Islamic State legacy of guilt weighs heavily on Iraqi widows, children
Women like these in Mosul are among many whose families are shunned by governments in Iraq.
Women like these in Mosul are among many whose families are shunned by governments in Iraq.
Photo: Farid Abdulwahed / Associated Press
Women like these in Mosul are among many whose families are shunned by governments in Iraq.
Women like these in Mosul are among many whose families are shunned by governments in Iraq.
Photo: Farid Abdulwahed / Associated Press
MOSUL, Iraq — When Ahmed Khalil ran out of work as a van driver in the Iraqi city of Mosul three years ago, he signed up with the Islamic State group’s police force, believing the salary would help keep his struggling family afloat.
But what he wound up providing was a legacy that would outlast his job, and his life.
In Mosul and elsewhere across Iraq, thousands of families — including Khalil’s widow and children — face crushing discrimination because their male relatives were seen as affiliated with or supporting the Islamic State when the extremists held large swaths of the country.
The wives, widows and children have been disowned by their relatives and abandoned by the state. Registrars refuse to register births to women with suspected Islamic State husbands, and schools will not enroll their children. Mothers are turned away from welfare, and mukhtars — community mayors — won’t let the families move into their neighborhoods.
The Islamic State group’s “caliphate” that once spanned a third of both Iraq and Syria is now gone, but as Iraq struggles to rebuild after the militants’ final defeat and loss of their last sliver of territory in Syria earlier this year, the atrocities and the devastation they wreaked has left deep scars.
Iraq has done little to probe the actions of the tens of thousands of men such as Khalil who, willingly or by force joined, worked and possibly fought for the Islamic State during its 2013-17 rule. Instead, bureaucrats and communities punish families for the deeds of their relatives in a time of war.
Khalil was killed in an air strike in Mosul, in February 2017, during the U.S.-backed campaign to retake the city that the Islamic State seized in 2014.
Philip Issa and Salar Salim are Associated Press writers.