Letters sent from aspiring ISIS militants in Syria to their relatives in France reveal the mundane and 'boring' life of jihadists and their desperation to return home.
A series of letters from foreign militants seen and cited by the French Le Figaro newspaper on Wednesday have given a rare glimpse into the lives of the ISIS recruits who are trying to find their way back home.
The letters also tell the story of how new recruits are being forced to carry out tasks against their wishes and how life is no more interesting and happy.
"I'm fed up. My iPod doesn't work anymore here. I have to come back," one Frenchman wrote to his family members in France complaining about his jihadist life in Syria.
Others appear to be unhappy with the workload and duties allocated to them.
"I've basically doing nothing except hand out cloths and food," another former aspiring jihadist who wanted to return from Aleppo, said, according to the newspaper. "I also help clear weapons and transport dead bodies from the front. Winter's arrived here. It's begun to get really hard."
Another person said in his letter: "I'm fed up. They make me do the washing up."
One letter also revealed how new recruits were forcibly sent to the frontline despite their objection.
"They want to send me to the front, but I don't know how to fight," said yet another person.
Reports suggest that the relatives of the authors of those leaked letters are trying their best to convince authorities to get help them return home because it is clearly evident that they were misled and were "cheated" into joining the deadly jihadist outfit.
However, dangers associated with allowing them to return seem to far outweigh the merits. "We have made contacts with the police and judicial authorities [in France] but it's a hyper-sensitive subject. Everybody grasps that the longer these people stay out there, the more they become time bombs when they return," one lawyer explained
"But no one wants the risk of having an official policy to encourage the disillusioned ones to come back. What if one of them was to be involved in a terrorist attack in France?"
This is the not the first time jihadists have expressed their disappointments and regrets at having joined the organization. A 23-year-old, Areeb Majeed from Mumbai returned to India last Friday and said that he had to clean toilets as part of his duties adding that he was not treated even after sustaining a bullet wound.
"Only after I begged them, I was taken to a hospital," he was widely quoted as saying.
