SDF Needs Our Help Now as Another Woman in Camp Hol Killed by ISIS Enforcers
As published in Homeland Security Today:
by Anne Speckhard & Ardian Shajkovci
One woman was killed and seven others
were wounded in Camp Hol, Syria, where a gunfight broke out this week after
ISIS enforcers tried to impose shariah upon other women in the camp.[1] Camp Hol is the largest
of three family camps administered by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). It
houses 12,000 foreigners—4,000 women and 8,000 children of ISIS families,
alongside another 60,000 Syrians and Iraqis. The overcrowded conditions
occurring since the mass surrenders and captures of ISIS fighters and their
family members in Hajin and Baghouz last spring are straining the capacities of
the Women’s Protection Units (YPJ) who guard them. Numerous security incidents
have occurred in recent months, creating a number of security breaches and unsafe
conditions for both the detainees and the security personnel. In interviews
last month in all three camps, ICSVE researchers were told about ISIS
female enforcers[2] who cruelly require
former ISIS women to cover themselves and refrain from criticizing the group. These
ISIS enforcers met out punishments in a series of escalations, according to a
YPJ security officer working in Camp Hol. The YPJ security officer also added, “They
punish them first by delivering a written warning, then a knife, then kerosene
in their tents, and then it varies what they do—burn their tents.” [3]
These women are
afraid of no one and they believe that their ISIS male fighters, still on the
loose, will be coming to their rescue and to reinstate the Caliphate. They
instill fear in all, attacking guards and inmates alike, beating, biting,
stabbing and setting fire to tents and killing. Just this week, they killed
another woman in Camp Hol, Syria. This is the second woman to be killed there
by ISIS inmates.
“One woman
was killed and six others were wounded in the sector reserved for foreign
women,” an official of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria
told the AFP [4]. This same source said
that the ISIS enforcers had set up “courts” to try their peers and had stabbed
to death a woman that the camp’s guards had been trying to rescue. After the
riots, 40 women from the foreigners’ section at the camp were detained. The
local Kurdish news agency ANHA also reported that one ISIS woman was killed and
that seven were injured and more than 50 arrested by the security forces after
riots broke out over the shariah courts being held in Camp Hol. ANHA also reported that upon the arrival of
the security forces to the camp, some of the women had guns and had opened fire,
creating a battle, lasting about fifteen minutes, as they chanted ISIS slogans.[5]
The Telegraph also reported that an ISIS enforcer had a gun and that the riot “broke out when a group of female ISIS
supporters ordered that several other women in the foreigners’ section of
al-Hol camp be given lashes for refusing to attend an informal Koranic
studies class.”[6]
That ISIS
enforcers have set up shariah courts in prison is not surprising. A similar
situation occurred in Camp Bucca when the first
author
was working there in 2006-2007. Al Qaeda
in Iraq, ISIS’ precursor organization, also set up shariah courts, breaking the
arms and otherwise punishing those who defied them.[7]
This September, YPJ guards in Ain Issa Camp told ICSVE researchers about
a charismatic ISIS female enforcer who goes around preaching ISIS propaganda to
the other women, telling them that the men are soon going to reinstate the
Caliphate and return for them. For most of the European women in these camps,
who have long ago lost their enthusiasm for ISIS and now seem disillusioned,
this is a chilling prophecy, one which they hope cannot play out.[8] Abu Bakr al
Baghdadi’s October 2019 audio broadcast, provided it is authentic, seem to confirm
this as an ISIS priority. He urged his followers to break the ISIS prisoners
out of the camps and prisons where they are being held.
