'ISIS Brides’ Open up in Syria Camp Documentary

Shamima Begum features in ‘The Return: Life After ISIS.’  - AFP
Shamima Begum features in ‘The Return: Life After ISIS.’ - AFP
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'ISIS Brides’ Open up in Syria Camp Documentary

Shamima Begum features in ‘The Return: Life After ISIS.’  - AFP
Shamima Begum features in ‘The Return: Life After ISIS.’ - AFP

“Okay, um... My name’s Shamima. I’m from the UK. I’m 19.”

Spoken with a nervous laugh, the introduction to a room full of women and restless babies could be the start of any young mothers’ support group.

But the speaker is Shamima Begum, the teenage “ISIS bride” who left Britain for Syria in 2015 to join the group, and whose desire to return sparked a right-wing press frenzy that saw her stripped of her citizenship.

The footage is captured in “The Return: Life After ISIS,” a documentary premiering Wednesday at the online Texas-based South By Southwest festival.

Spanish director Alba Sotorra got rare, extensive access to Begum and other Western women over several months in Syria’s Kurdish-run Roj camp, where they remain following the so-called caliphate’s collapse in 2019.

“I would say to the people in the UK, give me a second chance because I was still young when I left,” Begum tells the filmmakers, AFP reported.

“I just want them to put aside everything they’ve heard about me in the media,” she adds.

Begum left her London home aged just 15 to travel to Syria with two school friends, and married an ISIS fighter.

She was “found” by British journalists, heavily pregnant at another Syrian camp, in February 2019 — and her apparent lack of remorse in initial interviews drew outrage.

But Begum and fellow Westerners including US-born Hoda Muthana strike a very different and apologetic tone in Sotorra’s film.

The documentary follows “workshop” sessions in which the women write letters to their younger selves expressing regret about their departures for Syria, and plant a tree to remember their loved ones.

“It was known that Syria was a warzone and I still traveled into it with my own children — now how I did this I really don’t know looking back,” says one Western woman.

Begum recalls feeling like an “outsider” in London who wanted to “help the Syrians,” but claims on arrival she quickly realized ISIS were “trapping people” to boost the so-called caliphate’s numbers and “look good for the (propaganda) videos.”

Sotorra, the director, gained camp access thanks to Kurdish fighters she had followed in Syria for her previous film.

She set out to document the Kurdish women’s sacrifices in running a camp filled with their former enemies’ wives and children, but soon pivoted to the Western women.

“I will never be able to understand how a woman from the West can take this decision of leaving everything behind to join a group that is committing the atrocities that ISIS is committing,” Sotorra told AFP.

“I do understand now how you can make a mistake.”

On Sotorra’s arrival in March 2019, the women — fresh from a warzone — were “somehow blocked... not thinking and not feeling.”

“Shamima was a piece of ice when I met her,” Sotorra told AFP.

“She lost the kid when I was there... it took a while to be able to cry,” she recalled.

“I think it’s just surviving, you need to protect yourself to survive.”

Another factor is the enduring presence of “small but very powerful” groups of even “more radicalized women” who remain loyal to ISIS and exert pressure on their campmates.

“We had (other) women who joined in the beginning, and then they received pressure from other women so they stopped coming,” said Sotorra.

In the film, Begum claims she “had no choice but to say certain things” to journalists “because I lived in fear of these women coming to my tent one day and killing me and killing my baby.”

The question of what can and should be done with these women — and their children — plagues Western governments, sowing divisions among allies.

Last month, Britain’s Supreme Court rejected Begum’s bid to return to challenge a decision stripping her citizenship on national security grounds.

How much the women knew about — and abetted — ISIS's rapes, tortures and beheadings may never be known.

In the documentary, Begum denies she “knew about” or “supported these crimes,” dismissing claims she could have been in ISIS's feared morality police as a naive 15-year-old who did not even “speak the language.”

