To hell and back

A trip to the prison camps for Islamic State terrorists in northeastern Syria will leave you traumatised, physically and emotionally

- BHANU PRAKASH CHANDRA

Dark clouds had obscured Erbil, the capital city of Iraqi Kurdistan, when our aircraft started its descent. By the time we touched down, it was raining heavily. As we walked towards passport control, my colleague Lakshmi Subramanian and I were anxious, although we had been preparing for this assignment for nearly six months. We were on our way to the upper Mesopotamian region called the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, known popularly as Rojava. A de facto self-governed state which lies between the Euphrates and the Tigris in northeastern Syria, Rojava is controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab militias fighting the Syrian civil war. The SDE led primarily by the powerful Kurdish People’s Protection Group (YPG), has been at the forefront of the fierce battle against Islamic State. It is also involved in an existential fight against Turkey and the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria.

We had crossed our first obstacle-clearing immigration in India—rather smoothly. When the immigration officer asked us about our destination, we did not mention Iraq or Syria as we did not want to cause an alarm. Instead, we told him that we were going to Kurdistan. After scrutinising our e-visas, he allowed us to proceed, but only after pointing out in an educative tone that Kurdistan was an autonomous region in Iraq.