The children of the Islamic State, abandoned and frightened: the difficult life of the surviving children of families linked to IS in North-East Syria

ROME – Many children with less than 12 years. Too young to think they played an active role within Isis. Yet many governments do not want to repatriate them for fear of undermining national security or because they fear public backlash. Many of these minors have now been living in the camps for five years, they are detained in terrible conditions without having done anything, thus risking becoming victims of violence or recruitment by the forces of the Islamic State. After a series of visits to the fields, Human Rights Watch he denounces that the desperation of these little ones is so palpable that in some cases it has manifested itself with suicidal instincts. Read also the reporting from Damascus of Mondo Solidale on “Children saved” from the war.

Security issues. Governments do not want to repatriate them, yet UN and counter-terrorism experts have stressed on several occasions that keeping these children in the camps, abandoning them, poses more risks to national security than bringing them home. However, apart from Iraq which has so far repatriated 2850 minors, thirty-five other governments have brought home a total of only 1600, leaving another twenty-three thousand in the camps. Canada even repatriated only four. Save the Children denounces that at this rate it will take thirty years to free all the children trapped in northeastern Syria.

History. In March 2019, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led regional force backed by a US-led military coalition, while overthrowing the remnants of the self-proclaimed “caliphate” in northeastern Syria, imprisoned thousands of family members of ISIS and took them to makeshift detention centres. According to HRW estimates, as of January 23, 2023, almost 42,000 foreigners are detained in the region along with 23,000 Syrians. 37,000 of these are women and children of men suspected of having links with ISIS and they are all held in the largest camps in the area: al-Hol and Roj.

Nationalities. Nearly twenty-seven thousand prisoners in the camps are from Iraq, another ten thousand from sixty different countries. More than 60 percent of those arrested are children and almost 80 percent of them are under the age of 12. 30 percent are under the age of 5. Neither the children nor the detained adults have ever been brought before a judicial authority. Arbitrary detention, based solely on family ties, amounts to a form of collective punishment, i.e. a war crime, to which governments become accomplices when they refuse to proceed with repatriations.

The condition of the children. The youngest in the camps live in such an inhumane way that their detention can be compared to torture. In the camps there is a shortage of medical assistance, clean water, education and the possibility of playing. According to Kurdish Red Crescent, at least 371 children died in 2019 in al-Hol from easily treatable diseases or from hypothermia. Others drowned in sewage ditches, tent fires or were run over by water trucks. Many minors suffer from asthma, probably due to the fumes coming from an oil field near the camp, but they cannot be treated due to a lack of oxygen and medicines.

Attacks and assaults. The camps have become increasingly dangerous and violent, as detainees, including many IS loyalists, almost regularly carry out attacks on other inmates, camp authorities and aid workers. According to United Nations estimates 90 people were murdered in al-Hol in 2021 and 42 from January to mid-November 2022. In November 2022, two Egyptian sisters, both under 15, were found dead in a sewage canal in al -Hol after being raped and stabbed. The mothers interviewed by Human Rights Watch they said they hid their children in tents to protect them from sexual assaults. The words of a Canadian mother detained in the Roj camp are emblematic: “When we were under the Islamic State, we had to find a safe place to protect our children from bombs. Now we have to find a safe place to protect them from other people in the camps.” Her son tried to hang himself with a rope last spring.

The situation in prisons. Conditions are even worse in prisons and makeshift detention centers where the SDF hold up to 1,000 detainees, many of whom are boys up to 12 years old and are kept in cells with adult men. In January 2022, Isis attacked a prison containing seven hundred people in the city of al-Hasakah, sparking a ten-day battle with the SDF. More than 500 people died, including many children. When the foreign minors approach adolescence, they are taken from the fields where they live with their mothers and taken by the guards to the so-called “rehabilitation centres” or to the prisons where the men are kept. Often they are taken away without warning, the mothers don’t even know it, and many are as young as 10 or 12 years old. Generally, Syrian families are allowed to visit their loved ones, but foreign families are not allowed.