After the start of the war in Syria, fuelled by internal groups but also by external actors with the intention of overthrowing the government of Bashar Al-Assad, many young people from different European countries reached Syrian territory with the direct support of Western intelligence agencies. They almost always entered via Turkey, which became the main transit corridor: a safe and relatively uncontrolled passage that allowed thousands of foreign fighters to move from Europe to the Syrian war zones.The war in Iraq launched by the United States in 2003 created the ideal conditions for the rise of ISIS, as stated by General David Petraeus’s former military adviser: “ISIS would not exist if we had not invaded Iraq”. This statement was made ten years after the American military occupation, but it clearly explains the repercussions that the American armed intervention had on the entire region. The birth of ISIS was not accidental, and neither was its expansion, either in Iraq or Syria. On the contrary, it ended up fitting perfectly into the US logic following 11th September 2001, which had identified Syria as a future theatre of conflict, with the probable aim of weakening Damascus and isolating it from its main regional ally, Iran.The group’s media propaganda was massive and highly structured, exploiting social vulnerabilities in Europe and leading to the recruitment of nearly 30,000 people, including many European women from France, Germany and even Italy, who travelled to Syria to become the wives of jihadists.Although ISIS was formally defeated in Baghuz in 2019, in the battle that marked the end of its territorial control in Syria, it continues to live on in the thoughts and actions of the female prisoners, in an atmosphere saturated with anger and fanaticism, like a fuse ready to explode. The director reports that after the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the foreign fighters barricaded themselves inside the section for about two weeks, preventing food and other essential goods from entering, convinced, as she tells us, that Al-Jolani16 would come to free them. They only surrendered when hunger got the better of them. Many of them said they did not want to leave Syria and the camp, claiming they wanted to wait for the arrival of the new Caliphate.Al-Jolani’s seizure of power, as reported by both the director of Al-Hol and the head of security at the Roj camp, has exacerbated attacks from outside by ISIS cells still active on Syrian territory, increasing their number and intensity and creating an ever-greater problem in terms of security management.
