Fatima finds it hard to convince people outside the detention camp that her grandchildren are not responsible for what their parents and grandfather did, and that they do not pose a danger to anyone. Having lived in camps for over three years, most ISIS families still do not know what future lies ahead.
The war was over in Mosul, but other battles were still unfolding. The returnees to the old Iraqi city are still dealing with poverty and disease, and with unidentified bodies buried under the rubble of demolished and mined buildings. Their recovery has become a daily occurrence, no longer newsworthy.
‘ISIS’ killed and moved on, the way viruses do. It resides in one place after it did what it did, and killed what it killed. Scientists expect a similar path for ‘Corona’.
Isn’t it strange that most Tunisian experts will give the same answer when you ask them about the reason behind the participation of thousands of Tunisians in the battles in Syria? The reason, they say, is: “Freedom!”
Everyone Daraj interviewed in Tunisia, from researchers to journalists and officials, confirm the existence of well-known entities behind sending Tunisians to Syria after the revolution broke out there.
More than a hundred young men left al-Alia town to join the war in Syria, between 2012-2014, the period of the “Troika Rule”, as Tunisians call the years when al-Nahda Movement, the Tunisian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, was in power.
In Bucca prison in Basra, the brutality of al-Ba’th and its officers was buttressed with the Salafi-Jihadist ideology. It was right there that Isis was born. Are we about to witness the birth of another monster?
It seems like episodes of the mystery of the death of Jordanian pilot Muaz al-Kasasbeh have begun to unfold. Al-Kasasbeh’s jet was shot down and he was burned alive in 2015 by Isis, in eastern Syria. “Daraj” reopened the file and sought the truth once more by conducting interviews with Isis leaders at their detention centers in Baghdad.
Iraqi security experts assert that eliminating Abu-Bakr al-Baghdady is crucial in the war on Isis. There are fears that the last reemergence of al-Baghdady may signal an attempt to regroup his forces.
