The children of the Islamic State, abandoned to their fate in a field in Syria

Ali is 12 years old and has survived things that no child should see. She has spent half her life in what amounts to a prison camp for jihadist families in an arid corner of northeastern Syria.

He knows that he should not dream of freedom. Instead, he fantasizes about having a soccer ball. “Can you get me one?”he says, as if he were asking for the Moon.

Five years after the fall of “caliphate” of the Islamic State (IS) group, tens of thousands of women and children of jihadists remain held by US-backed Kurdish forces in camps subjected to violence and abuse, with no clear plan appearing to be in place for what to do with them.

More than 40,000 inmates – half of them children – are locked behind barbed wire fences and guard towers at the Al Hol camp, run by Washington’s Kurdish allies.

The children of jihadists live a bleak existence in old tents, with little water and limited access to sanitation. Few go to school. Many have never seen a television or tasted ice cream.

A UN expert found that guards separate boys from their mothers when they turn 11, in violation of international law. The Kurdish authorities claim that they do this to prevent them from becoming radicalized.

They admit that jihadists continue to exert control in some parts of the countryside through fear, punishment and even murder.

A former inmate told AFP that IS pays pensions to some widows. There he lives in terror: “They enter stores at night and kill people”said.

“It is not a life for children (…) they are paying the price for something they did not do,” a humanitarian worker tells AFP.

The Al Hol camp grew as the coalition and its allies in the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) approached the last IS stronghold in eastern Syria.

When they were finally defeated in March 2019, the families of the suspected jihadists were taken by truck to Al Hol.

Five years later, dozens of countries continue to refuse to welcome their nationals, and FDS leader Mazloum Abdi – whose soldiers guard this camp financed by Western powers – describes it as “clockmaking bomb”.

Acute deprivation

AFP interviewed Islamic State widows, aid workers, security forces and administration employees, including within their “exhibit” high security, the camp within the camp where women are held “foreigners” along with their children, from 45 countries, separated from the Syrian and Iraqi prisoners.

Some asked not to be named for fear of what might happen to them.

To complicate matters, in the Syrian and Iraqi sector of the camp there are some 3,000 men held with women and children. Not even the guards venture into the rows of shops at night unless they are conducting a raid.

The huge camp – originally built for refugees fleeing the wars in Iraq and Syria – towers over the town of Al Hol, with its small houses and narrow streets.

Its thousands of white shops are so packed together that it is almost impossible to walk between them without colliding with something. Privacy is non-existent, and common kitchens and toilets are squalid and insufficient, according to aid workers.

Most children do not go to field schools. Instead, they try to earn some money by transporting water, cleaning or fixing shops for those who have money sent by their families. Others trade the food aid they receive.

“Al Hol is a suffocating place for children to live and grow up”says Kathryn Achilles, of the NGO Save the Children.

They will leave us here

“How can our children dream if they have never seen the outside world?” a mother of five imprisoned in the prison tells AFP “exhibit”. Two-thirds of the annex’s 6,612 inmates are children, according to camp administrators.

The 39-year-old woman gave birth to her youngest son in Al Hol after fleeing Baguz in 2019 after her husband, an IS jihadist, died there.

Like all the women in the camp, she was covered from head to toe in a niqab and black gloves. Only a slit reveals her large, dark eyes.

The niqab is prohibited in the Roj camp, smaller and closer to the Turkish border, but the women of Al Hol assure AFP that they do not dare to take it off for fear of being punished by the fundamentalists.

“It is a bitter life, and what is worse, they say they are going to leave us here,” regrets this mother. New sections have begun to be built in which each store will have its own toilet and kitchen.

Jihan Hanan, head of administration, confirms that “the camp can remain long-term.”

Murders and sexual abuse

What worries humanitarian organizations the most are children. In 2022 in the “exhibit”, two Egyptian girls aged 12 and 15 were murdered, their throats slit and thrown into a septic tank.

In 2022, gunmen shot Rana, a Syrian woman in the face and shoulder, who was accused of having fathered a child out of wedlock when she was 18 years old.

