The ‘little London’ at the heart of Isil’s war
What was once an unremarkable Syrian town has now been overrun by foreign extremists. Many of these incomers are Britons, among them a woman whose four-year-old young son featured in Isil’s latest propaganda video
THERE was little to attract foreign visitors to the town of Manbij in northern Syria before the civil war. It had not much more than a post office, a prison and a large flour mill.
However, when the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) took over, this unremarkable town became a meeting place for jihadists from around the world.
Most of all, it drew British fighters. So much so, it has now become known as “Little London”. Half an hour’s drive from the border with Turkey, Manbij is the first stop for fighters arriving from Europe and has become the front line of the holy war for a caliphate.
As many as 100 Britons are living in Manbij, residents have told The Sunday
Telegraph. An estimated 700 are thought to have travelled to Syria to fight since 2011, half of whom have since returned to the UK.
“There are about 30 nationalities of Isil fighters here: Britons are the highest, then the Germans and the French, then the Saudis and the Algerians,” according to a resident using the name Husain Khalaf. “It has the most Europeans of any town in Syria. Arabic has almost become the second language.”
Last week, one of its youngest British residents became the unwitting star of an Isil propaganda video, which showed the execution of five men accused of being spies. Four-year-old Isa Dare – who was taken by his mother, Khadijah, from Lewisham in south-east London to Manbij – was seen threatening the “infidels” in the West.
Dare, a 24-year-old Christian convert, arrived in the town in late 2012, setting up home with Isa and her husband, a Swede known as Abu Bakr.
Western fighters with young families are sent to Manbij rather than the group’s de facto capital of Raqqa, 80 miles further east, because the town is considered safer – largely spared from regime and coalition air strikes.
Isil has strict and unchallenged rule over the town, which has a population of around 150,000, around the size of Exeter. Women must cover their hands and face and must not mix with men in public; Western clothes are banned, so are music and smoking. A former resiin dent who used the pseudonym Ali AlKhatib told Sunday Telegraph: “Manbij used to be one of the most liberal places in Syria, but people have no freedom now, they are all slaves of Daesh,” he said, using the derogatory Arabic name for Isil.
“These foreigners came and invaded our town, telling us what we can say, what we can wear, what we can eat. The women aren’t used to covering up like this, but they are threatened with violence if they do not. The British are the most brutal.”
Among its residents are 17-year-old “jihadi brides” from Manchester, twins Salma and Zahra Halane.
Salma was married to a 19-year-old fighter from Coventry, whom she met online before travelling to join her new husband in Manbij.
The marriage was arranged by Aqsa Mahmood, a 20-year-old Glaswegian woman placed on a United Nations sanctions list, who alluded to her location in an online diary of her life in Manbij. Both the girls’ husbands have since been killed in battle.
Khadijah Dare, whose own husband died last year fighting opposition rebels, has lived for the past 18 months the town with Isa and her younger son, alongside the family of another British woman, known only as Ayisha, who is married to a British fighter. The women seem to share the childcare duties. Her social media posts have offered an insight into what daily life is like for the families.
She complains it is difficult to get fresh hummus, and that she was missing the fast food she enjoyed back home. The salary they are given to live on is not enough, she says.
More disturbing, are the pictures she posts of Isa smiling as he plays with her AK-47 rifle. She is understood to have enrolled him in a local Isil school.
His unmistakable British accent has made him a poster boy in Isil’s ongoing drive to recruit foreigners.
She also writes nonchalantly, in text speak, about seeing a man being crucified in the public square. “On da way back frm da market, we see da body of a young man, with blood comin his nose ... tied onto a tree.”
In a tweet she claims the man had raped a 70-year-old woman.
The mastermind of the Paris attack, Belgian-born Abdelhamid Abaaoud, also spent time in Manbij, and is thought to have plotted the massacre from internet cafés in the town.
One resident recalled seeing Mohammed Emwazi, otherwise known as Jihadi John, in Manbij in the spring of 2014 – just after the town fell to Isil.
