Biodun Iginla, BBC News

Biodun Iginla, BBC News
Showing posts with label Baghouz. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baghouz. Show all posts

Friday, February 1, 2019

After joining Islamic State, German woman, aged 15, asks to go home


Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces
Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces AFP
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Beirut
Four years after leaving Germany to live under the Islamic State group, 19-year-old Leonora has fled the jihadists' last bastion in eastern Syria and says it's time to go home.
"I was a little bit naive," she says in English, wearing a long billowing black robe, and a beige headscarf with white spots.
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US-backed forces are fighting the last IS jihadists in a final shred of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, causing thousands of people to flee.
Just beyond the frontline village of Baghouz, Leonora and her two small children are among the thousands of men, women and children to have scrambled out this week.
The young German woman says she first came to Syria aged 15, just two months after converting to Islam.
"After three days, I married my German husband," she tells us at France24, at a screening centre for the displaced run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.
Leonora says she became the third wife of German jihadist Martin Lemke, after he travelled to Syria with his first two wives.
IS had the year before swept across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in areas it controlled.
Leonora first lived in the extremist group's de-facto Syrian capital of Raqa, but says she was just a housewife.
"I was just at home, in (the) house cooking, cleaning -- stuff like this," says the pale faced German, clutching the youngest of her two children, an infant aged just two weeks.
- 'Change house every week' -
Syria's Kurdish authorities hold hundreds of foreign alleged IS fighters in detention, as well as thousands of their wives and children in camps for the displaced.
The Kurds have repeatedly urged Western governments to take back their nationals, but these powers have been reluctant.
At first life in Raqa was easy, Leonora says, but that changed when the SDF started advancing against the jihadists, with support from US-led coalition air strikes.
The Kurdish-led SDF overran Raqa in 2017, after years of what residents described as IS's brutal rule, which included public beheading and crucifixions.
"Then they lose Raqa, and we started to change our house every week because they lost every week a city," she says.
When they came under attack by the Kurdish-led SDF, Leonora says the IS fighters left their families to fend for themselves.
"They left the women alone, no food, they don't care about you," she says. The enemy was advancing "and you were sitting alone in an empty city with your kids".
They ended up in a tiny patch on the eastern banks of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province.
The SDF have cornered IS into a patch of less than four square kilometres (around 1.5 square miles) in recent days.
- 'Big, big mistake' -
Eventually, she says, she picked up her children, and fled with her husband, and his second wife into SDF-held territory.
US-backed forces detained Lemke on Thursday.
Leonora claims Lemke worked mostly as a technician for IS.
"He makes technical stuff, computer stuff, repairs computer, mobiles," she says.
But investigations published in German newspapers portray Lemke, who is now believed to be 28, as an influential figure among foreign jihadists in Syria.
More than 36,000 people have fled the SDF assault on the so-called "Hajin pocket" since early December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on a network of sources inside the country.
Among them, 3,200 have been detained as alleged jihadists.
On arid farmland near Baghouz, a group of men sit on the ground as SDF and coalition personnel stroll nearby.
Not far off, a group of women and their children -- most from neighbouring Iraq -- wait to be driven north to a Kurdish-held camp for the displaced.
After four years under a now near-extinct IS caliphate, Leonora says she wants to go home.
"I want to go back to Germany to my family, because I want my old life back," she says.
"Now I know that it was a big, big mistake."

Sunday, January 27, 2019

Near Islamic State holdout, Syrian fighters face women suicide bombers


A picture taken from inside a car shows US-led coalition vehicles driving through the Syrian village of Baghouz on January 26, 2019
A picture taken from inside a car shows US-led coalition vehicles driving through the Syrian village of Baghouz on January 26, 2019 AFP
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Beirut
Driving towards the frontline of what remains of the Islamic State group's self-declared "caliphate" in eastern Syria, US-backed fighters pass huge craters from air strikes and buildings reduced to rubble.
Backed by air strikes of the US-led coalition, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces are battling to expel IS from a few hamlets in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor.
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But cornered in a final remote pocket of territory near the Iraqi border, the jihadists are staging a fierce fightback, hiding in tunnels and deploying suicide bombers -- including women.
Listening to Egyptian diva Umm Kulthum, SDF fighters drive along a desert road towards a string of villages retaken in recent weeks from the jihadists.
"The Islamic State has surrendered," reads graffiti scrawled across the wall of a small house at the entrance to the deserted village of Shaafa.
Nearby, a cart once used to sell fruit and vegetables lies abandoned.
The armoured car continues southwards, to where the Kurdish-led SDF is battling to secure the last patch of the village of Baghouz from the jihadists.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights this week said the village had been retaken, but SDF commanders on the ground say some IS fighters still remain, and are fighting back hard.
"Two women blew themselves up near our position," an SDF official tells AFP.
"We saw them come towards us dressed in black. They cried 'God is greatest' and then blew themselves up," he says, giving his name as Damat.
- 'Cornered' -
Aram Jaweesh, a commander in the SDF, says five women blew themselves up in various parts of Baghouz on Saturday, killing one SDF member and wounding three others.
IS suicide bombers are usually men, but some women have carried out such operations in Iraq.
From a rooftop, Jaweesh oversees operations, issuing instructions to his fighters in Kurdish through a walkie-talkie that never leaves his side.
A few streets away, armoured cars from the international coalition rumble by.
SDF advances in recent weeks have whittled away at the last pocket of Syrian territory the group controls, and Jaweesh says the noose is tightening around IS.
"They're cornered between the Iraqi border on one side and the SDF on the other," he says.
Late Saturday, four more suicide bombers killed 11 SDF fighters, according to the Britain-based Observatory, while a further 19 jihadists lost their lives in air strikes.
Coalition war planes zip across the skies above Baghouz.
A blast resonates, then a mushroom cloud of smoke rises above its houses.
- Civilian exodus -
On the roof, an SDF fighter points to another spot in the village.
"Look, civilians are coming out," he says.
Thousands of people, mostly relatives of IS fighters, have fled the ever-shrinking IS pocket in recent weeks.
When they reach SDF-held territory, those who are suspected of being fighters are detained for questioning, while relatives are ferried north to Kurdish-run camps.
IS swept across large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014, declaring a "caliphate" there and ruling it with a brutal version of Islamic law.
It has since lost almost all of it to various offensives.
Earlier this week, the SDF's commander-in-chief told us at France24 that his forces would have flushed out the last shreds of the quasi-state within a month.
Leaving Baghouz, the armoured car drives into the dark, cold desert, traditional Kurdish songs now blasting from its speakers.
Jaweesh says the battle has yet to be won -- the jihadists may be encircled in a small area, but they are still launching rockets and drones.
"Every time our forces lead an assault, they emerge from tunnels and blow themselves up," he says.