“They kidnapped me for 11 days and beat me with chains,” he told AFP. Other children are victims of sexual abuse and harassment, denounces an aid worker. In three months, in 2021, she treated 11 cases of sexual abuse of minors.

The children of Al Hol have seen murders or “shootings, stabbings and strangulations on the way to buy food at the market or on the way to school,” Save the Children noted in a 2022 report.

“I try to keep my children from interacting with others to protect them, but it is almost impossible because the field is crowded,” explains Shatha, an Iraqi mother of five.

However, keeping children confined to their tents was equivalent to keeping them “in a prison within a prison,” laments a social worker.

“Go for my son”

All the mothers AFP spoke to in Al Hol, especially those in the annex, were terrified that guards would take their children away from them.

There are women here from 45 countries, including France, the Netherlands and Sweden, and a large number from Turkey, Tunisia, Russia, the Caucasus and the Central Asian republics.

Security forces regularly take away children over the age of 11 in nighttime raids, which a UN expert denounced as “forced arbitrary separation.”

Zeinab, an Egyptian mother, claims her 13-year-old son was taken from her a year ago. Now she worries that it will soon be her 11-year-old son’s turn.

“I can not sleep at night. “When I hear noise outside, I fear that they are coming for my son,” it states. Some mothers hide their children in holes or prevent them from going outside.

“Some boys may have turned 20, but we don’t know where they are hiding”admits a member of the security forces.

The Pentagon told AFP that it is aware that some young people are transferred “both to youth centers and detention centers.”

“We keep the well-being of children at the center of our policy”he added.

IS cells

Kurdish forces have long warned about the existence of IS cells in the countryside, with a spike in murders, arson and escape attempts in 2019. Rifles, ammunition and tunnels have also been found in searches.

A Syrian woman who fled the camp in mid-2019 recounted how an IS member known as Abu Mohamed visited widows monthly and paid them between $300 and $500.

“He used to come in a security forces uniform and promise that the group would return,” said.

In the squalid annex market, women examine the few pieces of meat available, while others transport bottles of water and rugs in three-wheeled carts.

When seeing the journalists, some raise their gloved index fingers towards the sky, a gesture frequently used by IS to designate God. Although many are repentant, others do not hide their loyalty to ISIS.

The ISIS “it is still here, and has a stronger presence in certain sectors,” according to Abou Khodor, a 26-year-old Iraqi.

Death does not scare us

At a protest organized in the camp earlier this year, a woman was recorded shouting at guards: “Now we are here, but one day it will be you.”

“The Islamic State is not going to disappear, even if you kill us and beat us… Death does not scare us”he added.

Women and children in the annex also have to get permission to go to health centers outside the camp, and sometimes it takes time. “days, weeks or even months” for less critical cases, according to Liz Harding, head of the Doctors Without Borders mission in northeastern Syria.

“Fear, movement restrictions, insecurity and lack of emergency services at night” They prevent them from receiving assistance, he emphasizes.

Some smuggle medications and at least one woman performs clandestine dental procedures, which has led to cases of sepsis.

“There are no instruments, but there are no other dental services”complains a Russian woman.

Huge burden for the Kurds

The grim desperation of the situation weighs on the Syrian Kurds who run the camp. Many lost colleagues at the hands of IS jihadists, whose relatives they now have to guard.

“It is a big problem, a financial, political and moral burden,” Abdi says.

Humanitarian groups present in the camp stated that children should not have to live in such conditions and insist that they should not be defined by the actions of their parents.

“Mothers want their children to go to school, to grow up healthy, and they hope that they are not discriminated against because of everything they have experienced,” says Achilles of Save The Children.

When asked by AFP what it plans to do with the women and children, the Pentagon said: “the only durable and long-term solution for residents… is the return or repatriation of the displaced to their areas or countries of origin.”

It is little consolation for a Russian mother of two who says she feels like the world has abandoned them.

“We have nowhere to go. There is no solution”, it states.

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