Festering Islamist Jihad

"It’s happening at night, and it’s happening in the shadows, but no one informs on who did it. They’re afraid of each other here."
"We can contain the women, but we can’t control their ideology. There are many types of people here, but some of them were princesses among ISIL. There are spaces inside the camp that are like an academy for them now."
"The children need help here, you can see it. How do we stop them becoming their parents?"
Kurdish senior intelligence source, al-Hol camp 

"Given that ISIL had women’s units and also taught them how they should still spread the idea and ideals of the caliphate once they are back in their countries of origins, they are a serious risk to the society, so their children could be also."
Arab intelligence official

"[The approach had to be] pragmatic [and] case by case."
"We will have to study: Who was this woman married to? What role did [she] play inside ISIL? Is (she) really ready to give up the ideology? [before countries in Europe feel prepared to repatriate their citizens who chose to join ISIL]."
European intelligence source 

"The children who have been traumatized by living through all of this need a lot more than we can really offer in a camp."
"It’s not only the missing out of school, it’s the violence that women and children were exposed to. People talk about seeing the beheadings in the town square, seeing the heads roll around."
Sonia Khush, Syria country director, Save the Children

Veiled women walk together at al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria. Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

In July several women appeared in a video that was posted online; the women heavily veiled, held the Islamic State black-and-white banner, claiming to be delivering a message from the al-Hol camp. One speaks the message: "Brothers, light the fire of jihad and free us from these prisons." Her speech then turns to the "enemies of God: To you we say, women of the mujahideen: You think you have us imprisoned in your rotten camp. But we are a ticking bomb. Just you wait and see."


They are, in fact, a ticking time bomb right where they are, at the al-Hol camp where six months after the defeat of the Islamic State caliphate's territory 20,000 women and 50,000 children who had been part of the caliphate live in the vast and sprawling tent camp operated and guarded by 400 Kurdish troops supported by the United States. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant's men are installed in their own rough camps, segregated from the women. In squalid, crowded areas known as prison camps the ISIL inmates remain a barbaric fixture, a threat to others through their virulently hateful ideology.

Islamic State fundamentalist sharia strictures are being forced by the women inside the confines of al-Hol on other women whom they consider are insufficiently pious. They stress their censure of these women with beatings and other forms of brutality, including murder. In short, they have imposed a reign of terror at al-Hol where no one, not even the guards, are immune from their venomous cruelty imposed in the name of Allah. Violence and fanaticism reign supreme.

Stabbing guards, stoning aid workers and flying the Islamic State group’s black flag in plain sight: the wives and children of the ‘caliphate’ are sticking by the jihadists in Syria’s al-Hol camp. Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images

Many of the women in the camp have no idea where their husbands or teen sons are, taken away by the Syrian Defence Forces after the defeat of the caliphate and distributed among a number of camps and prisons. At overcrowded al-Hol, sewage leaks into tents. Residents draw their potable water from water tanks full of worms. Kurdish doctors treat the women who are ill, but many are reluctant to turn to them for help because they know that the ISIL women will fault them and harass them for their weakness in seeking aid from those who imprison them.


Similarly, women in the camp not associated with ISIL, whose relatives abroad or in Syria or Iraq are attempting to have them released, engaging lawyers to plead on their behalf, try to ensure that no one has any knowledge of their hopes for release. When and if this information is relayed to the women of ISIL who dictate everything that happens at the camp, they turn their attention on those women threatening and beating them, and sometimes worse.

The camp residents are segregated by nationality with specific sections meant for either Syrians or Iraqis, leaving over 9,000 others penned behind chain-link fences. Where the radicalized elements, those with ISIL and remaining loyal to the terrorist group to the point of emulating the violent coersion that took place in Raqqa and elsewhere, known as the Annexe, home to Arabs, South Asians, Africans and Europeans as well as others who heeded the clarion call to Islamist jihad.

In this zone, the guards move about with particular care. Last month one of the guards was left with broken bones after a planned ambush. Residents of the camp have been warned by the black burkar-clad ISIL women that they must obey the dress code imposed by Islamic State on all women. Their lapses receive corrective advice which will be elevated to violence should they repeat the insult to Islamist sharia-imposed garb. In one instance, at another camp, Islamic State children tried to bury an Iraqi child alive.

Little wonder France and Britain refuse to repatriate their nationals. In Canada, some Islamic State returnees have been allowed to go about with complete freedom, ostensibly under surveillance by the RCMP. In the United States many of those who returned from Syria have been imprisoned. Their caliphate's territory may have been recaptured in Iraq and Syria but their ideology lives on to continue its scourge of deadly violence in South Asia, Africa, the Middle East, as the group continues to regain strength and attracts new recruits

A general view of the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, crammed with around 70,000 people. Delil Souleiman/AFP/Getty Images