"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.
Women and children who fled the Islamic
State (IS) group's last embattled holdout of Baghuz wait to be searched
by US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters (not pictured) in
Syria's northern Deir Ezzor province, on February 22, 2019.Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP
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
"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
Displaced peopleat the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria on Feb. 6, 2019.Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images
An estimated 25,000 people have become refugees, fleeing conflict in the last of the territory held by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant in Deir Ezzor province, Syria. The numbers appearing to surprise even the totals aid agencies had prepared for. The result being there are insufficient supplies to cope with the needs of people during a winter season. Women and children complaining about the shortage of shelter; not enough tents. Of course if there's a shortage perhaps some of the neighbouring countries for whom a division of vast wealth should be no practical problem to proffer the missing tents; say Saudi Arabia?
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.
Women and children displaced from Deir
Ezzor sit in the back of a truck after they fled the Islamic State
holdout near Baghuz, Syria, on Feb. 11, 2019. Fadel Senna/AFP/Getty Images
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.
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.Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images
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.
