refugees
escaping persecution in their Muslim home countries, state in their
filing: "The Canadian government has the ability to bring the unlawful
detention to the end and secure the release of the detained Canadians".
Characterizing the incarceration of Islamic State avowed Islamists as
'unlawful' is a bit of a puzzler to begin with. Universality of
solutions to rogue mass slaughterers is generally to sequester them to
ensure the safety of others rather than permitting them to remain at
large to continue their violent depredations.
It's also a little
difficult to evoke compassion for the plight of such human rights
abusers whose actions shocked the world when propaganda videos were
released of ISIS members exulting in the beheading of helpless prisoners
whose crimes were that they were not fundamentalist Islamist butchers,
but vulnerable outsiders for whom ISIS crimes represented an
assault on civilized universal mores of human behaviour. That they now
suffer the indignities of mass incarceration under less than hygienic
conditions is sad, but no tragedy.
The tragedy is
that of the children in the camp. Theirs was a tragedy when they were
born to ISIS parents to begin with, and later to be raised and taught
the values of fundamentalist Islamist principles of conquest and jihad.
They were born abroad, not in Canada. The older children up to age 14
who were taken by their parents to Syria to be part of the brave new
world of the Islamist caliphate were raised in the miasmic atmosphere of
a brutalized social order, many of them exposed to and urged to take
part in atrocities.
Islamic State adherents don't
flinch at human butchery. They caused innumerable deaths, focusing on
minority groups within their widening grasp as their geographic holdings
increased and they created a mass of desperate refugees, anxious to
escape death. Their victims include men, women and children. Just as the
detainees by the Syrian Democratic Forces represent men, women and
children -- who preyed on other human beings. These are people who share
a deviant and fundamental lack of social conscience.
Calling now upon the conscience of decent people to come to their rescue.
Children hold water containers in al-Hol camp, Syria, on January 8, 2020. (Goran Tomasevic/Reuters)
"Abandoning citizens to indefinite, unlawful detention in filthy,
overcrowded and dangerous camps and prisons does not make Canada safer." "The lives of Canadians are on the line, and the time to
bring them home is now." Letta Tayler, senior researcher, Human Rights Watch
"[Canada will] support Canadians in difficulty overseas." "Syria
is an area where we do not have any diplomats or any Canadians on the
ground, and therefore we work through intermediaries to try to provide
consular assistance as best we can." "We have a responsibility as a government to ensure that Canadian citizens, particularly employees, are not put into danger, are not exposed to grave situations." Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
In this 2017 photo, Kurdish soldiers from anti-terrorism units,
background, stand in front of a suspected Islamic State member at a
security centre in Kobani, Syria. A new report by Human Rights Watch
urges the Canadian government to repatriate all citizens currently
detained in northeastern Syria because of suspected ties to ISIS. (Hussein Malla/Associated Press)
"The Conservatives have given the Liberals all the tools they need
to hold ISIS terrorists accountable and to protect Canadians." "We will continue to hold Justin Trudeau accountable and
insist that he come up with a real plan to bring the ISIS terrorists to
justice." Conservative MP Pierre Paul-Hus, the party's public safety critic
"Countries such as France have taken a prosecution approach.
Countries such as Denmark have taken a reintegration approach. The Dutch
have taken both a prosecution and reintegration approach. Canada has no strategy and no approach at all." "If
you bring them home, there will be a public perception that the
government is supporting people who … have possibly been engaged in very
serious criminal offences." "It's politically easier
and more expedient for the previous government and for this government
not to do much about it." Christian Leuprecht, international security expert, Queen's University, Royal Military College of Canada
A
fighter from the Syrian Democratic Forces stands guard in the
front-line village of Baghouz in the countryside of the eastern Syrian
Deir Ezzor province, on the border with Iraq, on Feb. 2, 2019. Baghouz
is where ISIS made its last stand. (Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images)
Kurdish fighters were admired and lauded for their fierce fighting opposition to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, recognized as the only fighting force with the discipline and determination to vanquish that Islamist medievalist atrocity-loving band of fundamentalist murderers. The Kurdish forces defended and protected minorities in Syria from ISIL persecution and savagery, creating a safe zone for fleeing Syrian Christians and Yezidis who were enslaved and slaughtered by ISIL.
