Internal Security Forces in al-Hawl camp describe the situation as a “ticking bomb”

 

Hasakah – North-Press Agency

Delsoz Youssef / Jindar Abdulqader

“If we are pushed to the brink, you will see something that you won’t like”, said a jihadi woman in a threatening tone while waving her finger, wrapping herself in a black veil as only her eyes were visible, during a round inside al-Hawl camp’s market, where she met North-Press reporter.

“We were delighted in al-Baghouz, we ate bran in the land of Islam, yet it was better for us than here”, said the pregnant woman who was carrying a little child in her arms.

Extremist acts have recently intensified in al-Hawl camp, east of Hasakah, by radical women and supporters of the Islamic State group (ISIS), the latest of which was the killing of an Iraqi young man “Muhammad Shehadeh” inside his tent last Thursday, by unidentified persons who were disguised as women after they infiltrated into the tent at night and beat him with sharp objects.

“Monsters are living here, those are not human beings, they beat me until I was unconscious and threatened to make me a sacrifice for Eid”, said a Moroccan girl, Shaimaa Muhamad, who lives in a section dedicated for ISIS women and children inside the camp.

Shaimaa recounted her suffering after being threatened to be killed, by women who hold radical ideologies and show strong sympathy for the terrorist group.

‘Death threat’

Shaimaa, from the Moroccan city of Fez, said that she had entered Syria in 2016 alongside her mother and two sisters, in search for her other sister who was earlier kidnapped in Istanbul by a Syrian person named “Ahmad” as they were visiting Turkey to attend her brother’s wedding, as she claimed.

Shaimaa got married to a Moroccan ISIS militant, she left the town of al-Baghouz (the last ISIS stronghold) about six months ago with her family and her husband, who is currently detained in the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) detention centers.

The 16-year-old Shaimaa told North-Press about the harassment by ISIS wives who hold an extremist ideology, whom Shaima describes as “too hard-line monsters”.

“When we try to go to the market or talk respectfully with the security members in the camp, and we don’t throw stones at them, we are accused of being infidels and apostates by those radical women”, she said.

“I do not move within the camp unless accompanied with my family. A few days ago, I was with my friend in the camp as a group of women came and threatened us with death, they told us that if we dealt respectfully with the Kurds, they will sacrifice (slaughter) us for the Eid”, Shaimaa said with a shaking voice.

 “I was walking in the market, as I suddenly felt being beaten from the back”, she explain, “I was trying to figure out who they were, but I only saw more than 20 women surrounding me and started beating me so hard, and then I lost consciousness, when I regained conscious I found myself in a tent.

She noted that she was threatened to be killed a short time ago again, she said: “My mother and I work in a restaurant in the camp, where several women came to the owner of the restaurant and tell him, by God willing, we will kill the woman who works for you, when I called the owner of the restaurant to identify them, they fled and I couldn’t catch up on them”.

According to the Moroccan girl, Shaima, these women once tried to set her friend’s tent in fire as they poured oil on it, but fortunately, they did not succeed”.

The ideology of extremism

The Democratic Autonomous Administration has been demanding the repatriation of those foreigners to their original countries, for the fears of the “danger” that the presence of thousands of those extremists in north and eastern Syria might pose.

The Commander-in-Chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces, General Mazloum Abdi, has recently reiterated in an interview  with a British newspaper the seriousness of the situation in al-Hawl camp, considering it as a “ticking bomb” about to explode.

Night meetings

Moreover, local sources inside the camp told North-Press that suspicious movements are activated during the night hours within women of the group’s section, as if they are holding “night meetings” especially that the burning of IDPs’ tents starts following these movements, while they raise the banners of ISIS.

Making weapons

For his part, Faisal Saleh, an official in the Internal Security Forces (Asayish) inside al-Hawl camp, told North-Press that most of the extremist women were the ones who had left al-Baghouz, al-Busayrah and Sousa, punishing women who stand with the Security Forces, “who may only ask for help”.

“ISIS ideology which is rooted in their minds, is pushing them to spread extremism inside the camp, until they get to make plastic weapons of hoses and wood similar to the real ones, which shows how dangerous and sophisticated they are, and well trained within the terrorist group”, Saleh explained.

Saleh noted that such actions would in turn impact the children, “if these children stay longer without rehabilitation, they will grow up to the extremism engraved in the minds of their mothers, and in turn, they will pose a great danger to their surroundings in the future”, Saleh said.

The official in  Asayish forces Faisal Saleh described the large number of ISIS families in the camp as a “ticking bomb”, stressing that if the bomb explodes, it will make an affect on the whole world, calling on their countries to take their citizens back, and work to rehabilitate them before it is too late.

The Global Coalition-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) were able to control the last stronghold of the Islamic State group (ISIS) in March in the town of al-Baghouz in the eastern countryside of Deir ez-Zor, after the surrender of its militants following six months of fierce fighting against the SDF. The terrorist group’s detainees were moved into detention centers in north and eastern Syria, while their families, women and children were placed in a private section inside al-Hawl camp, northeastern Syria.

According to the latest statistics of the camp’s administration, al-Hawl contains about 71,000 people, of whom 11,000 were allocated in a private section giving that they are ISIS families, separated by an iron fence from the rest