For three years, Sophia, Lisa and all the other children of French jihadists have been languishing in the Roj camp, in northeastern Syria, an autonomous region managed by the Kurds, while France is reluctant, like other States. , to repatriate them, despite international condemnations and petitions.
Behind the barbed wire of this open-air prison, in the middle of the desert, one of the Kurdish guards leads us to the tent of Sophia, 16 years old. Sophia was born in the suburbs of Paris, she was 8 years old when her mother took her to Syria.
Today, Sophia lives alone, in this camp with her three little brothers. Their mother and sister are dead. On the floor, three mattresses, an old TV and some blankets. Dejected, Sophia lost all hope of ever returning to her country.
/2022/04/12/phpG76bkr.jpg)
“It’s difficult, I would like to go back to France, it’s my country, I don’t want to stay in the camp, she explains, extinct. I have lots of family in France: my aunts, my grandmother, my grandfather. I’m angry: we’ve believed for a long time that they’re going to repatriate us and every time we have hope, well, we lose hope.”
“We’ve been in the camp for almost four years, alone, without a mother. We have nothing to do here. Why do people say I’m a danger? I came here when I was little, with my mother. I don’t know why I would be a danger.”
Sophie, 16 years oldat franceinfo
A child’s face, a very frail body. The orphans feed on the rations that are distributed to them: rice, lentils, sugar. Three times a week, they go to school: on the program Arabic, English and mathematics. Not far away, Lisa, 14, also lost her mother and two brothers in the battle of Baghouz, during the fall of the caliphate. Seriously injured, she lives with her older sister Sarah with an Uzbek woman. “During the war, over there, everyone died, describes Lisa. When we fled, in the mountains, there were lots of bombs. My mother got a bomb on her. She and my brothers are dead. Then there were bullets on me, on my arm, and I fell. Then there were bullets in my legs. Afterwards, soldiers came to carry us and I came here to Roj.”
/2022/04/12/phpLOPMvI.jpg)
“The hardest thing for me is that I’m injured and I’m all alone, without my family, continues the girl, who can barely move her arm. I can’t sleep well: I never sleep at night.” Before, she was staying with a woman who beat her. It’s no longer the case now. “Now it’s OK, she assures. Now, we are used to it: wherever we are, we manage to live.”
Lisa left for Syria when she was seven years old. She has not forgotten her life before, in a big city in the west of France. The life of a normal little girl. “I remember my school, my friends, remembers the little girl. We went to school, we went out with friends, the bike, the scooters… I went to my friends’ birthday parties, it was good. What do I miss the most? Go back to my country.”
“I would like to go back to France with my family. It’s hard here, in the camp. If it had been in our hands, we would never have come here. We were too young. We would never have come here. “
Lisa, 14 years oldat franceinfo
In Roj, more than 300 women and children returned last year to their country: to Germany, Sweden or Belgium. France only repatriated seven children in 2021.
Paris categorically refuses to repatriate the mothers, which forces them to make a painful choice: to separate from their child, with whom they live and sleep, to offer him a better life in France. In the camp, they are still 80 women, accompanied by their 200 French children. Among them, Celia, a 27-year-old jihadist mother, who says she is ready to separate from her son, but is heartbroken.
“My son asks me, ‘I’m five years old, mum…Will I go to school?'”
“Because I school him, continues Célia, her voice broken by sobs, but I have no support. A child of five, he goes to kindergarten, he has a mistress. So he said to me: ‘Mom, even if I leave, you will come and come back for me.’ When your son tells you that, your mother’s heart is torn because you love your child more than anything. But besides that, you want the best for him. Why still traumatize a child by separating it from its mother? While we ask them to be repatriated, and we regret, we know what awaits us, we will pay. We know it. But in the meantime, we’re still here.”