Children of Isis

Deadly ambushes, violent clashes and cold blood killings are almost daily occurrences here in north-east Syria, where the war against the Islamic State has never ended. Taking advantage of the security vacuum that opened up after the fall of the Assad regime, Isis cells are regrouping, recruiting and increasing the attacks, expanding their operations in the Deir ez-Zohr province and in the Euphrates valley, from the Iraqi border to the former Caliphate “capital”, Raqqa.

The region is part of Rojava, the Kurdish Democratic Autonomous Administration of north-east Syria, or Daanes, and is controlled by YPG, People’s Protection Units, local militias that form the backbone of the American-driven international anti-terrorist coalition. According to intelligence sources here, at least 30 YPG fighters have been killed in the past year and roughly 100 diehard Islamic militants have been arrested, not to mention the growing number of civilian victims and displaced persons.

In Raqqa, the square where IS cutthroats displayed the severed heads of hostages and infidels is now guarded by security forces, and the nondescript town of concrete block buildings is slowly returning to an uncertain normality. But the unmarked mass graves that surround the city, where stray dogs walk over the forgotten remains of tens of thousands, are a stark and disturbing reminder of a past that has not yet been buried.

Rojava’s prisons are full of suspected and confessed IS terrorists from 50 countries including Russia, the US, Europe, the Balkans, Australia, North Africa and the Middle East. Their families, some 34,000 women and children, are arbitrarily detained in tented camps with little hope to regain their freedom soon.

Al-Hol is an open-air prison housing 25,000 people at the edge of the Syrian desert: whipped by the wind, scorching in summer and freezing in winter, it is surrounded by barbed wire fences and armed positions. In some sections of the camp I had to be escorted to prevent assaults and stone throwing by youngsters who consider the place to be IS territory. In the “Annex”, where the 6,000 most radicalized foreigners are locked up and where even the police stay away, they made sure I got my fair share of insults: kafir, dog, and worse.  Nur ad-Din, a 14 years old kid, defiantly told me he would rather be called Nur al-Khalifa, Light of the Caliphate.

“It’s a time bomb” says Gihan Hanan, who manages al-Hol. “Some women were just the fighters’ wives, but many were part of the Islamic State organization and still behave as they did in the Caliphate, teaching only the Koran and the sharia to the children. They even bribe the guards to get pregnant and force their daughters to marry other teenagers, so to raise a new generation of hardline Daesh militants”.

I was able to speak with a few of them, all clad head to toe in the black niqab: no one showed any regret and most claimed they were not aware of the atrocities committed in the name of Allah, shifting the subject to their harsh living conditions and their wish to break free.

Since the Kurdish administration is not recognized by any government, it has no legal jurisdiction over the detainees, who should be tried in their countries of origin. Spanish citizens and many Iraqis have recently been sent home. But most other countries, including Europe and the US, are reluctant to accept large numbers of foreign fighters and their families. Attempts to escape are therefore frequent, and at times successful: a network of smugglers is helping and IS sleeper cells are ready to embrace the runaways.

As I walk among the tattered tents, I am surrounded by a crowd of children: a Bosnian toddler with long blond hair and blue eyes, a dark-skinned Azeri, a German little girl holding a colorful drawing, an Iranian boy trying to fly a kite made from a trash bag, a French teenager with a deflated soccer ball, a young Russian asking for a picture. I wonder how they can talk to each other, but they do, using the Arabic of the Koran and that incomparable magical language that only children know.

They are the innocent and unwitting victims of these barbaric times. Will they forget their magical language one day? Will they ever be free?