ReportageIn the Roj-2 camp, under the guard of Kurdish forces, tensions are high, between the women who regret their commitment to the Islamic State organization and those who remain loyal to the “caliphate”.
Samia stopped to buy ice cream in the Roj camp market. She offers it to Camille’s son (all names have been changed), a fellow prisoner, French like her. The 2 and a half year old boy devours her greedily as they go up, all three, under the boring sun of this August afternoon, the central alley of Roj-2, one of the sectors of this camp located on the borders of northeastern Syria. Under the care of Kurdish forces, more than 800 foreign families, women who joined the Islamic State (IS) organization and their children, separated from their husbands who died during the war or imprisoned, are being held in this open-air prison, surrounded by wire fences and watchtowers. Among them are nearly 90 women and some 200 children of French nationality, the majority of whom are under 6 years old.
Behind the fence that isolates Roj-2 from the rest of the camp, between the alleys of white tents, silhouettes of women wrapped in niqab and colored veils emerge. A host of children, mostly in jeans and colorful t-shirts, and a few veiled girls, play around the water tanks and toilets. “Here, we are forced to wear colored clothes while we were forced to wear the black niqab in Al-Hol”, the camp where they were previously held since their release from Baghouz, the last stronghold of ISIS liberated by Kurdish forces in March 2019, says Camille, who has matched her meadow green veil with a blue-print abaya.
Dark or shimmering colors, among the twenty French women who live in this area of Roj-2, each has accommodated in its own way, willy-nilly, the dress rules imposed by the Kurdish prison authorities. A handful of them chose to reveal themselves. “You need strong kidneys to take on walking like this “, recognizes Samia, showing her outfit. Appointed responsible for the sector by the Kurdish administration, she walks freely through the alleys of the camp, dressed in black jeans and a top, her long black curly hair tied up and her face slit in wide sunglasses.
Uncompromising outburst of hatred
The other women in the industry have no choice but to come to terms with her. His break with the jihadist group, his choice to have his four children repatriated to France and his collaboration with the Kurdish guards earned him an outburst of the most uncompromising hatred, which still took care to ensure the survival of the “caliphate”. Others, who question their membership in ISIS without however questioning their faith and their rigorous practice of Islam, are exasperated by its judgments, too sharp for their liking.
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