A crisis that remains and is expanding.. Why do the women and children of ISIS raise a headache in Europe?

(1) The story of Anais, who used to live in the French region of Upper Savoy on the eastern border of the country with its neighbor Switzerland, began with her meeting with her future husband, “Benjaman.” The two young men converted to Islam, and soon fell in love with the “Islamic State” project. Which tickled the feelings of enthusiasts, after the organization made a promise to itself to establish an Islamic state on earth to gather the diaspora of vulnerable Muslims everywhere.

The duo’s journey began to “the land of the caliphate” in search of the “state of Islam”, but the reality was very difficult and very different from the “utopia” of the utopian Islamic city. for succession.

The Swiss channel "RTS" tells us the story of Anais and others who left Europe towards a burning Middle East. As for the other part of the story, the father of the French girl appears affected while watching the last video clip sent to him by his daughter while she was playing with her children, and although she was deeply affected, she confirmed that she She is still fully convinced of the correctness of her step towards the Levant.

Unfortunately, the story does not end there. After a few days of recording, the Kurdish forces' bullets will penetrate the body of the girl and her husband, leaving behind their youngest daughter "Imama".

The story did not end here either. It can be said that it has just begun for the grandfather who began the process of searching for his youngest granddaughter, perhaps finding her, and perhaps succeeding in something more difficult than finding her: returning her to France and saving her from life in the harsh camps set up in the middle of the Syrian desert.

Fear of "lone wolves"

Al-Hol camp

Despite their geographic distance from the conflict areas in the Middle East, European countries were one of the targets for which ISIS fighters were targeted between 2015 and 2016. These operations resulted in a high rate of refusal to return fighters from areas of armed conflict, as this constitutes a threat to security. internal affairs of these countries.

However, the issue of the return of fighters began to occupy an important place in the European debate after the decline of the armed threat of the Islamic State inside Syria and some other areas that were subject to it, and with the increase in the number of detainees and the expansion of camp spaces, the problems of former jihadists and their families began to take on greater dimensions due to the violent bombings that some of them knew Camps, such as Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, in addition to the high number of child deaths due to lack of food, clothing and food, and the spread of diseases as a result (2).

According to some statistics conducted by the Kurdish Autonomous Administration of Northeast Syria in late July 2018, the number of foreign fighters who were arrested is about 500 people, in addition to 550 women and more than 1,200 children.

This number corresponds to figures issued in 2019 confirming that one-fifth of the 10,000 ISIS fighters hold European passports, knowing that these numbers have developed since 2019 until now, after other detainees joined these camps (3).

But despite these proven numbers, European countries are clinging to a number of pretexts in order to keep their citizens in the Kurdish camps away from the old continent. They are initially afraid that these fighters will use the experiences they gathered in battles against the countries of their nationality, in addition to the difficulty of collecting evidence to prosecute Those suspected of being involved in crimes during their stay among ISIS men, as the legal pathways lack compelling evidence to convict these returnees. For example, German sources (4) stated that the local authorities were unable to prove the involvement of two German citizens who were deported by Turkey in jihadist activities;

This made the German security reluctance to arrest them after their arrival on German soil due to the lack of sufficient evidence to issue arrest warrants against them.

These countries also face a second problem - according to local officials - which is the difficulty of rehabilitating these foreign fighters, most of whom hold extremist ideas, as it will be easy for them to transfer and spread these ideas in the circles to which they belong, which suffer - like most immigrant neighborhoods - from poverty and marginalization. And isolation from the rest of society, this view is supported by some non-governmental studies that consider that foreign fighters returning from conflict areas play a role in spreading extremism, creating sleeper cells or committing some criminal crimes (5).

In their view, European countries do not differentiate between men who took up arms to fight in the ranks of ISIS, women who accompanied their husbands to the “Caliphate”, or even young children who took their first steps in life between the cities controlled by the organization and the middle of Kurdish detention camps Then.

