The al-Shaitat clan, which includes residents of Abu Hamam town and the nearby villages of al-Kishkiyah and Gharanij, is a branch of the Ageidat tribe whose lands extend deep into Iraq. As ISIS had expanded across Deir Ezzor, the al-Shaitat allied with Nusra, putting up fierce resistance against ISIS.
When Nusra was expelled from Deir Ezzor, the al-Shaitat, now on the losing side, were left in a precarious position. Although ISIS made numerous promises of clemency to tribes across Deir Ezzor in this period, the agreement concluded over al-Shuhayl and the return of inhabitants following their repentance were not extended to the al-Shaitat. Nevertheless, initially, clan elders negotiated with ISIS that their fighters would hand over their weapons in exchange for undergoing Shari’a courses and “repentance” sessions. According to Omar Abu Layla, an activist and former FSA spokesperson in the east of Syria, the agreement also covered the oil wells. Either way, ISIS had never intended to respect it.
After some initial small confrontations between ISIS and al-Shaitat members, matters came to a head in August 2014. An ISIS patrol raided a home in Abu Hamam—which they were not allowed to do under the agreement—and killed the man they were searching for. Al-Shaitat members from Abu Hamam killed several foreign fighters and burned ISIS’ local headquarters in response. One witness reflected on what had happened:
An ISIS patrol from the al-Battar al-Libi battalion raided some houses in the area. They killed three people by cutting their throats. That sparked a battle between the two sides, which ended with the killing of all the ISIS members at their bases in the area.
The group then withdrew from our area and the surroundings, to come back and strike again more strongly. That’s what happened. They came back with a heavily armed convoy and lots of fighters.
There was a big battle and ISIS took heavy losses, due to the experience of some [local] fighters and their knowledge of the area. This made ISIS more and more angry, so it sent in reinforcements from several other regions, including some of its leaders, to supervise the fight.
ISIS responded by detaining and then killing 50 al-Shaitat members working at the al-Tanak oilfield. Their bodies were buried in a mass grave, according to Abu Layla. Outraged by the treatment of their fellow tribesmen, the incident led hundreds of al-Shaitat members to take up arms against ISIS. They killed several fighters and burned the group’s bases in Sweidan al-Jazeera and al-Tayyana. ISIS responded to the uprising with excessive force and treated the rebelling tribe with contempt. A member of the al-Shaitat clan recounted how ISIS killed his brothers during the clashes:
Someone told me that two young men had been killed close to our house. I ran unconsciously. When I arrived, I saw that their heads had been cut off. Blood was gushing out of them. I lost control of myself. I screamed: “They killed two of my brothers!”
I think [Y.] had been killed before [A.], because I saw his head separated from his body. I found their severed heads. I screamed and called out to my brothers: “There is no might and no power except with God.”
My third brother ran home and brought back a gun. He started running and shooting at the headquarters of the Chechens [foreign ISIS fighters], who fired back. I called him and told him: “Come back! They’ll kill you like they killed our brothers.”
Minutes later, he was hit by five bullets from their base. I was too scared to go on. Removing the bodies wasn’t allowed, but I carried them home anyway. When I arrived, my family and children started screaming from the sight.
Using a fatwa, ISIS then labelled the al-Shaitat a “group that resists Islamic rule through force of arms,” stating that:
It is not permissible to conclude a truce with them, nor to release their captives, neither for money nor for any other purpose. It is not permissible to eat the meat of the animals they slaughter, and it is not permissible for anyone to marry their women. It is permitted to kill them as captives and to pursue and kill any one of them who escapes. It is also permitted to kill them when they are wounded. They must be fought, even if they do not start the fight.
ISIS brought in reinforcements from Hasakeh and, on 5 August, laid siege to Abu Hamam. An al-Shaitat member who lived through the ordeal recalled what happened next:
After about 15 days of fighting, [ISIS] took control of the area, due to a suffocating siege, a lack of ammunition and medicines, and the number of wounded, as well as indiscriminate ISIS shelling of residential areas.
After the fighters left, ISIS moved in and carried out a series of killings, forced displacement and slaughter, despite promising to only target those who had fought it. This was totally untrue; they only killed unarmed civilians.
My family and I went to al-Shaafah and stayed in a school on 24th Street with my siblings and the people who had fled with us. Suddenly, a big ISIS patrol arrived and surrounded the school. Some fighters came inside. My father was with us.
They gathered the children and women in the school yard. One young fighter came forward and grabbed one of my brothers. He beat him in front of the women and children, then made him kneel, took out a knife from his sleeve and slaughtered him, in front of my father, the women and children. This was on 13 August 2014, between 7 and 8 am.
After cutting off my brother’s head, the fighter said, “God is great,” then threw [his head] in front of my father and said: “Take the head of your apostate son.”
The children started screaming and the women were crying from the horror of what they were seeing. But my father stayed silent. He didn’t say a single word.
Then the patrol arrested my siblings and their children. I managed to escape by jumping from the car. Some ISIS fighters chased me, but I hid in the buildings behind the school.
In its assault on the al-Shaitat’s towns, ISIS used heavy artillery, remotely detonated bombs, and suicide bombers. It also unleashed some of its most hardened, feared fighters against the area after ISIS forces drawn from the local population had failed to take it. When the ISIS fighters entered the town of Abu Hamam, as well as the villages of Gharanji and al-Kishkiyah, residents fled with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. ISIS had announced via the mosque loudspeakers that it would guarantee civilians safe passage, but this was a trap, as those who fled into ISIS checkpoints were killed. The adult men who remained were killed when ISIS took control. According to one survivor, on 15 August, “more than two hundred people” were killed in the desert, their bodies mutilated. Many others were burned, crucified or hanged. Women were captured as “spoils of war.”
Amid the violence, the massacre of the al-Shaitat also provided an opportunity to settle old tribal feuds. Inhabitants of Muhasan, of the Albu Khabour tribe, who had pledged allegiance to ISIS, tortured inhabitants of al-Shaitat villages and confiscated their properties after ISIS issued a decision to displace al-Shaitat residents. The attack was a retaliation for a previous attack by the al-Shaitat against Muhasan clans. Such inter-tribal feuding would become a recurrent feature of ISIS violence in Deir Ezzor.
For months, ISIS continued its purge of al-Shaitat members, setting up checkpoints around the area. The al-Shaitat clan suffered violence even after they eventually returned to their homes, as one victim described:
In Gharanij, most of the animals had died of lack of water. There were lots of corpses on the road, the houses and the trenches.
There were several mass graves: one containing 30 corpses, another containing 40, another with 70 and another one with hundreds in the scrubland near Gharanij and Abu Hamam. In the houses, there were many dead people. Most of them were unrecognisable because they were decomposed and eaten by animals.
After the discovery of several mass graves, sources estimated that in total, over 900 people were killed in several mass-casualty atrocities. Some sources estimated it to be on the level of the organisation’s attack on Kobane, its mass killings of Christians, its attack on Camp Speicher in Iraq, and its killings of Yazidis in Sinjar. Later incidents demonstrated that ISIS maintained its grudge against al-Shaitat members: in May 2015, an al-Shaitat teenager, accused of killing ISIS members, was killed with a bazooka.
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