Their 'reward' for courage and determination with the destruction of the Caliphate has been seen in the responsibility relegated to them as wardens of thousands of ISIL prisoners, with no financial support, much less practical-presence support of Western nations that had lauded the Kurdish role in vanquishing the noxiously-deadly aspirations of the ISIL leadership to conquer the forces of moderation in the Middle East, and then to spread their venomous murderous spirit of jihad throughout Europe and North America.
The Kurds have appealed for years to the countries of Europe and North America to relieve them of the onerous, costly, time-consumingly difficult task of guarding the world against escape-prone ISIL fundamentalist determined to regain their lost 'Caliphate' and return to terrorizing the world, to little avail. It is understandable why Western democracies whose Muslim citizens responded to the appeal of ISIL to join their jihad would not wish to have them return to plague their own countries. Yes some have responded and repatriated the demons of ISIL to hold them accountable for their crimes.
Of the roughly 300 children of French parents in Syria’s camps, only 18 have been repatriated.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
Canada is loathe to reclaim Muslim-Canadian ISIL members because the general Canadian public views the Muslim jihadists with the loathing they deserve. The government hesitates to repatriate them fearing the difficulties inherent in the justice system requiring evidence sufficiently useful in a court of law to successfully prosecute and convict the ISIL members of crimes against humanity that they committed but for which evidence in a far-off, war-struck zone makes it impossible to collect.
On the other hand, it is unknown the actual numbers of those who responded to the ISIL invitation to join their jihad. It is known that some ISIL members have long since returned to Canada and are, presumably, being monitored by Canadian intelligence. Of the thousands of ISIL prisoners in the Kurdish camps, 47 are identified as being of Canadian origin, among them women and children, and two particularly notorious ISIL male leaders of high jihadist influence.
Conditions in the camps are abysmal, and any living there critical of ISIL are threatened by roving enforcers prepared to mete out disciplinary punishment, including death. The plight of children living in unsanitary conditions, where food is scarce and so is medical attention, weighs heavy on the conscience of Western democracies. With the knowledge that the children have been exposed to the jihadist ideology, steeped deeply in the belief of conquest and slaughter justified by jihad. How, then, to rescue the minds of deeply traumatized children?
Women and children who fled ISIS-controlled territory in southern Syria at Al Hol camp last year. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times
"We teach them that Islam is a peaceful religion an that jihad is about building, not destroying." "It's natural for the children to want revenge for their parents' deaths." "They were taught to hate the Indonesian state because it is against the caliphate." Khairul Ghazali, terrorism renounced in favour of rehabilitation, Medan, Indonesia
"We spend all this time working with them, but if they go back to where they came from, radicalism can enter their hearts very quickly." "It makes me worried." Sri Musfiah, senior social worker, Indonesia
This picture taken on May 10, 2019 shows children, whose parents were
suicide bombers or involved in terror plots, in a mosque at a safe house
in Jakarta. AFP
Following the U.S. special forces raid on the Islamic State leader Baghdadi's compound in northern Syria just across the border from Turkey, before the successful, retreating U.S. forces took to their helicopters with the corpse of the terrorist leader to bury him at sea as they had done Osama bin Laden, they had with them eleven children plucked from the compound before it was destroyed. Their mothers had been discovered, dead, shot in the head, their suicide vests not detonated. Their father dead as well, they are orphans.
