Uncertain Future for ISIS Orphans in Syria Camp

Features

October 2nd, 5:18am

Asharq Al-Awsat

A volunteer caring for 24 orphaned children reportedly linked with foreign fighters of ISIS, knits a garment while children watch at a camp in the northern Syrian village of Ain Issa, on September 26, 2019. (Photo by Delil SOULEIMAN / AFP)

Sitting in a wheelchair beside a metal fence in a camp in northern Syria, nine-year-old Ruqaya Mohammad raises a scarf over her face to hide from journalists. The girl lost her left eye, her legs and both her parents during battles against ISIS in their last Syria redoubt in March. She now lives in a large tent along with 23 other orphaned children of foreign ISIS militants in a camp for the displaced in Ain Issa, under the care of older camp residents. "Among the children, Ruqaya moves me the most," said Sara al-Abdullah, a 37-year-old who helps look after the orphans. "She always looks withdrawn, shy, and sad," said the widowed mother of three, one of nine women residents of the Ain Issa camp paid a small fee to help look after the children. Outside the tent, tiny children's tops and trousers have been slung across the metal fence to dry. Inside, young boys dip flatbread into bowls of soft aubergine stewed in tomatoes. A volunteer tries to coax a young child into opening his mouth, while another woman feeds an infant with a milk bottle. A small boy dashes across the tent and throws himself excitedly into a pile of bedding. The volunteers say some of the children are still visibly scarred after living with their late parents under ISIS. "They play at shooting each other or planting mines in the earth," Abdallah told Agence France Presse. Clutching bits of wood they pretend are guns, she says they throw themselves into imaginary battles, emulating the cries of ISIS militants. "All that is ingrained in their heads. There's nothing to help them forget," said Abdallah. "They don't study, or go and play with the little ones. It's been taken away from them."  ISIS overran large parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq in 2014. US-backed Syrian fighters in March expelled them from their last patch of territory in the eastern Syrian village of Baghouz. After years of leading the fight against the extremists, Syria's Kurds hold thousands of suspected foreign ISIS members in detention and camps: men and women, but also some 8,000 children -- more than half of whom are under the age of five. The United Nations says hundreds of them are unaccompanied. The 24 orphans in Ain Issa were among the tens of thousands of people to stream out of Baghouz in the last weeks of the battle, after months of food shortages and heavy bombardment. "They were in a pitiful state. They went to hospital and got better," said Ain Issa camp manager Jalal Iyyaf. But the camp has received no aid for the orphans and is struggling to provide for them, he told AFP in his office. "We ask for clothes, food, drink as well as help to rehabilitate them, rid them of IS ideology," he said. Back in the tent, Suad Mohammed Ameen, 20, pulls a T-shirt over a toddler's head. The children she helps need food and clothes -- but also psychological support, she said. "The toughest part is when they tell me their fathers and mothers were killed in front of them, or how they lost their siblings," she said, a fuchsia pink headscarf framing her face. To help ease the pain, she has vowed to tell the children stories, and even teach the girls to crochet. But Iyyaf, the camp manager, said the best solution would be for their home countries to take them back. The Kurdish authorities in northeast Syria have repeatedly called for the foreigners they hold to be repatriated, a request that has largely been met with resistance -- except in rare cases, including several orphans.

from Asharq AL-awsat https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1927921/uncertain-future-isis-orphans-syria-camp