Baladi News
An Islamic State fighter detained in Syria urged Italy on Saturday to let him come home to start a new life, saying said he had abandoned the self-styled jihadist “caliphate” after growing disillusioned with its rulers, an exclusive report published by Reuters said.
Mounsef al-Mkhayar, a 22-year-old of Moroccan descent who grew up in Italy, spoke to Reuters in his first interview since surrendering to the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) two months ago.
Reuters interviewed him at a security office in northern Syria in the presence of an SDF official.
He has been in prison since emerging from Baghouz, where the SDF is poised to wipe out the last vestige of Islamic State rule - which once spanned a third of Iraq and Syria.
Mkhayar gave an account of growing chaos among jihadists on the brink of defeat, and of disputes in the ranks as top commanders fled Syria, the report read.
But he said Islamic State was also planning for the next phase, smuggling out hundreds of men to set up sleeper cells across Iraq and eastern Syria: “They said ‘We must get revenge’.”
“I wish to return to Italy to my family and friends ... for them to accept and help me to live a new life,” said Mkhayar, who walks on crutches after shelling injured his leg. “I just want to get out of this movie, I’m tired.”
He said he had tried to quit the fighting but had been imprisoned, and then dispatched back to the frontlines as attacks intensified.
He wound up in Baghouz, where he said the jihadists were split between wanting to give up or fight to the death.
Mkhayar said his wife, a Syrian Kurdish woman from Kobani whom he had married three years ago, helped convince him to leave.
“‘That’s it,’ we said, ‘we’re getting out’. I saw my little daughter turning weak. I was scared my children would die.”
He said he still believed in the idea of a caliphate for Muslims, but accused Islamic State rulers of governing their land like “a mafia”, seeking only to make money and violating their own rules with impunity.
Commanders had stolen money and fled to Turkey, Iraq or Western Europe while ordering people to stay and defend Islam, he said.
“This is my belief and I won’t change it, but here in Islamic State, in reality this doesn’t exist ... There is no justice,” he said.
“Honestly, I came here too fast ... When I arrived, I found another story.”