Stacey Dooley gets blanked by the real housewives of the former Islamic State of Iraq and Syria

The oddest Panorama this week – a lady named Stacey Dooley who has an MBE and the kind of regional accent that makes one simultaneously nostalgic for received pronunciation while also feeling a snob ... pootled about the refugee camps of Syria/Iraq/Kurdistan to talk to ex-IS caliphate “brides”. 
This seemed to involve her asking them self-incriminating questions and then giving them hard stares when they replied that they didn’t really know what IS did ... because they were doing the washing up at the time etc.  And stuff like that.  The most silly exchange probably being:

Stacey : “You do know there were aid workers who came out here who were beheaded by IS?”

ISIS-bride: “Yes, but no one asked my opinion about that.”

Almost all of the women interviewed said they

didn’t really know what was going on.

One lady said she had been groomed which was a bit laughable as she looked at least 30 … but I could be wrong.

With her seemingly limited knowledge of Sunni/Shir/Kurdish politics …

…it was very difficult for Ms Dooley to make any meaningful inroads with her questioning.  Most of it was verging on directly saying “you know you’re accessories to murder?” or “are you aware you have committed treason?”   

This uncomplicated cross-examination technique for the most part just elicited blank looks – when her interlocutors took their veils off and also when they did not…

And that was pretty much it.   

Apart from some well meaning Kurdish camp guard lady who thought some of them could be reformed if someone was nice to them…

If there was a message I think it was that the Western governments these ladies came from should accept some responsibility for them… to prevent re-radicalisation or the death of their interred offspring….

…but maybe there doesn’t need to be a message to this kind of thing – maybe the job of journalists is just to show us what’s there because …it is so. 

So…

...so what?