“He used to come in a security forces uniform and promise that the group will return,” she said.In the annex’s squalid marketplace, women pore over the few available pieces of meat through the slits in their niqabs, while others haul away bottles of water and rugs in three-wheeled carts or on makeshift sleds made from cardboard attached to a rope.Seeing journalists, some raised a gloved index finger to the sky, a gesture frequently used by IS signifying the “oneness of God”.While many women are repentant, others don’t hide their continued allegiance to IS.IS “are still here, and they have a stronger presence in certain sectors of the camp,” according to Abou Khodor, a 26-year-old Iraqi man who has been in the camp for seven years.He complained that diehards from IS’s last bastion in Baghouz had “ruined” the camp. But one of the women captured there said it was more complex.’Death does not scare us'”There are supporters of IS, and those who have become even worse,” she said. Others, however, “don’t want anything to do with it anymore.”At a protest over searches in the camp earlier this year, one woman was filmed shouting at the guards, “We are here now but one day it will be you!”The Islamic State is not going away, even if you kill and beat us… Death does not scare us.”But an Egyptian woman was seen urging calm, saying, “We don’t want problems.”Such is the mistrust that some women resist being treated with what they call “Western medicine” leading to outbreaks of disease, most recently of measles.Women and children in the annex also have to get permission to go to the health centres outside the camp, and it sometimes takes “days, weeks or even months” for less critical cases, according to Liz Harding, head of Doctors Without Borders mission in northeastern Syria.”Fear, movement restrictions, insecurity and lack of emergency services at night” was cutting them off from care, she added.Some smuggle in medication and at least one woman performs clandestine dental procedures, which has led to cases of sepsis.”She doesn’t have the tools, but there is no other dental care,” a Russian woman complained.Huge burden for KurdsThe grim desperation of the situation weighs heavy on the Syrian Kurds running the camp. Many lost comrades to IS militants whose family members they now have to guard.”It’s a major problem… a burden both financially, politically and morally as well,” the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces Mazloum Abdi told AFP.Humanitarian groups in the camp said children should not have to live in such conditions and insist they should not be defined by their parents’ actions.
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