Tribal justice awaits returning Iraqis who joined ISIS terrorist group

In the unforgiving deserts of Iraq, there is just one way to deal with defeated members of the Islamic State group who try to come home – tribal justice.

No pardons are possible among tribes which have agreed among themselves to treat with the utmost severity those members who became jihadists.

As for the families of IS members, many have already fled, fearing reprisals.

The former army commander for operations in the western province of Anbar, where IS once held sway after a sweeping offensive across Syria and Iraq in 2014, told AFP returning jihadists face short shrift.

“The Bumahal and the other tribes have agreed to adopt a common stance” on the issue, said General Ismail Mehlawi, himself a Bumahal.

In the vast Sunni region where tribal law prevails, the tribes have addressed the thorny question of what to do about any relatives who pledged allegiance to the self-proclaimed IS “caliphate”.

“They’ve all fled to neighbouring Syria,” say residents of Al-Obeidi village in the heart of what was the last jihadist bastion in Iraq, which has just been retaken by Iraqi forces.

But if any return or are discovered in the area, they “will be treated with severity”, Mehlawi said.

“No pardon will be possible,” said the moustachioed Iraqi whose home was dynamited by members of his own tribe who had joined IS.

“We will punish them as prescribed by God so justice is done to the tribesmen who have been wronged” during the jihadist occupation.

The cycle of revenge has already begun in Al-Obeidi, said a security official in the Al-Qaim region whose 150,000 inhabitants belong to around half a dozen tribes.

Source: Daily Mail