The exodus of the last inhabitants of the Islamic State

EZ-ZOR DEIR PROVINCE, Syria – Men released from the last territory of the Islamic State have been ordered to sit behind one of the two lines painted orange on the ground rocky and desert: the Syrians were behind a line, the Iraqis behind each other.

The women, who wore the hijab and carried young children by hand, were grouped together in a different place, also separated by nationality.

Many of those who escaped were so injured by the attacks that they had to be moved on mattresses until then in the open air to be able to reach the US-backed coalition.

In the middle of the morning, US special forces arrived in a convoy of armored vehicles. Men suspected of being fighters of the Islamic State were ordered to approach in one line, arms outstretched, while soldiers and sniffer dogs examined them. They then took their fingerprints, a photo and interrogated them.

In the past two weeks, thousands of people have left the village of Al Baghuz Fawqani, the last ISIS-controlled territory in Iraq and Syria, where the group ultimately dominated a territory the size of the Kingdom. -United.

This state has almost completely disappeared. Last month, the group went from three villages to two, then to one. At present, the militants are confined in an area the size of Central Park.

In the west, they are cornered by Syrian government forces. To the south is the Iraqi border, where Iraqi troops are waiting. From the north and east, they are attacked by the Kurdish and Arab armies supported by the United States, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces.

While the siege is closed, even those who joined the caliphate at first try to save themselves.

According to Kurdish officials, the majority of those who have managed to reach this point in the desert in recent days are the families of activists – their multiple wives and their many children – mixed with only a small portion of the local population. Faced with the lack of food, the families said they had to boil the grbad growing on the roads.

A large number of fugitives are foreigners, mainly Iraqis who lived under the Islamic State regime before fleeing to this corner of southeastern Syria during the liberation of Iraqi cities. Among the fugitives who arrived last week, there were also Germans, French, British, Swedes and Russians, a sign of the great popularity of the group, which managed to attract 40,000 recruits from 100 countries in this nascent state. .

Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces, said that representatives of the Islamic State had called for security measures, but that request had been rejected. "We will fight against all," he said.

However, US officials who spoke in exchange for maintaining anonymity said that safe behavior in the Syrian province of Idlib was still under review and an army commander said the group had asked for a food truck.

One of the women who went on Sunday returned for the second time. The 22-year-old Amal Mohamed al-Soussi woman arrived in the desert with her two little daughters by the hand.

She said that after the murder of her husband – an Islamic State sniper – during the battle of Al Raqa in 2017, she had gone to the army and that she had been detained in a camp for eight months.

Then, one day, she and dozens of wives of members of the Islamic State were trucked to the desert, where they were sent back to the armed group. "They ordered us to leave and told us, 'They are now in their state,'" he said. "We understood that it was an exchange of prisoners."

The woman explained that she was a citizen engaged in the caliphate, but that starvation brought her to surrender. She said that for weeks, she and her daughters were living on animal feed. Another woman said she was looking for a plant that grows in crevices between buildings and roundabouts to boil and force herself to eat.

The growing danger faced by families of the Islamic State was evident in the number of people who presented themselves daily with injuries.

A woman whose leg was broken by shrapnel shot down into the arms of the truck in which she arrived; they helped her limping to the place where other women were waiting for them to check them. An older man disappeared on a mattress because of a back injury. A woman in her twenties managed to reach the revision area before dying a few moments later. His family could not do more than cover it with a sheet.

That afternoon, the security forces dug a grave for the girl on the rocky ground where the newcomers were being treated.

There was only one person in his family, a cousin. He helped his body down to the grave and found his face long enough to turn him to Mecca. The men who dug the grave raised their hands to heaven for five seconds.

There were three others next to the new tomb, one of them measuring barely one meter long. It was the last resting place for those who did not survive the caliphate.

* Copyright: 2019 The New York Times Press Office