Sophie Kasiki stared
at the photograph of a young English-speaking boy in a camouflage uniform and
black bandana covered in Arabic calling for unbelievers to be killed in the
latest Islamic State propaganda.
Her eyes welled and
she swallowed hard. “That could have been my son,” she said, her firm voice
wavering. “That’s hard for me to say and makes me want to cry. I would have
killed us both rather than let him become a killer, rather than let him fall
into the claws of those monsters.”
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The “monsters” she
is referring to are Islamic State, and Kasiki weighs her words; she knows her
four-year-old son was only ever at risk of falling into the jihadis’ lair
because she had taken him there.
Kasiki is one of the
few western women who have been to the capital of the Isis-declared caliphate
at Raqqa in Syria and returned to recount the tale. It was, she said in her
first interview with a British newspaper, like a journey into a hell from which
there seemed no return.
“I have felt so
guilty. I have asked myself how I can live with what I have done, taking my son
to Syria,” she told the Observer. “I have hated those who manipulated me,
exploited my naivety, my weakness, my insecurity. I have hated myself.”
About 220 French
women are thought to be with Isis in Iraq and Syria, according to the country’s
intelligence services. Two years ago only 10% of those leaving France to join
the jihadis were women. Today the proportion is 35%. A third are converts, like
Kasiki. Her story, Dans la Nuit de Daech (In the Night of Daesh), published by
Robert Laffont Editions, reads like a thriller.
In the night of Daech
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In the night of Daech, recounts Sophie
Kasiki’s journey to Raqqa, life in captivity and then escape.
Kasiki, 34, a petite
but fiercely determined woman with neatly braided hair (who will not give her
real name for fear of Isis reprisals), seems an unlikely recruit to the
Islamist cause. Born in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and raised in a
fervently Catholic and comfortable household of strong, independent women, she
was nine when sent to live with her older sister near Paris after their mother
died. The death of the woman she still calls her “guardian angel” sparked a
childhood depression that cast a long shadow into adolescence and adulthood; a
“hole in the heart” that even a happy marriage and motherhood failed to close.
While employed as a
social worker helping mainly immigrant families in the Paris suburbs, Kasiki
decided to convert to Islam, without telling her fervently atheist husband,
believing it would fill the gap in her life. Her new faith brought only
temporary psychological comfort, but introduced her to three Muslim men, 10
years her junior, whom she nicknamed Les Petits (the little ones) and teased
like younger brothers.
In September 2014,
the three disappeared, later turning up in Syria, from where they maintained
daily contact with Kasiki. She saw herself as a conduit between three lost
boys, who simply needed to know their mothers were missing them to catch the
next plane home, and their distraught families. Slowly the roles reversed. “I
thought I was in control of the situation, but I realise now they were probably
trained to recruit people like me,” she said. “Little by little they played on
my weaknesses. They knew I was an orphan and I had converted to Islam, they
knew I was insecure …”
On 20 February 2015,
Kasiki told her husband she was travelling to work in an orphanage in Istanbul
for a few weeks and taking their son. Instead she took the well-worn jihadi
route to southern Turkey and into Syria.
Installed in the
Isis stronghold of Raqqa, the reality of daily life was predictably different
from the “paradise” painted by her hometown friends. Kasiki was ordered not to
go out alone and only then covered from head to toe, to hand over her passport,
and to limit communications with her family in France.
At the city’s
Isis-run maternity hospital, where she was to work, she was shocked by the
squalid conditions, staff indifference to patients’ suffering, and a hierarchy
in the city that put “arrogant foreign fighters” at the top of the social heap
and Syrians at the bottom. The family apartment Kasiki was allocated had been
hastily abandoned by its Syrian owners and their caged canaries served as an
increasingly potent metaphor for her and her son’s confinement.
It took just 10 days
for Kasiki to wake from what she describes as a “paralysing torpor”, prompted
by regular missives and family photos emailed by her desperate husband, and to
realise her terrible mistake.
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“I asked to go home.
