I arrive in Syria looking for people: for missing hostages, an Islamic State propagandist, jihadi brides. The battle for the last sliver of the Caliphate is ongoing near the small town of Baghouz in eastern Syria, and final battles often reveal the outstanding mysteries of war. So my first destination after crossing in over the river from Iraq is a non-descript dusty town on the plains in the north, where I meet a Kurdish intelligence official. His office is long and rectangular. Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (the PKK), presides at one end, his portrait staring down the length of the room. Two goldfish eye me from a tank at the other end.
I ask the official for access to a Canadian prisoner with two names who is being held in a jail elsewhere, and for permission to visit al-Hawl camp, where 39,000 civilians – the majority from Isis families – have been gathered as they flee the fighting in the east.
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