More orphans to add to the toll of the Islamic State stalwarts who have died over the years while faithfully carrying out the instructions of Islamic State to butcher and rape. And what to do with children whose parents have been committed Islamists who taught their offspring the sterling qualities of violent Islamist jihad, children who absorbed the ideals of terrorism believing it to be fulfilling the sacred instructions handed down to their parents and all self-respecting Muslims to obey the commands of Islam, beginning and ending with jihad?
There are some countries like Kazakhstan and Saudi Arabia that have developed deprogramming missions in the hope of being able to turn adults, much less children, away from their chosen path of violent extremism. Their record is a mixed one of partial success. In the instance of children whose loving parents whom they trusted and looked to for emotional support, how successful can it be to institute a learning program teaching children their parents' example was wrong, and those who fought them are intent on teaching them otherwise?
Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim majority nation, where many of its nationals saw fit to travel to Syria to join Islamic State, while many others remained right in Indonesia to do Islamic State work in the country itself, has seen a number of specialized 'schools', madrasas, open with a mission to deradicalize the children of militants. Like the little girl who at age 7 was bundled on a motorcycle with her mother and brother, her father and other brother on another motorcycle, both equipped with bombs the children were told were coconut rice wrapped in banana leaves.
Driving toward a police station in the Indonesian city of Surabaya where other faiths besides Islam are practised, the bombs were set off at the gate of the police station, killing the family, but no one else, while sparing the life of the little girl. Catapulted from the motorcycle the child emerged alive, unhurt, an orphan. She is now enrolled in a deradicalization program operated by the Indonesian Ministry of Social Affairs in Jakarta. Her schoolmates are other children similarly left orphans.
In Indonesia, the reality is that thousands of vulnerable children indoctrinated by their parents, now dead, but many more alive, call out for a solution. Khairul Ghazali, five years imprisoned for terrorism-related crimes renounced violence and now respectably operations an Islamic school in Medan, on Sumatra. He draws on experience as a former extremist to help him in his mission to deradicalize the children of terrorists. A mere one hundred children have thus far attended formal Indonesian deradicalization programs.
His own madrasa which receives significant government support for its work, is able to teach only 25 children at a time, up through middle school. Follow up by government is minimal. "The children are not tracked and monitored when they leave", noted Alto Labetubun, a terrorism analyst in Indonesia. Indonesian counterterrorism police had tangled with about half of Mr. Khairul's students' parents, killing them.
One day, some boys spoke of their worldview at Mr. Khairul's Medan madrasa, with all the boys in the class agreeing that Indonesia should be an Islamic state. They were asked what about the churches among the mosques in mixed-religion Medan? A 12-year-old boy raised his hands to mimic the shock of an explosion, and he said "Bomb".
"It hasn't been easy dealing with [the children] because they
believed in radicalism... and that bombing was a good thing."
"They were taught that jihad was essential to go to heaven and that
you must kill non-believers. It was very hard to change that mindset." Neneng Heryani, head, safe-house, Jakarta
An Indonesian family who escaped from the Islamic State group in
Raqqa gather inside their tent at a refugee camp in Ain Issa in
northeastern Syria, July 24, 2017.
"To me it doesn't actually seem like something that's super hard for us to do as a country. We only have 33 of them -- 18 of them are kids, there's only six men over there [held by the Kurdish Syrian Defence Forces]. So the number of prosecutions that would be involved in serious criminality would be minimal. And we're doing nothing." "I think we would have the ability to take a leadership role or at least to be at the table providing opportunities for solutions if we were to do the right thing. But we can't." Leah West, international security expert, lecturer, Carleton University Norman Paterson School of International Affairs
An estimated 40,000 to 50,000 foreign fighters are held in Syria by the government of Kurdistan and the government of Syria. Of that total a tiny fraction are Canadians. Far many more are European citizens. But neither Europe in general nor Canada in particular are taking action to repatriate their nationals who chose to travel abroad to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in their caliphate to become murderous jihadists. An estimated 60 Canadians have returned quietly of their own volition, being tracked by Canada's intelligence and policing agencies but no action taken against them.