Western governments consider that a proportion of these women carry the extremist ideas of the organization;

This prompted the camp officials to separate them from the rest of the refugees so that their ideas would not spread in the camp (6).

Difference in drug description

Europe does not have a unified strategy to solve the problem of the families of jihadists and their families who are trapped in the camps of the Middle East. At a time when some countries, such as Finland, see that the solution will be to return their citizens on the grounds that this may reduce the severity of extremism, especially among children, other countries such as France are turning To the almost total abandonment of those coming from the areas that were previously under the control of the state, on the grounds that they are "temporary bombs."

In his (7) article on the topic published on the website of the newspaper "Le Monde", "Jean-Pierre Filiu", historian and professor in the history of the Middle East at the Institute of Political Studies in Paris, said that the chances of the Arab jihadist who had been proven to have carried weapons to get out of the prisons of the Kurdish forces and then from Her camps to go to more humane areas remain bigger than the return of a French minor child to France.

The writer quoted the British newspaper, "The Guardian", the story of jihadists who managed to get out of the prisons of the Kurdish forces after paying 8,000 dollars to get away from the "Al-Hol" camp, which is inhabited by about 68 thousand people of different nationalities, while French women and children are still residing there. A camp that lacks the most basic necessities of normal life.

Filiu adds, "These jihadists were not only able to get out of the camp, but also drove their families out after passing an agreement with the Kurdish forces, to be able to go to settle in some areas controlled by the Syrian opposition, and then crossed the Syrian-Turkish border in search of life. there".

It is no wonder that France is at the forefront of countries refusing to repatriate its citizens stuck in Syria who participated in or lived in ISIS areas, even though it was at the forefront of European countries exporting jihadists.

According to figures issued by "Laurent Nunez" (8), the French national coordinator of intelligence and counter-terrorism, France exported 1,450 people between 2012 and 2013, 430 of them, including 130 children, returned to the country earlier through their own methods or after being deported by the Turkish authorities. to their country of origin.

As for the rest of the French jihadists, they were divided between a prisoner in Syrian territory and a dead person during the various battles (the numbers indicate 700 dead), and currently the Kurdish forces are holding about 80 women and 200 French children, whose country does not seem eager to return them to its lands. Paris agreed with difficulty to return 10 children. Earlier, after their mothers agreed to give them up in exchange for getting them to safety (9).

It seems that the French governments are afraid of returning the families of jihadists, fearing the reaction of public opinion and the achievement of many political gains by the far-right parties as a result of this decision.

In the same context, Germany is dealing with great caution with the file of jihadists stuck with their families in Syria, as Germany knew earlier the departure of about 1,050 people to the conflict areas in Syria and Iraq, most of whom returned between 2014 and 2015, while hundreds of Germans are still in these areas. The areas, whether to continue the fighting or because of their arrest by the Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria, with 95 individuals currently being held by the Turkish authorities.

Some sources (11) estimate the number of Germans present in the "Al-Hol" camp at 50 women, 60 children and 30 men. Germany has sent secret investigation teams to track its jihadists because it does not have a diplomatic presence on Syrian soil, so that it can try them upon their return to their country, German intelligence also warned of children and teenagers who have been taught the literature of the Islamic State and who may be time bombs that may explode inside the country at any time.

Therefore, Berlin is working on dividing its jihadists into groups according to the degree of their danger so that it can deal with them. It studies each case separately because the margin of error for it should be close to zero, because German law does not punish travel to Syria and Iraq, but rather for crimes committed by travelers in those areas, which means that it is necessary to prove these crimes in order to hold trials in their light.

In the same context, Britain is trying to avoid the return of its jihadist citizens to the country, despite their small numbers, as most of them were arrested during the last days of the "ISIS" caliphate.

The same path was taken by Belgium, which is trying to study the files carefully before giving the opportunity to return to some of the stranded, but on the contrary, Finland followed a different approach, as we mentioned, in late 2019 it approved a commitment to guarantee the rights of Finnish children languishing in Syrian camps, as it appointed a special envoy for this The mission is on behalf of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United Nations (12).

