Wadhban Massar Madjid joined the Islamic State organization (ISIS) in 2014, an Iraqi student who was then 28 years old, making his family live as pariahs. His loved ones, tossed between Iraq and Syria, from war zones to refugee camps, have lived in hell for eleven years. “Since my brother joined ISIS, the whole family has been linked to ISIS”complained Qadissa Massar Madjid. The 35-year-old Iraqi woman ended up living, in August 2024, with her 7-year-old daughter, three sisters, a sister-in-law and their children, in a makeshift house on the outskirts of Mosul, in northern Iraq.
A chance encounter pulls them out of an inseparable situation. They have no relatives they can ask for collateral so they can leave the jihadist family rehabilitation camp in Al-Jadaa, south of Mosul. Returning to their village in Sayyed Gharib, in Salahaddin province, was also unthinkable. “Our houses were destroyed, most of the residents were displaced because of the militia (Shia) Moqtada Al-Sadr’s Saraya al-Salam occupied the area and prevented us from returning.”explained Qadissa Massar Madjid. Tarek Fadel, a 55-year-old driver, met in front of the Al-Jadaa camp, offered them shelter and housed them in a house he owned in Mosul.
But the family problems are not over yet. Neighbors greeted them with stones. “Even children are insulted on the street. When called to national security, we are humiliated and insulted”said Tarek Fadel, who is married to one of his sisters. Eight years after the fall of the ISIS organization which proclaimed itself as a caliphate in a third of Iraq’s territory (2014-2017), Iraqi society still harbors strong hatred towards the black-flagged people who spread terror in the areas they control.
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