DER SPIEGEL was able to speak with a number of people who fled Baghouz in recent weeks. Their accounts paint a picture of sheer madness — or, more precisely, of a murderous struggle between two camps, the “traitors” and the fanatics, those who intended to blow themselves up after capitulating and the many others who cast aside their suicide belts, which could be seen lying around everywhere. The conflict even continued in the prisons and detainee camps, which explains why nearly everyone who spoke with the “infidels” asked to remain anonymous for fear of being attacked at night.
“The hard core are a sect, completely insane,” said one of the “traitors,” a woman, describing the others before adding: “they call us idol worshipers and refer to themselves as Khawarij,” a group whose members view themselves as the only true, albeit misunderstood followers of the Prophet Muhammad in accordance with early Islamic models. This deep divisions extend across all nationalities; men and women from Tunisia are included, so are those from Iraq, though less so those from Europe. A Swedish woman living with several children in an internment camp was quoted as saying that it was better for a child to starve in the Islamic State than “to be sent to the land of the infidels, where it will be raised by homosexuals.” They are immune to all logic. They have walled themselves off in their utopia and the memories of the euphoric success of 2014.
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