Daesh

In Arabic the term Islamic State sounds like Daesh, and some commentators use "daesh" instead of "Islamic State". The acronyms ISIS (Islamic State In Syria) or ISIL (Islamic State In the Levant) stand for the groups that administered the Islamic State.

The organization started to control enclaves temporarily carved out of Syria and Iraq from around 2014. This territory included cities and oil fields. The last enclave fell in 2019.

Since then Kurdish militia have held tens of thousands of foreign refugees who had been trapped within the Daesh enclaves, in refugee camps. Something like 1000 of those refugees are widows, from Europe, North America and Australia, who married foreigners who travelled there to support Daesh. Those women struggle to raise children in those camps, who are also, technically, citizens of western democracies.