Every day, I said I missed my family and my son needed to see his father. To
begin with they made excuses, then came the threats. They said I was a woman
alone with a child and I couldn’t go anywhere, and if I tried to leave I would be
stoned or killed.
“I was terrified
someone would come and take me to prison and I’d have to leave my son with
them. I spoke to him all the time: I tried to impress on him things he wouldn’t
forget; that his father and I loved him; that he had to be kind to girls. I
talked in the hope it would sink in, and if something happened to me and he
fell into Daesh’s clutches he would have my voice in his head and would not be
able to kill … I was like a lioness trying to protect him.”
When one of the
Frenchmen demanded to take the boy to pray at the mosque, she snapped: “Keep
your hands off my boy.” The response was a punch in the face. “I was in a
foreign city where I knew nobody and didn’t speak the language. I looked at my
son and knew that I had made a monumental mistake, the worst of my life. I knew
then I had to be strong and do everything possible to get him out of there.”
The Frenchmen took Kasiki and her son to the madaffa (guest house), a prison in
all but name and home to dozens of foreign women, where she was shocked to see
young children watching Isis decapitations and killings on television while
their mothers cheered and clapped. “The women saw Isis fighters as their Prince
Charming, someone who was strong, powerful and would protect them. The only way
out of the madaffa was to marry one. In reality, these western women were just
wombs to make babies for Daesh.”
The following day,
while her jailers were organising a marriage, Kasiki discovered an unlocked
door and walked out. She kept walking.
Her account of her
escape from Raqqa is the edge-of-your-seat stuff of thriller movies. After
being taken in by a local family, who risked their lives sheltering them,
Kasiki made contact with Syrian opposition fighters, mobilised by her husband
in France. On the night of 24 April 2015, a young Syrian took Kasiki, with her
son hiding under her niqab, by motorbike to the Turkish border. Had they been
stopped at a checkpoint or caught fleeing, all would have faced death.
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In Paris, Kasiki was
interrogated by French intelligence officers, remanded in jail for two months
and prevented from any contact with her family. Today she and her husband are
reconciled, but she is still facing possible charges for child kidnapping.
“I have gone back
over everything and asked myself, how did this happen, how could I have done
this? Yes, I was naive, confused, fragile, vulnerable even, but how were these
ordinary, not particularly smart boys intelligent enough to brainwash me? It is
a question I still ask myself.”
Kasiki knows that
she has had an improbably lucky escape, one that many western girls and women
who have been lured by the siren calls of Islamic State and trapped in Syria
will never enjoy.
After her return to
France, her husband showed her a photo Isis had sent him of their son posing
with an automatic rifle. “It must have been taken while we were there, but it
was the first time I’d seen it. I felt sick to the heart,” she said.
“I will always feel
bad about taking my son into this hellish nightmare, so bad I often feel
completely paralysed with guilt. But I have to be strong and go on. The most
difficult part is over. We have escaped from the clutches of these people and
we are alive.
“Now I must prevent
other people being drawn into this horror. What can I say? Don’t go.”
Response:
This article gives a different perspective behind the tactics of ISIS. Kasiki retells the story of her decision in going to join ISIS and she got out. Since this is a personal story there is definitely bias. She takes account of what happened to her and that has to come with bias because she is putting in her views. However, even with this I thoroughly enjoyed the article because it lent a different view. Kasiki first explained some reasons on why she would actually join ISIS. It first started with some people she knew that were in ISIS and she maintained contact with. Those guys later then preyed on her insecurities and manipulated her into coming and joining ISIS. When she actually did she learned of the horrors that were in ISIS. Kasiki was able to identify the brainwashing that took place with the mothers and the children. Although in the article Kasiki was a foreigner so her perspective would be different from people who are from the country. She felt alienated so that skewered perspective. Kasiki's audience may be for people who are thinking about joining ISIS but most probably for citizens plagued by ISIS wanting to get more insight.
Citation:
Willsher,
Kim. "‘I Went to Join Isis in Syria, Taking My Four-year-old. It Was a
Journey into Hell’." Theguardian. Guardian News and Media Limited, 09 Jan.
2016. Web. 11 Jan. 2016.
