Barbaric ISIS brides turn refugee camp into caliphate

From the Australian, who have it from The Times

The woman’s body had been stuffed in a septic tank where it lay hidden for a month before the camp authorities discovered it and pulled it into the sunlight. Despite the corpse’s frightful condition the injuries were discernible: the victim had died from repeated blows to head, possibly with an iron bar.

None of the women I spoke to within al-Hawl camp that day would discuss the rising violence engulfing the section known as “the Annex” which holds 3,100 foreign Isis wives — “muhajirat” — and their 7,000 children. But two of the women there referred elliptically to a female, apparently a Chinese Uighur, who had disappeared after she was caught having an affair – punishable by death under Islamic State codes of justice — with an Iraqi refugee, and yesterday an internal security report suggested that the corpse belonged to her.

Yet everyone knew who the killers were: female members of al-Hisbah, the morality police, who are embroiled in a violent bid to reimpose Isis control over the al-Hawl camp, where over 68,000 people, the majority women and children, have been corralled since the fall of the last slither of the caliphate’s territory in Baghouz six months ago.

Everyone knew who the killers were: female members of al-Hisbah, the morality police, who are embroiled in a violent bid to reimpose Isis control over the al-Hawl camp, where more than 68,000 people, mostly women and children, have been corralled since the caliphate collapsed six months ago. The violent grip of these fanatics extends beyond “the Annex” to the tens of thousands of other camp children who are showing signs of becoming even more radicalised than their parents.

“The violence here is getting worse and worse,” Aylul Rizgar, 30, the Syrian woman responsible for the camp’s management, told The Times. She said that every time Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Isis leader, “releases a statement calling for an uprising, the foreign women here become more uncontrollable and set about an Isis revival”.

On Monday the killing began again in the Annex, this time when an Isis woman grabbed a gun from a guard sent to break up a protest by 50 hard-core Isis loyalists; one woman died and six others were wounded in the ensuing shootout.

A report by the Pentagon released in August noted that “minimal security” at the largest refugee camp in northern Syria “had created the conditions for the uncontested spread of Isis’s ideology within the camp” and suggested that the camp was becoming the incubator for the next generation of fighters. . . al-Hawl’s numbers swelled in February as thousands of Isis families fleeing Baghuz – the “Baghuziat” – arrived.

The original residents and camp authorities noticed that the Baghuziat was well organised and disciplined and soon strict dress codes were enforced, turning the camp back to black as women once again adopted full niqab and gloved their hands.

The behaviour of the children in the camp was the first indicator of the change. At first, traumatised by their exposure to battle, they had appeared friendly with camp staff and guards. Yet today they bombard patrols from members of the 400-strong security unit guarding the camp, the “asayish”, with rocks and stones. “At first the kids were OK, friendly even,” Jaber Mustafa, 34, one of the management staff, said. “Since then they have been told to keep away from us or face punishment by Hisbah. Now when I walk into the wire I feel they are reorganising around me and we are met with barrages of rocks. Even the vaccination teams get rocks thrown at them.”

Though the movement of the adult muhajirat females is limited to the Annex, their children have easy access to the other eight sections of the camp containing Syrians and Iraqis. In the foetid conditions and the absence of any schooling they are easily prone to further radicalisation.

A prominent Sunni sheikh in Raqqa who visited the camp to assess the possibility of returning some Syrian families to his own community said he had been appalled by the worsening levels of Isis indoctrination. “I was never as scared of Islamic State as I am scared of the generation of children being raised in al-Hawl,” Sheikh Hweidi al-Shlash, 52, said.

…a campaign of tent burning was launched by Hisbah against anyone suspected of disloyalty to the caliphate. According to a report by the United Nations Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs released on Sunday, 128 tents were burnt across the camp in the first three weeks of September alone.

“Hisbah have reorganised themselves here,” Ms Rizgar said. “They have one group that guards the camp, another responsible for burning down tents and making threats, and another for the beating and killing

. . . this isn’t about force – it is about changing the mindset of the women here and that cannot be achieved in these conditions…”

I feel sorry for the children but I really do not want the danger they present, young as they are, nor their mothers in my country. They left of their own accord – why should we take them back?