The back story is that the horrendous atrocities committed by Islamic State took place in countries abroad, Syria and Iraq and evidence must be secured to prove in a court of law in Canada that returnees were involved in ISIL crimes against humanity before legal action can be undertaken. That they left Canada for the express purpose of joining ISIL, fighting alongside other terrorists for the greater glory of a conquering Islamist caliphate is deemed insufficient to find them guilty of such crimes.
Under the previous Conservative government legislation was brought into law to deprive anyone with dual citizenship of their Canadian citizenship if they were involved in terrorism or conflict threatening Canada.One of the first actions taken by the incoming Liberal government in 2015 was to piously state "A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian", reversing that legislation, restoring citizenship to among a few others, the leader of the Jihadi 18 group out of Toronto, who had conspired and trained to commit mass murder in Canada in 2006; among their targets the-then prime minister, military installations and crowded civilian areas, for maximum impact.
Four individuals who had returned to Canada have been convicted of offences related to terrorism once they returned to Canada voluntarily. An estimated 180 Canadian became foreign fighters when they had left the country for Syria, and while 60 have since returned, none of them were brought back under government auspices; they returned on their own with the self-assurance there would be no penalty accorded them; as citizens of Canada merely returning after a stay abroad.
"It's clear that the United States and Germany have been more aggressive in bringing returnees to prosecute them in domestic courts", noted Kyle Matthews, executive director of he Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies. There has been very little formal action on repatriation in Europe in general; most of those who have been repatriated are women and children. Germany plans to repatriate 100 ISIL-linked children. Kazakhstan committed to returning 500 of its nationals, mostly women and children, processing them for reintegration into society.
When France refused to repatriate eleven of its nationals, Iraq sentenced them to hang, following nominal trials. Sweden proposes to set up an international tribunal which eleven countries including France, the U.K. and Germany discussed, when a meeting took place in Stockholm in June. For the most part countries have limited their responsibility in relation to their citizens as terrorists. Both Britain and Australia revoke citizenships of foreign fighters.
It is a problem, to be sure. Leaving Canadian citizens to stew in the juice of their own choices does give a lot of satisfaction. On the other hand, it's an action that shuffles responsibility on to others who have to bear the cost and the effort to ensure that these vicious malefactors are kept imprisoned when they're dealing with the nationals of other countries. Canada, under the current Liberal government has in the near past returned nationals and then compensated them, as in the infamous instance of Omar Khadr the al-Qaeda recruit by apologizing for his ordeal captured by the U.S. military and compensating him for his agony of experience to the tune of $10 million in taxpayer-funded award.
"The government is aware of some Canadian citizens currently detained in Syria. There is no legal obligation to facilitate their return." "We will not expose our consular officials to undue risk in this dangerous part of the world". Statement, Public Safety Ministry, Ottawa
An Islamic State militant waves an ISIS flag in Raqqa, Syria. In
December, Ottawa estimated the number of Canadian extremists abroad at
about 190. (REUTERS)
"She would like to come back; she has asked for pardon from her family, her friends, her country." Mother of Emilie Konig, German convert to Islam, ISIL 'terrorist'
"A Kurdish state does not exist, and French citizens cannot be judged by the Kurds." "They [children born to ISIL women] did not ask to be born in Syria. Nor to be detained by the Kurds, and they cannot be held responsible for the choices of their parents." Marie Dose, lawyer for French female jihadist "[If] there are legal institutions capable of guaranteeing a fair trial
assuring their right to a defense [women arrested in Kurdish-held
Syria should be] judged there." "Whatever crime may have been committed -- even the most despicable
-- French citizens abroad must have a guaranteed right to a defense. We must have confirmation of that." French government spokesman Benjamin Griveaux
Now 33 years old, Emilie Konig originally resident in a small town in Brittany, decided to convert to Islam while a teen. She later married, became the mother of two small children. She never felt quite comfortable living in France since she took to wearing a black abaya and niqab veiling her face. Since France did not seem to value her presence, she felt more comfortable leaving her two small children to travel to Syria where she became a propagandist and recruiter for the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. There, she felt appreciated.