Initially, these steps were met with strong internal opposition due to the fear that these returnees would threaten the internal security of the country, but the Finnish government confirmed its continued repatriation of its citizens from the children.

By March 2021, Helsinki had repatriated 20 children and 6 women from Syrian territory. Josi Tanner, Special Representative of the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the United Nations, commented on these operations, saying: “The longer the children stay in the camps and grow up in an extremist environment.” Without education and protection, it becomes more and more difficult to combat violent extremism and radicalization in the future, they are Finnish citizens after all, and they will return home at some point anyway. What we can really choose is when and how they return, not whether or not they return." .

Pressure from Washington and families' homes

In order to end this headache caused by their citizens in Syrian territory, several European countries are trying to play the "citizenship withdrawal" card as a legal solution that would enable them to get rid of their responsibility towards those living in the Middle Eastern conflict areas.

In 2019, Belgium withdrew its citizenship from 13 people because of their participation in terrorist operations or because they fought in the ranks of the Islamic State. A British woman of Bangladeshi origin named "Shamima Bogum"(13), for her part, France had begun to seek to withdraw her citizenship from its jihadist citizens during the era of François Hollande's government, which caused a crack within the socialist government, which some of its ministers saw as this step is the closest Right-wing ideology, including the literature of the French left.

But in any case, these solutions remain patchy, as the European authorities face great internal pressure from the opposition and the families of the stranded, who demand the return of their children, or at least their grandchildren, who have no fault in the decisions of the parents, some of whom died in the Syrian and Iraqi battles. In France, for example, two deputies presented In the French Parliament last March, with a letter demanding the return of French children with their mothers, accusing the French government of sacrificing children for electoral considerations (14).

Recently, the voices of women detained in the Syrian camps have risen, and some French women, for example, have begun to engage in escalatory steps against their government by engaging in a hunger strike (15). On the other hand, some families went to the European Court of Human Rights to demand the return of their daughters and grandchildren from the Syrian detention camps. .

Lawyers "Marie Douze" and "Laurent Petite", who represent the plaintiff in these calls, commented that France has violated European conventions in the field of human rights by refusing to take back its citizens who live in miserable conditions.

For its part, the Kurdish authorities stress the need for European countries to restore the jihadists and their families from detainees in Syrian camps, similar to a number of countries such as Russia, Indonesia, Turkey and the United States of America, and the latter classifies the European position as unacceptable, as Donald Trump previously criticized the European position, calling European countries to assume their official responsibility towards their captive jihadist citizens in Syria, and to return them to their countries for trial (16).

Washington considers that keeping the jihadists and their families in the middle of the desert will not be useful, because the correct solution cannot deviate from trial or rehabilitation. Between 2019 and 2020: “The Europeans have always criticized us because of Guantanamo. Now they also have Guantanamo, but in the middle of the desert” (17).

For its part, the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, which is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, proposed the establishment of an international court for these prisoners, to be tried in the areas controlled by the Kurdish forces, which was rejected by the United States of America, and supported by some European parties despite the logistical difficulties represented in choosing a seat for the court and determining its working mechanisms. In addition to the establishment of detention centers for detainees, without forgetting that the establishment of an international court means, in one way or another, involving the regime of Bashar al-Assad, whose legitimacy some European countries do not recognize (18).

In the end, despite all these challenges, finding real solutions to the problem of former ISIS fighters and their families remains one of the most important issues that preoccupy European governments, as the survival of all former ISIS sympathizers in nearby geographical spots may help it restore some of its fighters, especially after the faction expressed a desire It is clear in returning to the spotlight after the recent events of Al-Hasakah prison in Syria, but on the other hand, European countries do not feel any real desire to restore citizens who hold their citizenship and passports, because of the losses that may result from that, which may start with security, but inevitably end with politics, as is the case always.

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