DUBAI: The escaped wife of a Daesh fighter has revealed what life is like in Syria’s “Little Britain,” a neighborhood of British fighters in Raqqa.
Islam Mitat told The Sunday Times how she was forced to go to Syria by her British husband, referred to only as Ahmed, after believing the newly-married pair were heading to Turkey to start a new life together.
The 23-year-old from Morocco said she was surrounded by Daesh brides and fighters from the UK, which made the area feel like “Little Britain.”
Mitat told the newspaper that she met Sally Jones, referred to in the press as the “White Widow,” and sisters Salma and Zahra Halane from Manchester who had been dubbed the “Terror Twins” by the British media.
Mitat said the girls enjoyed reading about themselves on British news sites and would often visit each other for tea.
“I was so shocked,” she told The Sunday Times.
She also told the newspaper of how the young girls who had made headlines around the world had grown up: “The twins, they don’t look anything like the pictures you have of them. They’ve changed too much. They look like mothers.”
Mitat met her first husband on a Muslim dating site and claimed that after three months of marriage he told her that he had secured a job in Turkey.
Instead of settling in Turkey, she claims that her husband forced her to join him in Syria.
She said: ‘That is the problem with us women. We trust men too much.’
Mitat would go on to marry two more men after her first husband died.
She said that as the fighting intensified, mothers began to fear for their children.
“Especially the mothers wanted to leave because they think of their babies,” Mitat said. “But they were scared of their husbands.”
Mitat made her escape by disguising herself as a member of a Syrian family on the way to a wedding in March this year.
She made it past the Daesh checkpoints and ran to safety behind the lines of the anti-Daesh Syrian Democratic Forces.
She is now in a northern Syria-based safehouse with her son Abdullah and daughter Maria, both from separate marriages, but hopes to make her way to Europe.
“I never supported (Daesh),” she said. “Never. All I want is something better for me and my children. I just want to live again.”
Escaped Daesh bride reveals what life was like in Syria’s ‘Little Britain’
Escaped Daesh bride reveals what life was like in Syria’s ‘Little Britain’
UN arrives in east DR Congo town to prepare ceasefire mission
- Eastern DRC has been ravaged by three decades of conflict and faces renewed violence
KINSHASA: A team of UN peacekeepers arrived in the flashpoint eastern Democratic Republic of Congo town of Uvira to prepare the deployment of a ceasefire?monitoring mission, the force said Tuesday.
Eastern DRC has been ravaged by three decades of conflict and faces renewed violence following the 2021 resurgence of the M23 armed group, backed by Rwanda and its army.
The M23 seized large swathes of territory in the east and launched an offensive in December on Uvira, a strategic town in South Kivu province near the border with Burundi.
The assault drew condemnation from the United States, which has mediated a fragile peace deal between the DRC and Rwanda.
That agreement provided for the UN’s DRC peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to carry out a field-monitoring operation with a view to implementing a permanent ceasefire.
On Tuesday, MONUSCO and the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region, a grouping of surrounding countries, said in a statement they had deployed a joint exploratory and preliminary assessment mission to Uvira.
Scheduled to run until Friday, the mission focuses on assessing access, security, logistics and engagement needs, MONUSCO said.
The statement called the mission “an essential step toward deploying the future joint ceasefire?monitoring mechanism.”
In January, the M23 withdrew its last troops from Uvira, claiming it was responding to a US request. The Congolese army said it had retaken control of the town.
