Tribune. I come from the surroundings of Rakka, the city which was until recently the capital of Daesh [l’organisation Etat islamique]. Rakka, Deir ez-Zor, these are the towns of my childhood. They were the landmarks for us Bedouins who we still moved around. It was at Rakka that I studied. And it is on Rakka that the scourge of dehumanization fell. This whole region has practically ceased to exist as human territory. It has become a vast no man’s land in which thousands of young people from all over the world have rushed to unleash their outburst of violence, without regard for the local populations, as if they did not exist, as if they merged with the decor, as if one could molest and ravage with impunity. What happened there goes beyond the war, and even the worst abuses of the Civil War.
Travel in the opposite direction
In Rakka, in the city of my adolescence, there were a lot of young French people. They had made the reverse trip to mine. I left Syria in 1970 for France. To have the happiness of studying and to escape my condition of a nomad without a family. They left France from 2012. For one, two, three, then four years, an uninterrupted flow of young French people reached Syria and in particular this area of the Djézireh, “the island” between two rivers, the Tigris and the Euphrates, the cradle of civilization, Mesopotamia.
They left with the will to take revenge for their condition. With the idea that God was calling them. That the Sham (“The North”, Syria in the Koranic vocabulary) needed them. They killed. Devastated. Terrorized the local populations but also the French: the attacks of November 13, 2015 were organized from there. What purpose ? To instill terror, to spread despair, to propagate the void that has been created in these souls. Kill your neighbor rather than save your neighbor.
And always, Islam was used to claim these atrocities. I do not believe that Islam, as a religion or as a culture, is the real driving force behind these acts. It is a sham. There is a diffuse resentment behind all of this: an anomic hatred has found a support, even a springboard, in religious fundamentalism, thanks to social networks. Young French Muslims and their friends who convert believe they will find a substitute identity there, breaking with that of their parents and in conflict with the values of French society. What answer to give to that?
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