What next for children of Daesh detainees confined in Syrian camps?

1 / 8
Hundreds of offspring of foreign recruits are trapped in overcrowded camps following the collapse of the Daesh caliphate. (Supplied)
Short Url
Updated 19 February 2021
Follow

What next for children of Daesh detainees confined in Syrian camps?

  • Acute malnutrition, dehydration and diarrhea common among the innocent victims of war held in Al-Hawl and Al-Roj
  • Experts say the best way to shield the inmates from the influence of Daesh ideology is via rehabilitation and deradicalization

LONDON: Al-Hawl and Al-Roj, two squalid, horribly overcrowded detention camps in northeast Syria, are home to some 70,000 people — around 80 percent of them women and children — all in some way associated with Daesh, the terror group that dominated a third of the country and whole swathes of neighboring Iraq between 2014 and 2017.

Among them, some 27,500 children are waiting to be repatriated. Around 975 have been repatriated since 2017 — 70 percent of these in 2019. However, repatriations fell to around 200 children in 2020, down from 685 the previous year, due in part to travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic. But political considerations are also in play.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim, a director at the Center for Global Policy, Washington, D.C., who compiled a report for Arab News Research and Studies Unit based on field research in Syria and Turkey in 2020, believes the question of whether or not to repatriate these children is “unambiguous” and should be dealt with urgently.

0 seconds of 27 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
00:27
00:27
 

 

“Everybody accepts that these children are completely innocent. Many of them were born in Syria and Iraq, many of them were born in the refugee camps, many of them were just brought over by family members at a very young age and they are now in their teens,” Ibrahim told an Arab News webinar on Thursday.

“Almost everybody accepts they are innocent parties in this conflict and should be repatriated to their countries of origin as soon as possible. Because being situated in the camps long term is not just detrimental to them, it’s actually detrimental to our security over the long term. You are essentially now grooming the next generation of Daesh radicals.”

While the vast majority of the camp residents are from Iraq and Syria, about 13,500 of the children held in the camps hail from 70 different countries, including the US, Canada, Russia, Britain, France, Turkey and South Asia. Around two-thirds of the foreign children are aged under 12 — most of them under five.

According to Save the Children, some 30 percent of the under-fives screened at the camps since in early February were suffering from acute malnutrition. The World Food Program (WFP) says it has recorded several cases of dehydration and diarrhea. And conditions are deteriorating. More than 500 people died in the camps in 2019, including 371 children.

Overcrowding is one of the key health concerns, particularly given the threat of communicable diseases like COVID-19. Al-Hawl was originally established to host just 10,000 people. Today it contains 64,000.

“They suffer stigmatization, unclear status, lack of clear pathways around reintegration — their basic human rights,” said Orlaith Minogue, who participated in the same webinar in her capacity as senior conflict and humanitarian advocacy adviser to Save the Children UK.

“Throughout the camps, critical gaps exist in all sectors: water, sanitation, hygiene, health, nutrition, education and protection. Our colleagues have reported seeing children who are bowlegged, which can be the result of Vitamin D deficiency. Children’s teeth are rotting. It’s those broader medical issues that over a period of time can become quite debilitating for children.”

0 seconds of 24 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
00:24
00:24
 

 

Tens of thousands of women and children poured out of Baghouz in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province when the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) liberated this final sliver of territory from Daesh in March 2019, backed by the US, UK and other members of the international coalition.

Truckloads of hungry and bewildered survivors were moved from the front lines into poorly equipped camps, where they have remained under SDF guard ever since — their status unclear and their future undetermined.

Aid agencies and overstretched Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on foreign governments to repatriate their nationals, warning further delay will cause greater suffering and loss of life and might allow radicalized inmates to escape and launch a new insurgency.

Read the full Arab News Research & Studies report here

However, foreign governments have been reluctant to take back their nationals, fearing the move would prove politically unpopular at home and pose a security threat should courts lack sufficient evidence to prosecute suspected militants.

“I have had discussions with various politicians on this topic. Their reluctance to repatriate individuals just comes down to a political calculation,” said Ibrahim. “Because if any of these individuals come back and even one of them is involved in some sort of terrorist activity, some sort of attack, a knife attack on the streets of London or Manchester or elsewhere, the first question that will be asked is, Why did you allow these people to come back?”




Syrians wait to leave the Kurdish-run al-Hawl camp holding relatives of suspected Daesh fighters in northeastern Syria on Nov. 24, 2020. (Photo by Delil Souleiman / AFP)

Several French nationals have been handed over to Iraq’s criminal justice system rather than face domestic courts, but human rights groups want to see far greater international oversight to prevent abuses.

Some governments have brought home women and children on a case-by-case basis — each time grappling with the moral implications of separating children from their mothers.

