Razan al-Sayyed
IDLIB, Syria (North Press) – She was married to an Uzbek jihadist who was killed while fighting with Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Now, she feels lonely with her two children, whose father’s identity remains unknown.
This is the story of the Rama and her two children, who live in a camp in Idlib countryside in northwestern Syria.
Rama, like hundreds of other women, married unknown jihadi fighters who came to Syria at the beginning of the war to fight against Syrian government forces, or for other reasons related to the goals of their jihadi groups, concealing their true identities by taking on fake names or nicknames.
There were several reasons that prompted Syrian girls and women to marry these jihadists, notably lack of awareness and traditions that imposed a view of widows, divorced women and girls who did not marry until the age of 25 as inferior.
Another reason was that Syrian youth abandoned marriage due to security, living, unemployment, and immigration circumstances, which led the girls to get married to those fighters, as they say.
Rama’s aging and her family’s poor condition prompted her to marry Abu Qutada, who was killed less than three years after their marriage.
Amid very difficult conditions, Rama cannot register her two children in official records because she does not know her husband’s true identity.
“I never expected that I would reach this miserable condition one day and live in a worn-out canvas tent that does not protect me from the heat of the summer nor the cold of the winter,” she said.
“My migrant jihadist husband left without informing me. He was very weird. He rarely stayed at home, and he forgot that he had a wife and children waiting for him,” said Samira al-Hamid, another jihadist’s wife.
“Our marriage lasted for three years, after which he went out without leaving any news that lets me know anything about him. I have two children with him, whom I registered in the civil registry on my family’s parentage because I don’t not know his father’s real name; we didn’t register our marriage in any court that proves the identity of the husband.”
“These marriages are legally invalid due to the husband hiding his real name, and this is a taboo according to Islamic Sharia ]Law[,” said Ola Mansour, a lawyer from the Idlib countryside.
“These marriages eliminated the wives and their children. Leaving a wife alone with her children in such a period, exposes her to the dangers of hard work to provide for the expenses of her children who are deprived of Syrian legal and civil rights, the most important of which are identity, education, health care, and protection,” she added.
Usually, foreign jihadi husbands suddenly disappear, leaving wives and children for unclear reasons related to their deaths or moving their organizations to new regions or countries, while some of them move back to their countries of origin.
The number of women married to foreign fighters in Idlib governorate has reached about 1,735 since 2013, including marriages of minors (under the age of 18), where 1,124 of them gave birth to 1,826 children, according to the “Who is your husband?” campaign launched by Syrian activists more than two years ago.