A
pregnant Indonesian woman in Camp Hol was recently beaten to death by ISIS
enforcers. Photos shown to ICSVE researchers by the camp officials showed her
body covered with extensive dark bruises. These women who cook for themselves
in the camps basically have weapons at hand, such as in the case of ISIS women
who have used kitchen knives to threaten other prisoners and, in Camp Hol, to
stab a security officer in the back. [9] A Yazidi woman is also reported to have been
beaten to death in Camp Hol.[10]
A YPJ female soldier who guards the
foreign women in Camp Ain Issa told
us about being attacked by a female ISIS enforcer who bit her arm drawing
blood. “She [an ISIS wife] came from behind, here outside at this security
post. The gate was open, and she came inside to beat me. She bit my arm and
drew blood before I could fight her off,” the guard told us, as she rubbed her
forearm, seemingly recalling the painful attack. These ISIS enforcers also
shouted at her, “When the Islamic State comes back, I will put your head on one
of these poles.” Her ISIS comrade’s attitude towards the guard was equally threatening,
“No that’s too good for her. We have to sell her as a sex slave.” [11]
A well-regarded male security officer
taking ISIS women to the market in Camp Hol was also brutally attacked; he was stabbed in the back
by one of the extremist ISIS wives, a female security commander in Camp Hol
told ICSVE researchers. “When these ISIS women attacked the security forces of
the camp on two different occasions, they shouted, “Do you think we are scared
of bullets? We are not scared of the bullets. We know how to use guns too!” the
security commander further shared. In Ain Issa, a YPJ security guard told ICSVE
researchers of being attacked while conducting a routine check in the camp. The
ISIS enforcers grabbed hold of her hair and beat her until other SDF guards
came to her rescue. While they beat her, they shouted, “What your women (YPJ
soldiers) did in al Bab, we will do the same. We are not less than them.” [12]
That ISIS women can get weapons is not inconceivable, as we were told
about women having phones and trading in illicit sim cards that they somehow
procure from locals. Medecins Sans Frontieres staff
is reported to have treated four women in the camp for gunshot wounds. Mustafa
Bali, spokesman for the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and a member
of the YPG who defeated ISIS forces in Syria earlier this year, in a Monday
tweet warned of worsening conditions in Al-Hol camp, stating, ” [conditions in the camps] are deteriorating
sharply… Daesh (IS) militants have stepped up their regrouping efforts
through women in the camp recently”, adding ” “This is going to be very dangerous in future unless governments take responsibility for
their citizens.” [13]
This is
the second killing in the camps this year indeed, and thousands of innocent
children, most very young, are on a daily basis being exposed to these violent
women who want to convince them to join and support ISIS. “The lack of action on al-Hol will
certainly come back to haunt us,” former Syria adviser to the Pentagon Jasmine
El-Gamal warns, adding, “This is no longer a disaster in the making; it is
a full-blown security threat.” [14]
To date,
ICSVE has interviewed over 200 former ISIS cadres, many of them wives held in the
SDF administered camps, where they are housed with their small children. We
find the majority of ISIS former members are disillusioned and now view ISIS as
an un-Islamic, corrupt and overly brutal organization that they have no desire
to keep serving. While many Europeans
fear ISIS women and their children, ICSVE researchers have been working with
European justice and security officials to try to repatriate ISIS men and women
to have them face justice at home. Arguably, some should rightly be feared, as
they continue to be violent. However, the majority are exhausted and ready to return
to their home countries and face justice. In the camps, most of the women are
living in fear, and their children, who are innocent of any crimes other than
being taken to or born in ISIS, are subject to violent enforcers and ISIS
propaganda on a daily basis. The
children need to be brought to safety and the SDF needs to be relieved of this
burden. All of them need to be brought
home, where their respective justice systems can deal with them appropriately.
Reference for this Article
Speckhard, Anne & Shajkovci, Ardian (October 1, 2019). Another Woman killed in Camp Hol, Syria by ISIS Enforcers: The Syrian Democratic Forces Need Our Assistance. Homeland Security Today.
Author Biographies
Anne
Speckhard, Ph.D., is
Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE)
and serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Georgetown
University School of Medicine. She has interviewed over 600 terrorists, their
family members and supporters in various parts of the world including in
Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia, the Former Soviet Union and the
Middle East. In the past two years, she and ICSVE staff have been collecting
interviews (n=196) with ISIS defectors, returnees and prisoners, studying their
trajectories into and out of terrorism, their experiences inside ISIS, as well
as developing counter narratives from these interviews. She has also been
training key stakeholders in law enforcement, intelligence, educators, and
other countering violent extremism professionals on the use of
counter-narrative messaging materials produced by ICSVE both locally and
internationally as well as studying the use of children as violent actors by
groups such as ISIS and consulting on how to rehabilitate them. In 2007, she
was responsible for designing the psychological and Islamic challenge aspects
of the Detainee Rehabilitation Program in Iraq to be applied to 20,000 +
detainees and 800 juveniles. She is a sought after counterterrorism expert and
has consulted to NATO, OSCE, foreign governments and to the U.S. Senate &
House, Departments of State, Defense, Justice, Homeland Security, Health &
Human Services, CIA and FBI and CNN, BBC, NPR, Fox News, MSNBC, CTV, and in
Time, The New York Times, The Washington Post, London Times and many other
publications. She regularly speaks and publishes on the topics of the
psychology of radicalization and terrorism and is the author of several books,
including Talking to Terrorists, Bride of
ISIS, Undercover Jihadi and ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate.