“We don’t believe the repatriation policy should be limited solely to unaccompanied or orphaned children or to a cumbersome case-by-case approach that has been taken on by a number of states,” said Minogue. “It has been demonstrated repatriation is feasible. We think all of these children, including those with their mothers, are innocent victims of this conflict and should be repatriated to their home countries with urgency.

 

0 seconds of 36 minutes, 49 secondsVolume 90%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
36:49
36:49
 

 

“Any decisions about what happens between mother and child, should happen back in their country of origin, in capitals where there are the services and where there are the professionals who are able to make those determinations.”

When Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi announced his self-styled caliphate on June 29, 2014, thousands of men and women from across the world heeded his call to build an “Islamic State” straddling the group’s newly conquered territories in Iraq and Syria.

Young men traveled thousands of miles to fight in the group’s ranks, while women and teenage girls, some with children in tow, came in search of the lifestyle promised to them by the group’s slick online propagandists. Instead, many found a world of barbarity and genocide, wrapped up in a warped interpretation of Islam.

Read the full Arab News Research & Studies report here

After the “caliphate” fell, the children born to these foreign recruits found themselves trapped in a kind of legal limbo — effectively citizens of nowhere.

Since the group’s territorial defeat in early 2019, there has been mounting concern about a potential resurgence among youngsters hardened by life in the camps.

The recent spate of murders in Al-Hawl shows “how unsustainable the situation is when you have many thousands of children essentially living out their childhoods in this dangerous, volatile situation,” said Minogue.




Syrians wait to leave the Kurdish-run al-Hawl camp holding relatives of suspected Daesh fighters in northeastern Syria on Nov. 24, 2020. (AFP)

“It’s never in the interests of a five-year-old child to languish in a camp with no services, among armed groups in a conflict zone. The idea that they know nothing else is very sad.”

Experts agree that the only way to defuse the potential threat in the long run is through rehabilitation and deradicalization, including psychological, psychiatric and spiritual support, to reintegrate these children into mainstream society.

Ibrahim wants to see young people removed from the camp environment immediately and moved to juvenile rehabilitation centers, where they can begin pro-socialization initiatives, with expertise from foreign governments and aid agencies.

However, the political will needed to resolve the issue has long been lacking, leaving the camps woefully underequipped, aid agencies underfunded and the chances of salvaging these childhoods even slimmer.

Read the full Arab News Research & Studies report here

_______

Twitter: @RobertPEdwards


Lebanese PM to visit Syria, discuss disappearance of prisoners

Updated 13 April 2025
Follow

Lebanese PM to visit Syria, discuss disappearance of prisoners

  • Nawaf Salam lays wreath at Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut to commemorate 50th anniversary of Lebanese Civil War

LONDON: Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam is scheduled to visit the Syrian Arab Republic on Monday to discuss common interests with the new leadership in Damascus.

It will be Salam’s first visit to Syria since he formed a government in February, and he is scheduled to discuss the issue of Lebanese citizens who disappeared in Syrian prisons during the Bashar Assad regime that collapsed in December. It has been reported that 622 Lebanese nationals remain forcibly disappeared in Syrian prisons.

“I hope to return with good news about those missing in Syria, and I will update the Lebanese people on this issue tomorrow,” Salam said, according to the National News Agency.

Salam laid a wreath at the Martyrs’ Monument in Beirut on Sunday to commemorate the anniversary of April 13, the date when Lebanon’s Civil War began in 1975.

Salam wrote on X: “We pause not to reopen wounds, but to recall lessons that must never be forgotten. All victories were false, and all parties (from the war) emerged as losers.”

He added: “There can be no true state unless legitimate armed forces have the exclusive right to bear arms.”


Aid worker missing after deadly attack on colleagues is held by Israel, ICRC says

PRCS paramedic Assad Al-Nsasrah is being held in an Israeli place of detention. (@PalestineRCS)
Updated 13 April 2025
Follow

Aid worker missing after deadly attack on colleagues is held by Israel, ICRC says

  • PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties

CAIRO: A Palestinian Red Crescent staff member who went missing in late March when 15 humanitarian workers were killed by Israeli fire is being detained by Israeli authorities, the rescue service and the Red Cross said on Sunday.
Hisham Mhana, the spokesperson for the ICRC in Gaza, confirmed to Reuters that it had received information that the Palestine Red Crescent Society paramedic Assad Al-Nsasrah was being held in an Israeli place of detention.
“As per standard practice, we informed the families immediately. In this case, we also informed the Palestine Red Crescent Society as they have special standing as a partner of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement,” he said.
The Israeli army did not immediately comment.
Mhana said the ICRC has not been granted access to Nsasrah, who until Sunday had been declared missing, and also has not been able to visit any of the Palestinian detainees and prisoners in Israeli jails since October 7, 2023.
In a post on X, The PRCS demanded the immediate release of Nsasrah, who it said was “forcibly abducted” while carrying out humanitarian duties.
It added that Nsasrah and his colleagues came under heavy gunfire, which led to the killing of eight of them in a “grave violation” of international humanitarian law.
The bodies of 15 emergency and aid workers from the Red Crescent, the Civil Emergency Service and the UN were found buried in a mass grave in southern Gaza in March.
The UN and the Red Crescent accused Israeli forces of killing them after they were dispatched to respond to reports of injuries from Israeli airstrikes.
The Israeli military referred Reuters to its statement from Monday, in which it said that a thorough inquiry into the incident was still underway and that it would provide further details only once the investigation is complete.
It said that a preliminary inquiry indicated that “the troops opened fire due to a perceived threat following a previous encounter in the area, and that six of the individuals killed in the incident were identified as Hamas terrorists.”
The Israeli military has provided no evidence of how it determined that the six were Hamas militants, and the Islamist faction has rejected the accusation.
The only known survivor of the incident, PRCS paramedic Munther Abed, said soldiers had opened fire on clearly marked emergency response vehicles.


Moroccans demonstrate in support of Palestinians

Updated 13 April 2025
Follow

Moroccans demonstrate in support of Palestinians

  • Demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat under pouring rain in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine

RABAT: Several thousand people demonstrated in Morocco’s capital on Sunday to show support for Palestinians in war-torn Gaza.
Under pouring rain, demonstrators marched through the streets of Rabat in response to a call from the National Action Group for Palestine, a coalition of several political organizations, including the Islamist Justice and Development Party (PJD).
“The Moroccans are with Gaza,” said the principal of a private school in Rabat who spoke to AFP.
The North African kingdom has officially called for “the immediate, complete and permanent halt to the Israeli war on Gaza,” but has not publicly discussed reversing the official establishment of ties with Israel in 2020 as part of the US-led Abraham Accords.
The latest protest followed another large rally held a week earlier, part of a spate of demonstrations across the country since the Israeli army resumed its offensive on March 18 against the Islamist group Hamas after a two-month truce in Gaza.


Israel denies entry to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians marking Palm Sunday

Updated 13 April 2025
Follow

Israel denies entry to Jerusalem for Palestinian Christians marking Palm Sunday

  • Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians to obtain security permits to access religious sites
  • Only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians

LONDON: Israeli authorities prevented Palestinian Christian worshippers from entering Jerusalem from the occupied West Bank to participate in Palm Sunday.

Israeli authorities imposed strict restrictions on Jerusalem over the weekend, limiting the access of Palestinian Christians to the city, the Wafa news agency reported.

Only a limited number of worshippers, primarily residents of Jerusalem and Palestinian citizens of Israel, were able to attend religious services at Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Wafa added.

Palm Sunday marks the beginning of Holy Week leading up to Easter. It commemorates the entry of Jesus Christ into Jerusalem and is observed by Eastern and Western Christian churches.

On Sunday, Patriarch Theophilos III of the Greek Orthodox Church and Latin Patriarch Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa led liturgies attended by the clergy and a small group of worshipers.

Israeli restrictions at checkpoints around Jerusalem require Palestinians — Muslim and Christian — to obtain permits to access religious sites, including the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

Father Ibrahim Faltas, Vicar of the Custody of the Holy Land, noted that only 6,000 permits were issued this year to the West Bank’s 50,000 Christians. Permit issuance requires a security clearance and often asks that applicants download a mobile application managed by Israeli authorities.

“This is the second consecutive year that only a small number of pilgrims are able to participate in Holy Week and Easter celebrations in Jerusalem due to the ongoing conflict (in Gaza),” Faltas told Wafa.

“Churches would continue to pray for peace, justice, and freedom for all people in the Holy Land,” he added.

The Catholic Palm Sunday procession took place on Sunday afternoon, starting from Jerusalem's Church of Bethphage and ending at the Church of Saint Anne.

Christians gathered for services at the Holy Family Catholic Church and Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox Church in the Gaza Strip amid the ongoing Israeli attacks since late 2023. In the West Bank, Palm Sunday services were held in churches throughout Bethlehem, Jericho, Ramallah, Nablus, and Jenin.


Syrian President Sharaa heads to UAE on official visit - SANA

Updated 13 April 2025
Follow

Syrian President Sharaa heads to UAE on official visit - SANA

CAIRO: Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa will travel to the United Arab Emirates for his second visit to a Gulf state as president on Sunday, Syria's official news agency reported.
He will be accompanied by foreign minister Assad al-Shibani, who visited the UAE earlier this year.
They are expected to discuss issues of mutual interest, the SANA state news agency reported.
Sharaa visited Saudi Arabia in February on his first foreign trip since assuming the presidency in January.
His visit to the UAE comes as the new Syrian leadership attempts to strengthen ties with Arab and Western leaders following the fall of Bashar al-Assad in December at the hands of Sharaa's Sunni Islamist group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.

 

(With Reuters)