The dream of an Islamist revolution attracted three students from the University of Sherbrooke who went to Syria in 2014 to build the “caliphate” proclaimed by the Islamic State armed group. The three young people died under the bombs. But nearly a decade later, the wife and young daughter of one of the jihadists languished in a refugee camp.
Leïla Sakhir, the sister of one of the militants who died in combat, went to Syria in the spring of 2023, hoping to bring her five-year-old niece, who was born Canadian, back to Quebec. But she found that it is infinitely easier to join the Islamic State group (also known as ISIS) than to leave it.
Director Raed Hammoud followed Leïla Sakhir in her quest for a better life for her niece. The documentary Goodbye Daesh?broadcast on Télé-Québec starting November 29, shows the obstacle course to get Islamic State group militants, their women and children out of Syria.
“It’s like the mafia, it’s like street gangs, you get in easily, but it’s a challenge to leave them. The wife of a mafioso, poor thing, she is involved in this without even wanting to,” said Raed Hammoud in an interview on a virtual platform.
This Quebec filmmaker and animator, born in Niger to parents of Lebanese origin, developed a real obsession with this story of radicalized students at the University of Sherbrooke. For what ? Because his friend Youssef, a top of the class he met at Stanislas College in Montreal, was among the Sherbrooke jihadists who left to build an Islamic society in Syria. He was the brother of Leïla Sakhir.
Youssef’s family and friends were stunned by his radical and incomprehensible change of direction. No one could have suspected that this studious, gentle and cheerful young man would join a group which seeks to kill all the opponents of its social project inspired by a rigorous vision of Islam.
Left to their own devices
This is Raed Hammoud’s third film dedicated to the expedition of Youssef and his friends in the Islamic “caliphate”, established in 2014 on a territory encompassing Iraq and Syria. Daesh was defeated in 2019, but continues the battle to retake pieces of territory. And to free his supporters who had been taken prisoner for ten years.
Leïla Sakhir’s fight to get her sister-in-law and her niece out of the Hassaké camp, in Syria, takes place in this post-war period where Daesh sympathizers and their relatives remain stuck in a staggering legal vacuum.
Refugee camps in Syria host 63,000 suspected members of the Islamic State group and their families, including 28,000 children, according to figures cited in Raed Hammoud’s film. About 25 of these prisoners, including a teenager and 16 children, are of Canadian origin.
These adults and their children are “left to their own devices, without any possible recourse,” says Leïla Sakhir, met on a virtual platform from her Montreal apartment. “Abandoned to their fate, they risk becoming radicalized,” she says in the film by her friend Raed Hammoud.
“Idealists”
Without revealing the conclusion of the documentary, we can reveal that Leïla failed to repatriate her niece to Quebec. The mother is awaiting trial in France for her alleged role in the bloodthirsty Daesh regime. The little girl is safe, but without her mother.
The word “alleged” takes on its full meaning here, because the responsibility of each of the jihadists and their relatives in this Islamic caliphate remains to be determined. After an in-depth investigation which took them to Senegal and the Middle East, Leïla Sakhir and Raed Hammoud consider it plausible that Youssef never resorted to violence in this radical government.
The film shows Leïla going to Senegal to meet Assan, a friend of Youssef who was also tempted to go and wage jihad in Syria. He was unable to make his dream come true because his mother, realizing that he had become radicalized, reported him to the police. The young man was sentenced to prison.
Assan says he and his friends were “idealists” seeking justice. They planned to open an orphanage. “It was an ideal which is good. Islam is good behavior, help, good relationships with neighbors, family. I do not deny this ideal. »
A cycle of violence
He and his friends saw images on social media of Islamist fighters massacred by the regime of Bashar al-Assad, who survived more than a decade of civil war. But they were not going to Syria to resort to violence, according to Assan.
Youssef was a loving father. He lived for his wife and daughter (whom he only knew four months before dying in a bombing). “Despite all this chaos, [la fillette] was born in love,” says Leïla in the documentary. “You didn’t choose this beginning of the story. You have the right to happiness like any child on this earth,” she adds.
The director and the heroine of his film are convinced that mother and daughter will eventually find peace. However, they are worried about the repercussions of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, which gives rise to appalling violence spread on social networks.
“The feeling of injustice fuels radical groups. We are putting everything in place so that history repeats itself,” says Leïla Sakhir with a sigh.