Her publications are found here: https://georgetown.academia.edu/AnneSpeckhard and on the ICSVE website http://www.icsve.org Follow @AnneSpeckhard
Ardian
Shajkovci, Ph.D., is
the Director of Research and a Senior Research Fellow at the International Center
for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). He has conducted primary research
on ISIS and al Shabaab, as well as trained key stakeholders in law enforcement,
intelligence, education, and other CT and CVE professionals on the use of
counter-narrative materials produced by ICSVE both locally and internationally.
He has conducted fieldwork in Western Europe, the Balkans, Central Asia,
Africa, and the Middle East, mostly recently in Syria, Jordan and Iraq. Disengagement from terrorism, violent extremist and terrorist
group media communication strategy and information security, messaging and
counter-messaging, and the strengthening of resilience to violent extremism and
terrorism through the application of the rule of law represent some areas of
research interests. He holds a doctorate in Public Policy
and Administration, with a focus on Homeland Security Policy, from Walden
University. He obtained his M.A. degree in Public Policy and Administration
from Northwestern University and a B.A. degree in International Relations and
Diplomacy from Dominican University. He is also an adjunct professor teaching
counterterrorism and CVE courses at Nichols College.
Endnotes
[1] Wladimir van Wilgenberg
(October 1, 2010) One woman killed after ISIS-motivated riot in Syria’s al-Hol
camp. Kurdistan24. https://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/c0fb39cd-f364-46ee-a77a-2da8f1bb7905
[2] Speckhard, A., & Shajkovci, A. (2019). “Waiting for
the return of Islamic State caliphate among ISIS enforcers in al Hol, Ain Issa,
and Roj Camps in Syria.” ICSVE, https://www.icsve.org/waiting-for-the-return-of-the-islamic-state-caliphate-among-isis-enforcers-in-al-hol-ain-issa-and-roj-camps-in-syria/
[3] Ibid.
[4] 24France. (2019). “Woman
killed, dozens detained in Syria camp: Kurd source,” https://www.france24.com/en/20190930-woman-killed-dozens-detained-in-syria-camp-kurd-source?ref=tw&fbclid=IwAR3elRgu7tTyfwyeN40uv5pX7inT2opUeSbwuglOuqK-2OOIGR6bSuOZMrY
[5] ANHA. (2019). “One ISIS woman killed, 7
injured, 50 women arrested in al-Hol camp,” https://hawarnews.com/en//haber/one-isis-woman-killed-7-injured-50-women-arrested-in-al-hol-camp-h11719.html
[6] The Telegraph. (2019). “Female Isil supporter killed in row over makeshift
Sharia court in Syrian camp,” https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/30/female-isil-supporter-killed-row-makeshift-sharia-court-insyrian/
[7] Speckhard, Anne (2012). Talking to
Terrorists: Understanding Psychosocial Motivations of Militant Jihadi
Terrorists, Mass Hostage Takers, Suicide Bombers and “Martyrs”. Advances Press, https://www.amazon.com/Talking-Terrorists-Understanding-Psycho-Social-Motivations/dp/1935866532
[8] Speckhard, A., & Shajkovci, A. “Waiting
for the return of the Islamic State Caliphate among ISIS enforcers in al Hol,
Ain Issa and Roj Camps in Syria.”
[9] Ibid.
[10] Eisa
Saadu, a Yazidi activist reported that a kidnapped Yazidi girl in her twenties
was beaten to death by ISIS women inside the al Hol camp after she tried to
escape from them. See, for example, https://clarionproject.org/sex-slaves-being-held-for-ransom-by-iran/
[11] Speckhard, A., & Shajkovci, A. “Waiting
for the return of the Islamic State Caliphate among ISIS enforcers in al Hol,
Ain Issa and Roj Camps in Syria.”
[12] Ibid.
[13] Dadouch, S. (2019). “Security forces respond with
gunfire to protests at Syrian detention camps.” The Washington Post, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/security-forces-respond-with-gunfire-to-protests-at-syrian-detention-camp/2019/09/30/17e69b74-e3b4-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html
[14] The Telegraph. “Female
Isil supporter killed in row over makeshift Sharia court in Syrian camp.”