Wedded To ISIS

Now That The Islamic State Has Lost Its Militant Grip On Iraq, What Will Become Of The Women Being Punished For Their Husbands’ Crimes?

- Sophia Jones

Late at night, when the wind whips between the rows of sand-caked tents in a detention camp about three hours north of Baghdad, Umm Ahmed’s mind drifts to the orange tree that once stood in the courtyard of her former home in Mosul, then Iraq’s second largest city. There, in her mind, she hears her husband, Ali, cracking jokes as her children eat lunch. If only for a moment, she’s at peace. But for Umm Ahmed—who, for fear of retribution, asked to be identified only as umm, the Arabic word for mother, and Ahmed, the first name of her 14-year-old son—the memory is fleeting.

Umm Ahmed is accused of being the widow of an Islamic State supporter. There has been no trial. She says Ali was a nurse given an impossible choice: pledge allegiance to ISIS or die. As head of the household, her husband of 16 years held the decision-making power; Umm Ahmed says she had no voice in the outcome. Ali chose life, vowing to serve ISIS, though his service wouldn’t last long.

He died in what was likely an air strike or heavy artillery fire, along with two of her five sons, Haresh and Ayman, in early June 2017, during the United States–backed offensive to drive ISIS fighters out of Mosul. One moment Umm Ahmed was washing her face, and the next she was frantically digging through rubble for her family. “I will never forget that moment,” she says. “How can I?”

Now Umm Ahmed lives with her three surviving sons, two daughters, and nine other family members in a detention camp called al-Shahama, near Tikrit in central Iraq. She’s essentially a prisoner, as she has been since Iraqi security sent her to the camp shortly after Ali was killed.