A Cameroon-born teacher who relocated to France and worked as an educator with underpriviledged children in Paris, Sophie Kasiki takes the radical decision to join the Islamic State, without actually being aware what she is doing. At least, this is what she confessed in her post-escape memoir, Dans la Nuit de Daech. Confesion d´une repentie, published by Robert Laffont.
Recently converted to Islam, Kasiki was convinced to go to Rakka, by two young men she met at the center where she was working. As she was going through a stage of soul searching, at a very personal and family level, she thought that by ´helping´ in Syria she would be part of something bigger than her. As many other women who joined the Daesh whose testimonies I´ve read or listen to, she was promised comfort and relative luxury, a cheap life and a community of like-minded people (what exactly this means it´s a completely different subjective story). Kasiki takes her son with her telling to her husband that she is actually doing some volunteering work in Turkey.
Once taken to Syria, her nightmare and the plan to escape is started. She will encounter there a different reality that she naively not even imagined: of abuse and extreme brutality, perpetrated by a bunch of radicalized foreigners utterly disrespectful when not openly aggressive against the local Syrians. An army of strangers took over Syrian teritory.
As she succeeded to connect with her husband several times, he got in touch with the France anti-terror experts and despite the slow down and the bureaucratic asperities, Kasiki and her son will return to France. After some interrogation sessions and a couple of months of prison, she is free and able to share her story.
The book is an useful testimony for anyone trying to better understand the recruitment methods and the overall functioning of Daesh. It can be added as a psyhological handbook about the type of personality usually attracted to such deadly extremist adventures.
Dans la Nuit de Daech has a very simple writing, the linear kind of story from A to B, lacking any kind of serious introspection and eventually a critical evaluation of her own decisions and risks encountered. It is an useful bibliographical source - especially for the French-speaking realm - but needs a serious critical add-on.
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