Ola Ulmo remembers particularly well the evenings at the cafe in Damascus. Conversations with Syrian friends about what was going on, some who had just had to hurriedly gather a few possessions and flee to the city. – It was quite unreal for us to sit there in Damascus and meet colleagues who came from Raqqa, Deir ez-Zur and other areas in north-eastern Syria, Ulmo tells news now, ten years later. In 2014, the Syrian civil war raged in full force. Ulmo was in the country to carry out aid work for the Red Cross. Ola Ulmo in Syria in May 2015. Photo: Olav A. Saltbones / Red Cross But further north something completely new was emerging. It would have enormous consequences. Today, ten years later, IS, or the Islamic State, is greatly weakened. The state, the “caliphate”, no longer exists. But the group never completely disappeared. And now IS is considered to be a greater danger than for a long time. Showed off beheadings – It was then that the scale of what they were doing began to dawn on us. How brutal the methods they used, and what kind of rule they introduced in the areas they controlled, says Ulmo about the summer months of 2014. – That was when IS really established itself in north-east Syria and eventually Iraq as well, he continues. IS’s propaganda films showed IS fighters waving IS flags in a parade. The pictures and videos shocked people all over the world. Men in black on cargo planes and motorbikes racing through the desert landscape. Black flags with white lettering fluttering in the wind. IS fighters proudly shared gruesome propaganda films, featuring beheadings, crucifixions and people being burned alive, on the internet. Never before had you seen such an advanced media strategy from a terrorist group. Cities that IS fully or partially controlled in 2014 and 2015 – They were very forward-looking when it came to communication. Brutal images emerged from their own communication channels of beheadings. They really wanted to show what kind of government they put into practice, says Ulmo. – It was difficult for us to understand. Not only foreign aid workers in Syria, but also for ordinary Syrians. Ola Ulmo was in Homs in Syria in November 2015. He was here with colleagues from the Syrian Red Crescent. Photo: Olav A. Saltbones / Red Cross But the violence did not scare everyone. The propaganda inspired terrorist attacks in Europe, Australia and Africa. And it lured thousands of foreign fighters from all over the world to the “caliphate”. IS attacks in Europe and the USA In the years after 2013, the Islamic State was behind a number of attacks and terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East, Afghanistan and Africa. But several attacks in Europe and the US are also linked to the group: May 2014: Four people are killed when a man opens fire on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, Belgium. October 2015: More than 100 are killed in a suicide attack in Ankara, Turkey. October 2015: More than 200 are killed when a bomb goes off on a flight between Egypt and Russia. December 2015: 14 people are killed when a married couple starts shooting around in San Bernardino. March 2016: Suicide bombers attack a metro station and Brussels airport. More than 30 people are killed. June 2016: Almost 50 people are killed when a man starts shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando, USA. July 2016: Almost 90 people are killed when a man deliberately drives a truck into a crowd in Nice, France. August 2016: A child detonates a suicide bomb at a wedding in Gaziantep. Almost 60 people are killed. December 2016: A man drives a truck into a Christmas market in Berlin. 13 people are killed. April 2017: Five people are killed when a man drives a truck down a pedestrian street in Stockholm. May 2017: Suicide bombers attack an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. 22 people are killed. June 2017: Eight people are killed when a man drives a car into a group of pedestrians on London Bridge. A legacy of trauma At its most powerful, in 2014 and 2015, IS controlled large cities in Syria and Iraq. It is estimated that they ruled over around 10 million people. In retrospect, people especially remember the IS genocide and abuses against the Yezidis, a Kurdish minority who live in particular in the Sinjar area in northern Iraq. IS propaganda films showed foreign fighters destroying their passports. – This is a trauma that will be passed down for generations, says Alhan Morrad to news. Morrad is himself a Yezidi. She was 24 years old and living in Sinjar when IS attacked on 3 August 2014. The Yezidis were slaughtered by IS soldiers in what became known as the “Sinjar massacre”. Hundreds of thousands were displaced from their villages. Without water and food sought refuge in the Sinjar mountain, which was besieged by IS. Members of the Yazidi minority had had to flee their homes in Sinjar in Iraq in August 2014. Here, many were on their way on foot towards the border with Syria at Mount Sinjar on 11 August. Photo: Rodi Said / Reuters It is estimated that at least 6,000 Yezidi women and girls were held and sold as sex slaves. The IS fighters tried to wipe out the Yezidis through mass rape. Morrad says that she managed to escape to safety with her family. – I saw many horrible things. But thank God we survived, says Morrad. Villages in ruins Today she works for the Church’s Aid in Northern Iraq and helps Yezidis who survived IS’s reign of terror. Among other things, they use art therapy as a way for survivors to process trauma. 