This woman is exceptional in that she became an important recruiter for ISIL, whereas other women who travelled from across Europe to Syria to join the ISIL caliphate were more content to be breeding mares for the Islamist fundamentalist movement. They too were important, raising ISIL "cubs" taught from childhood ISIL's values and indoctrinated into the militancy of its murderous ideology. Who can forget in the heights of its abysmal notoriety the photographs disseminated widely of children wielding firearms, shooting at prisoners, helping to decapitate prisoners?
This was the world-class purveyors of hatred and bloody gore that Emilie Konig exalted in her propaganda, urging Muslims to commit themselves to jihad, ISIL-style. In October when Raqqa, the erstwhile Syrian capital of Islamic State was finally taken from the barbarian Islamists, mostly through the courageous actions of the Kurdish militias, the women and children who were resident there were taken to prison camps in Syrian Kurdistan. Europe, needless to say wouldn't mind if the ground beneath Raqqa had swallowed these European jihadist females.
Many of them were indeed discovered underground in the many tunnels that Islamic State had built. It makes eminent good sense for captured felons, murderers and their enablers to stand trial in the very place where their crimes were committed. All too often compensation for murder is not Paradise but state punishment of execution. And since European countries writhe in an agony of discomfort at the very notion, they are faced with the dilemma of claiming their own to have them extradited to stand trial at home for crimes against humanity committed elsewhere.
This photo taken on October 20, 2017 shows fighters of the Syrian
Democratic Forces (SDF) walking down a street in Raqqa past destroyed
vehicles and heavily damaged buildings after a Kurdish-led force
expelled ISIL fighters from the northern Syrian city, formerly their
"capital". Bulent Kilic / AFP
An estimated 4,300 people left Europe to join the battle in Syria and Iraq, according to the International Center for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. This is not a hard-and-fast number since other agencies place that number even higher. Foreign fighters remain in Syria of whom an estimated 43 percent are women. French President Emmanual Macon stated that decisions on retrieving women and children to return from Iraq and Syria would be reached on a case-by-case judgment basis.
Mustafa Bali, speaking for the Syrian Kurdish Defense Forces stated that his leaders have urged "all countries, European or other, to extradite their women and children". Presumably that advice has been set aside in indecision; the countries involved uncertain whether they plan or wish to return their nationals to stand trial at home, where no crimes were committed by them. Kurdish journalist Arin Shekhmus on visiting three camps where Arab, Asian and European "war prisoners" were kept, said he had seen up to a100 women and children.
They should be returned to their home countries which include Russia, Kazakhstan and Indonesia, however: "The European governments still haven't reached out to extradite their citizens", he said. They don't want their wayward and blood-stained citizens to return necessarily, and presumably remain content to have them remain under the stewardship of the Kurds. Yet should the Kurds take the initiative to rid themselves of the camps' inmates and executive their due punishment, those same European countries would rise up in irate disgust to sanctimoniously slam the Kurds for 'taking matters into their own hands'.
Both the United Nations and the United States took the unusual step of distinguishing Emilie Konig in recognition of her vital role for Islamic State, of listing her as a terrorist, subject to sanctions. On her arrival in Syria at age 27 she started to post propaganda videos and to appeal to Muslims to recognize their jihadist duty to support the Islamic State caliphate. From all accounts her valuable services were duly appreciated and recognized as heroic in nature.
Emilie König, a Frenchwoman suspected of recruiting fighters for Islamic State who appeared on US and UN blacklists, has been arrested by Kurdish forces in Syria, her mother said on Tuesday.
This represents a general opinion site for its author. It also offers a space for the author to record her experiences and perceptions,both personal and public. This is rendered obvious by the content contained in the blog, but the space is here inviting me to write. And so I do.
