HUSBANDS MADE THEM JOIN ISIL, WOMEN SAY
Two Canadians among detainees in Syria
Two Canadian women and their children are among thousands who have surrendered to U.s.-backed forces as the last remaining Isil-held enclaves in Syria are overrun.
Following a CNN report that quoted two women who were being detained after fleeing the caliphate’s last enclave, Global Affairs Canada confirmed that Canadian citizens are being held in eastern Syria. In the CNN report, Dura Ahmed, a 28-year-old with two toddlers who said she was from Toronto, and a 34-year-old Albertan woman with two children who refused to give her name, both said they were in Syria on their husbands’ orders.
Ahmed said she was a college student from Toronto before she first went to Raqqa, Syria, in 2014 after being convinced to do so by her husband, who had gone there in 2012.
“Then finally he said you have to come, but I was studying,” she told CNN. “English and Middle Eastern studies,” she said when asked her subjects. “I didn’t know anything about ISIS or anything. He said just come and see. Come and see.”
In the report, Ahmed painted a picture of a life removed from the extreme brutality ISIL has inflicted.
“You’re eating Pringles and Twix bars … you don’t feel like you’re in a war,” she said. When asked about her beliefs, she said she believes in Shariah law and doesn’t regret moving to Syria.
“Do I regret it, coming you mean? No, I don’t, in the sense I had my kids here,” she told CNN.
The second woman said she was a graphic designer from Alberta. She travelled to Syria to be with her first husband, a Bosnian who left Canada to join ISIL and was subsequently killed.
“He’s like, ‘it’s obligatory for you to come here. You have no choice, and as your husband I’m telling you to come here.’ And as a Muslim wife you have to obey, even though it was really hard for me to do it. I had to,” she told CNN.
The woman said she was pregnant with her third child when her second husband, who was also from Canada, was killed. She said she didn’t let her children go to school in Syria because it was too dangerous with the bombings.
“I was just trying to be an obedient wife,” she said.
Both women claimed they knew nothing about ISIL’S horrors before travelling to the region.
The women’s future remains uncertain. Global Affairs Canada said its ability to provide assistance is currently “extremely limited.”
“Canadian diplomats have established a communication channel with local Kurdish authorities in order to verify the whereabouts and well-being of Canadian citizens,” a Global Affairs spokesman told CBC.
The government has not come to an agreement concerning their repatriation, Global Affairs told CTV.
It’s not clear how Canada’s criminal justice system will deal with people who were involved with ISIL.
The Syrian Democratic Forces said heavy fighting was continuing inside the ISIL enclave of Baghouz
AS A MUSLIM WIFE YOU HAVE TO OBEY ... IT WAS REALLY HARD.
on Sunday, with an ISIL counterattack being foiled early in the day. A spokesman did not say how long the battle was expected to last. U.s.-led coalition warplanes were giving cover to advancing SDF fighters.
Last Wednesday, U.S. President Donald Trump predicted that by this week ISIL will have lost all the territory it once controlled in Iraq and Syria.
That would mark the end of a four-year global war to end the extremist group’s territorial hold over large parts of Syria and Iraq, where the group established its self-proclaimed “caliphate” in 2014.
U.S. officials have said in recent weeks that ISIL has lost 99.5 per cent of its territory and was holding on to fewer than five square kilometres in Syria, where the bulk of the fighters are concentrated.
But activists and residents say ISIL still has sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq, and is laying the groundwork for an insurgency. The U.S. military has warned the group could stage a comeback if the military and counterterrorism pressure on it is eased.