Wednesday 20 February 2019

What to do about Isis wives and children?

Isis has been responsible for the slaughter of thousands of people, some of them executed in the most barbaric fashion. It's a record of brutality not seen on this Earth in modern times. Hitler and Stalin remain the greatest serial killers of anyone's memory. But Isis brought to the world an era of horrific killings, torture, intimidation and hatred. Yet in between the murders and beheadings and abductionss, the Isis killers gathered around them a flock of women and produced children on a large scale. It's not perhaps surprising. Even monsters can procreate. But somehow it seems almost obscene that in between the wholesale slaughter these men who have devoted their lives to a vicious and hateful ideology still want to indulge in the sort of experiences which the rest of us on this planet regard as normal and healthy: passion, love, affection, intimacy, children. So, amidst the bloody mayhem, something like 1,500 children have been born to Isis men and their women, many of whom have rushed to Syria in order to marry or cohabit with the thousands of foreign fighters who have joined up from every country in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Russia, Chechnya and all over. What on earth to do about these children? It's not their fault they were born to mothers and fathers wrapped in hatred. They deserve a better life. But the hundreds and hundreds of Isis "brides" as they are strangely called cannot expect to be treated like deserving citizens just because they have delivered children into this world. It's a conundrum. The case of Shamima Begum, the British national who now wants to come home and to bring her latest and only surviving baby to the UK, is one of many. Two American Isis wives also want to return home. But at least they have shown regret and remorse over what they have done. Shamima Begum regrets nothing. But if all the nations respond to the dilemma like the UK, and make these women stateless and refuse to let them back in, what is to happen to them and their children? Are they to be permanent residents of refugee camps in Syria, their children neglected, uneducated and poorly fed? It's a desperate situation. I feel for the children but have no sympathy for their mothers. That solves nothing I realise. But in the end, for the sake of the children, governments will have to take responsibility for them.

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