RAQQA, Syria — Noura Al-Khalif married a Daesh supporter and then wound up without
her husband in a
Syrian camp viewed by many as the last surviving pocket of the
so-called “caliphate”.
اضافة اعلان
The 31-year-old
woman has been back in her hometown outside the northern city of
Raqqa for
three years but she is struggling to shake off the stigma of having lived in
the Al-Hol camp.
“Most of my
neighbors call me a (Daesh) supporter,” she told AFP from her father’s house
near Raqqa, where she now lives with her two children.
“I just want to
forget but people insist on dragging me back, and ever since I left Al-Hol I
haven’t felt either financial or emotional comfort.”
Al-Hol, in the
Kurdish-controlled northeast, still houses about 56,000 people, mostly Syrians
and Iraqis, some of whom maintain links with Daesh.
About 10,000 are
foreigners, including relatives of
Daesh fighters, and observers are
increasingly worried what was meant as a temporary detention facility is
turning into a terrorist breeding ground.
Most of Al-Hol’s
residents are people who fled or surrendered during the dying days of Daesh in
early 2019.
For staying,
whether by choice or not, until the very end, they are seen as fanatical Daesh
supporters, although the camp’s population also includes civilians displaced by
battles against the extremists.
The stigma is a
challenge for Khalif who arrived in Al-Hol from Baghouz, the riverside hamlet
where Daesh was declared definitively defeated by US-backed Kurdish forces.
“Al-Hol camp was
more merciful to us than Raqqa. I left the camp for my children and their
education, but the situation here is not better,” she said.
Tribal chiefs
In 2014, Khalif married a Saudi-born terrorist and lived with him
across several Daesh-held regions before the two were separated by the
fighting.
She has not
heard from her husband since she left for Al-Hol in 2019.
After a few
months living in the camp, Khalif was permitted to leave along with hundreds of
other
Syrians under an agreement between Syrian tribal chiefs and Kurdish
authorities overseeing the facility.
More than 9,000
Syrians have since been allowed to exit Al-Hol under such deals which aim to
empty the camp of nationals, according to the Britain-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Khalif’s
homecoming has been anything but sweet.
She said she
struggles to make a living cleaning homes and faces constant suspicion.
“Some families
won’t let me clean their homes because I wear the niqab (face veil) and because
they think I’m a (Daesh) supporter,” she said.
“Society won’t
accept me.”
Raqqa tribal
elder Turki Al-Suaan has arranged for the release of 24 families from Al-Hol
with the aim of facilitating their reintegration into their communities, but he
acknowledged that it was no easy task.
Raqqa resident
Sara Ibrahim warned that there was a danger in stigmatising people returning to
Raqqa from Al-Hol, most of whom are women and children.
“A lot of
families in Raqqa refuse to engage with these people and this ... could push
them towards extremism in the future,” she said.
Fearing
prejudice, Amal has kept a low profile since she arrived in Raqqa seven months
ago from Al-Hol.
The 50-year-old
grandmother and members of her family were among the last of those who flooded
out of Baghouz, where the extremists made their final stand.
“My neighbors in
Raqqa do not know that I was in Al-Hol camp, and I fear people will have a bad
idea if they know that I was living” there, she said, a niqab covering her
face.
“As long as I am
comfortable with my life ... there is no need for people to know,” she added.
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