Once Isil fighters wrested control of the town, they quickly began staking their claim: changing the place names of surrounding villages, and setting up their own court and police station.
Foreign fighters were given small apartments on the edge of Manbij, kept away from the local population. They live on salaries of around $150 (£100) a month – paid for by the taxes Isil imposes on residents and shopkeepers.
Minorities such as Christians, Shia and Alawite Muslims must also pay an added religious levy known as “jizya”, if they refuse to convert to Sunni Islam. Shops are fully stocked, unlike most of the rest of Syria, as food is regularly brought in from Turkey 25 miles away.
Abu Tayym, the pseudonym for an activist who recently fled Manbij for Aleppo, said: “Foreign fighters have special treatment by Isil, they enjoy clean water and electricity 24/7, unlike the locals.
“It was noticed that, when the Western fighters go shopping they buy the most expensive goods, in contrast to the local residents who suffer poverty. Isil uses that contrast to recruit the local people to fight with them.”
Another important recruitment tool is the education system. Children are enrolled in school from around the age of four in classes divided by gender, studying Arabic, sharia and how to be good citizens of the “Islamic state”.
Leaked Isil documents have shown that the brainwashing of children and the use of child soldiers is key to the group’s consolidation of its “state”.
At the age of 10, children in Manbij are enlisted in “cubs of the caliphate” training camps. They are taught how to fight, use weapons, behead captives, deal with prisoners – and even how to carry out suicide missions.
A handful of British children are understood to be among the 100 or so “cubs”. Once they have completed this
training, aged 15, they will be assigned their roles and stations.
Western jihadists generally have lower rank within Isil than native Syrians, Iraqis and other Arabs. However, the more competent foreigners, usually those with good Arabic or media training, are rewarded with more senior roles.
Manbij – which is largely Sunni and has a minority Kurdish population – was one of the first towns to be captured from Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
At first, non-Islamist rebels from the Free Syrian Army took over Manbij with the support of the population. But control was gradually ceded to Islamist fighters, who pledged allegiance to Isil in late 2013 and drove out the FSA.
The group rules through fear, regularly beheading people and leaving their bodies in public as a warning. Mr Khatib said several of his own family members and friends had been beheaded, including for offences as trivial as selling cigarettes. Others are “disappeared” and never heard from again.
He himself was threatened last year by a British fighter who went by the nom de guerre Abu Ibrahim al-Britani. The jihadi came to his house in the middle of the night, accused him of trying to orchestrate protests and ordered him to appear in court the next week.
Mr Khatib was so afraid he fled the town he had called home for 38 years, taking his wife, two young sons and a small bag of possessions to neighbouring Turkey.
The Sunday Telegraph understands that a group of British and German fighters are charged with running a feared unit within Manbij’s prison.
A recent court case in Germany of a returning jihadist exposed the inner workings of the jail. Members of the unit, which is responsible for the arrest and interrogation of deserters and dissidents, is referred to as the “storm troop”. The suspect, known only as Nils D, described routine torture sessions.
These jihadists wear masks in public and receive better salaries and bonuses from Isil, including looted antiquities from the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Abdulaziz Almashi, a co-founder of the Syria Solidarity Movement who moved from Manbij to London in 2009 to study, said: “The foreign fighters don’t integrate, many of them can’t even speak good Arabic. They walk around patrolling and they say they are police but they have no uniforms.”
In November, Manbij saw a number of protests – suggesting a popular backlash against the foreigners. One local resident shot a judge, a Tunisian national, who ordered three members of his family to be beheaded for “photographing Isil strongholds”.
But acts of rebellion remain rare. Isil responded to the killing of the judge by kidnapping dozens of women and executing scores of civilians trying to flee.
The leader of the protests was arrested and tortured to death. His body was dumped in the street.
“They are using Assad’s techniques – the disappearances, the torture,” said Mr Almashi, whose family stayed behind in Manbij. “They hung him there in public for all to see, to make sure they know the consequences of disobeying them.”
‘These foreigners came and invaded our town, telling us what we can say. The British are the most brutal’