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News Desk: \u201cOkay, um\u2026 My name\u2019s Shamima. I\u2019m from the UK. I\u2019m 19.\u201d<\/p>\nNews Desk: \u201cOkay, um\u2026 My name\u2019s Shamima. I\u2019m from the UK. I\u2019m 19.\u201d<\/p>\n
Spoken with a nervous laugh, the introduction to a room full of women and restless babies could be the start of any young mothers\u2019 support group.<\/p>\n
But the speaker is Shamima Begum, the teenage \u201cISIS bride\u201d who left Britain for Syria in 2015 to join the Islamic State group, and whose desire to return sparked a right-wing press frenzy that saw her stripped of her citizenship.<\/p>\n
The footage is captured in \u201cThe Return: Life After ISIS,\u201d a documentary premiering Wednesday at the online Texas-based South By Southwest festival.<\/p>\n
Spanish director Alba Sotorra got rare, extensive access to Begum and other Western women over several months in Syria\u2019s Kurdish-run Roj camp, where they remain following the so-called caliphate\u2019s collapse in 2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cI would say to the people in the UK, give me a second chance because I was still young when I left,\u201d Begum tells the filmmakers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just want them to put aside everything they\u2019ve heard about me in the media,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
Begum left her London home aged just 15 to travel to Syria with two school friends, and married an IS fighter.<\/p>\n
She was \u201cfound\u201d by British journalists, heavily pregnant at another Syrian camp, in February 2019 \u2014 and her apparent lack of remorse in initial interviews drew outrage.<\/p>\n
But Begum and fellow Westerners including US-born Hoda Muthana strike a very different and apologetic tone in Sotorra\u2019s film.<\/p>\n
The documentary follows \u201cworkshop\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was known that Syria was a warzone and I still travelled into it with my own children \u2014 now how I did this I really don\u2019t know looking back,\u201d says one Western woman.<\/p>\n
Begum recalls feeling like an \u201coutsider\u201d in London who wanted to \u201chelp the Syrians,\u201d but claims on arrival she quickly realized IS were \u201ctrapping people\u201d to boost the so-called caliphate\u2019s numbers and \u201clook good for the (propaganda) videos.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018A mistake\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n Sotorra, the director, gained camp access thanks to Kurdish fighters she had followed in Syria for her previous film.<\/p>\n She set out to document the Kurdish women\u2019s sacrifices in running a camp filled with their former enemies\u2019 wives and children, but soon pivoted to the Western women.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d Sotorra told AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cI do understand now how you can make a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n On Sotorra\u2019s arrival in March 2019, the women \u2014 fresh from a warzone \u2014 were \u201csomehow blocked\u2026 not thinking and not feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cShamima was a piece of ice when I met her,\u201d Sotorra told AFP.<\/p>\n \u201cShe lost the kid when I was there\u2026 it took a while to be able to cry,\u201d she recalled.<\/p>\n \u201cI think it\u2019s just surviving, you need to protect yourself to survive.\u201d<\/p>\n Another factor is the enduring presence of \u201csmall but very powerful\u201d groups of even \u201cmore radicalized women\u201d who remain loyal to IS and exert pressure on their campmates.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had (other) women who joined in the beginning, and then they received pressure from other women so they stopped coming,\u201d said Sotorra.<\/p>\n In the film, Begum claims she \u201chad no choice but to say certain things\u201d to journalists \u201cbecause I lived in fear of these women coming to my tent one day and killing me and killing my baby.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u2018Took them a while\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n The question of what can and should be done with these women \u2014 and their children \u2014 plagues Western governments, sowing divisions among allies.<\/p>\n Last month, Britain\u2019s Supreme Court rejected Begum\u2019s bid to return to challenge a decision stripping her citizenship on national security grounds.<\/p>\n How much the women knew about \u2014 and abetted \u2014 IS\u2019s rapes, tortures and beheadings may never be known.<\/p>\n In the documentary, Begum denies she \u201cknew about\u201d or \u201csupported these crimes,\u201d dismissing claims she could have been in IS\u2019s feared morality police as a naive \u201c15-year-old with no Islamic knowledge\u201d who did not even \u201cspeak the language.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI never even had a parking ticket back in my own country before\u2026 I never harmed anybody, I never killed anybody, I never did anything,\u201d says Canadian Kimberly Polman.<\/p>\n An incredulous Kurdish woman points out that \u201cmaybe your husband killed my cousin.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIt took them a while to realise that they have responsibility for (their) choice\u2026 they cannot just think \u2018Okay, I regret, I go back, as if nothing has happened,'\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cNo, it\u2019s not about this\u2026 you have to accept the consequences.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" News Desk: \u201cOkay, um\u2026 My name\u2019s Shamima. I\u2019m from the UK. I\u2019m 19.\u201d Spoken with a nervous laugh, the introduction to a room full of women and restless babies could be the start of any young mothers\u2019 support group. But the speaker is Shamima Begum, the teenage \u201cISIS bride\u201d who left Britain for Syria in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":67390,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2,14],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\n\n\t\n