34-year-old Alhan Morrad is from Bashiqa in northern Iraq. She was living in Sinjar when IS attacked in the summer of 2014. She makes no secret of the fact that the Yezidis are still facing major problems. Many survivors struggle with major trauma and depression. – Women tell me that they don’t want to live anymore. That they are unable to talk to family members and their children. That they are unable to do normal everyday tasks, says Morrad. In addition, over 100,000 Yazidis still live in poor conditions in refugee camps in Iraq. Their villages are destroyed and abandoned. They have nothing to return to. IS executed people by cutting off their heads. Often people were forced to watch. Photo: Church aid IS bought and sold Yezidi women who were taken as slaves in markets. A portrait of a woman crying. Two hands with nail polish clamp over her mouth. A blindfolded woman eats an infant with a knife and fork. Many Yezidis were forced to flee their villages. Many died in Mount Sinjar without access to food, water and shelter. Photo: The Church’s emergency aid Art therapy can be used to process trauma, show hidden emotions and promote creativity. Photo: The Church’s emergency aid This summer also saw the news that the Iraqi authorities want to close the refugee camps. Morrad believes that many Yezidis would rather try to get to Europe illegally than return to a home they fled from ten years ago. – This is the country they were born in. But they cannot imagine a life that is safe or good here, says Morrad. “Grounding ground for a new generation” Work on reconstruction has now started. On Thursday, local Yezidi leaders announced that they will build a brand new village, with money from the international community, The Washington Post reported. The extent of IS’s mass killings and abuses is still becoming known. Here, the remains of corpses are exhumed from a mass grave in Tal Afar in Iraq in July this year. Photo: ZAID AL-OBEIDI / AFP It is not just the Yezidis’ situation that proves impossible to solve. When IS grew, the United States formed a large international coalition to fight them. Russia also got involved in the war. Much of the fighting on the ground, however, was carried out by local Kurdish groups. And in 2019, IS’ caliphate was wiped out. The leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, had been killed. There were also thousands of IS fighters. The rest were interned in Kurdish-controlled camps, such as Al-Hol and Roj, in northeast Syria. There were also the women who had joined IS, and their children – many small and orphaned. The city of Raqqa in northern Syria served for a long time as IS’s capital. It was completely destroyed in the war. The image is taken from a drone film from 2017. Photo: Gabriel Chaim / AP And there they sat. Almost 10,000 male IS fighters are still detained. The number of women and children in Al-Hol is almost 45,000, according to US authorities. Many of the children have grown up. “The camps are characterized as a breeding ground for a new generation of IS,” writes the think tank The International Center for Counter Terrorism (ICCT). In the Al-Hol camp in north-east Syria, IS women and their children have been detained for years. Around 45,000 people live here today, under miserable conditions. There is no solution in sight for them. Photo: DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP Although IS was defeated in Iraq and Syria, the group never completely disappeared. They had provinces in Africa, in the Arabian Peninsula and in Afghanistan. Now there are warnings that the group is growing. In March, they were, among other things, behind the deadliest terrorist attack in 20 years in Europe when IS terrorists started shooting during a concert in Moscow. 150 people were shot. Last week, the police in Austria prevented a planned terrorist attack against a Taylor Swift concert. The suspects have ties to IS. Terrorist researcher Aaron Zelin believes that IS has become more difficult to fight: – They are more integrated and more robust because all the provinces are better coordinated with each other, Zelin told news. Kurdish fighters were crucial in the fight against IS. Women also fought on the Kurdish side. Photo: DELIL SOULEIMAN / AFP Interested in abroad? Listen to the foreign affairs editor’s recent podcast: Published 18.08.2024, at 19.22
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The Islamic State took power ten years ago – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
