Thousands of children of numerous Western and Asian nationalities face a life of confinement in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria, with little hope of being released by the US-backed Syrian-Kurdish authorities. This is what the BBC denounces today with a report conducted by one of its envoys in the north-eastern Syrian regions, administered by the Kurds and where refugee camps and 'rehabilitation centers for minors' resemble prisons.
ISIS was formally defeated in Syria in 2019 but in various Syrian regions in central and eastern Syria it continues to proselytize segments of the local population, and to operate as an armed insurgency. ISIS is also de facto present in the al Hol camp, the most crowded agglomeration of refugees and displaced persons in northeastern Syria managed by Kurdish-Syrian forces. About 60 thousand people reside in al Hol in very precarious health and hygiene conditions, mostly Syrians and Iraqis, but among them there are also thousands of foreigners, of 55 different nationalities.
According to the British investigation, some of the children and adolescents of parents who in the past supported ISIS in Syria and Iraq are transferred from camps, such as al Hol or al Roj, to 'rehabilitation centers' from which they cannot leave. . When they turn 18, if no one asks for repatriation to their country of origin, these boys are transferred to prisons, also run by the Kurdish-Syrian forces. These are local expressions of the anti-Turkish Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) founded by Abdullah Ocalan.
For their part, the Kurdish authorities have long insisted on reminding the international community that the issue of ISIS prisoners and their families, women and children, locked up in prisons and camps in north-eastern Syria is not a problem they can tackle. alone but that it must involve all the countries from which these individuals come.
As long as these foreign women and children, the Kurdish authorities cited by the BBC say, remain in camps in north-eastern Syria, ISIS will continue to survive.