“I never even had a parking ticket back in my own country before... I never harmed anybody, I never killed anybody, I never did anything,” says Canadian Kimberly Polman.

An incredulous Kurdish woman points out that “maybe your husband killed my cousin.”

Sotorra believes the women could be useful back home in preventing the same mistake in future generations, and points to the cruelty of raising young children in this environment.

“It took them a while to realize that they have responsibility for (their) choice... they cannot just think ‘Okay, I regret, I go back, as if nothing has happened,’” she said.

“No, it’s not about this... you have to accept the consequences.”



European Leaders on Possibly Sending Peacekeepers into Ukraine

 Ukrainian servicemen of the 211th Pontoon Bridge Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine put up barbed wire as part of a system of new fortification, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukrainian servicemen of the 211th Pontoon Bridge Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine put up barbed wire as part of a system of new fortification, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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European Leaders on Possibly Sending Peacekeepers into Ukraine

 Ukrainian servicemen of the 211th Pontoon Bridge Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine put up barbed wire as part of a system of new fortification, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine February 14, 2025. (Reuters)
Ukrainian servicemen of the 211th Pontoon Bridge Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine put up barbed wire as part of a system of new fortification, amid Russia's attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region, Ukraine February 14, 2025. (Reuters)

European leaders were holding an emergency meeting in Paris on Monday to discuss their role in Ukraine's future after the United States announced it would sit down with Russia to seek an end to the three-year war.

Here is what some have said ahead of the meeting on the issue of sending peacekeeping troops into Ukraine:

BRITAIN

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said he is ready to send British troops to Ukraine as part of any postwar peacekeeping force.

"We're facing a generational challenge when it comes to national security," Starmer told reporters.

"I think there's a bigger piece here as well, which is that this isn't just about the front line in Ukraine. It's the front line of Europe and of the United Kingdom. It's about our national security and I think that we need to do more."

SPAIN

"It is too early at this time to speak about deploying troops to Ukraine as there is no peace at the moment," Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told reporters.

Albares also told radio station Onda Cero: "A war of aggression cannot be rewarded, we cannot encourage others to launch wars of aggression.

"Today I'm convinced Putin will keep attacking and bombing Ukraine. So I do not see peace on the horizon at the moment."

GERMANY

Asked if German troops could be deployed in a future peace mission in Ukraine, Chancellor Olaf Scholz stressed the importance of a strong Ukrainian army.

"This will be a great task for Europe, for the US and international alliance partners," Scholz said. Future questions on security architecture would be addressed in due course, he said.

On the issue of European ground troops, a defense ministry spokesperson said: "If the framework is given, Germany will not shy away."

POLAND

"Poland will support Ukraine as it has done so far: organizationally, in accordance with our financial capabilities, in terms of humanitarian and military aid," Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters before boarding a plane to Paris.

"We do not plan to send Polish soldiers to the territory of Ukraine. We will ... give logistical and political support to the countries that will possibly want to provide such guarantees in the future, such physical guarantees."

SWEDEN

"There needs to be a very clear mandate for those forces and I don't think we can see that until we have come further in those negotiations," Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told Reuters. "But Sweden, we are normally a part of strengthening security in our part of the world, so I foresee us to be a part of that this time as well."

DENMARK

Ahead of the Paris meeting, Denmark's Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said: "We need to increase military support to Ukraine, we need to produce more, and we need to do it faster.

"And then we must remove the restrictions on the Ukrainians' use of weapons, so that they can actually defend themselves against the Russians without having one arm twisted around their back. A ceasefire must not lead to Russian rearmament, which is replaced by new Russian attacks."

THE NETHERLANDS

"We understand Europe needs to play a role. It is logical that the Netherlands is considered," Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof told reporters at the Munich Security Conference.

"There needs to be a strong mandate, because the Netherlands won't join any initiative whatsoever if there is not a clear mandate. (..) There also needs to be an escalation mechanism, in which the US needs to be prepared to be stand-by to act."