Raising the New Generation of Islamic State Jihadists at Al-Hol

"All of the women here are radical."

"But the bigger problem is that the mothers are educating their kids according to the Islamic State ideology."

Hokmiya Ibrahim, administrator, Roj camp, Syria 

 

"Repatriation is the priority."

"We are aiming to return people to their countries, not just in al-Hol, but for all the camps inside northeast Syria. Everyone should go back home."

"This camp is a ticking time bomb. We’ve received intelligence from our allies in the international coalition, led by the United States, and from the Iraqi government, that ISIS [the Islamic State] is planning something. But we don’t know whether it will be an external attack or an uprising from within."

"We’re trying to address this together with the National Security Agency and the [U.N. Refugee Agency]."

"[But on the part of the new government], no steps have been taken to relocate these populations."

"Humanitarian cases in al-Hawl need urgent referral to Damascus or elsewhere and, for the past month and a half, we’ve seen no positive moves." 

Jihan Hanan, co-head, al-Hol camp, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces

 

"Many international organizations have programs for al-Hol, but when it comes to actually moving and supporting families, there is no one there in practice."

"Given the scale of needs and funding constraints, no returnee receives a full package of support immediately upon return. Resources simply do not allow for that."

Mounzer al-Salal, director, Syrian NGO Stabilization Support Unit (SSU) 

Families prepare to return to their hometowns from northeast Syria’s al-Hol camp, 27 April 2025. Reuters

 

"A massive fence confines 39,000 people, 11,000 of whom are foreign nationals. Of these, 95% are women and children — mostly relatives of Islamic State fighters — along with a number of other civilians displaced by war. The camp is divided into six sections. Sections 1 through 5 house about 33,000 Syrians and Iraqis. Section 6, which the camp’s director described as “the most dangerous,” holds the families of foreign fighters from over 42 countries."

"There are 24,000 minors in al-Hawl. Many were born behind barbed wire and have never seen the world beyond the camp. Seven thousand of these children are under 12 years old. As we drive in, children hurl stones at the armored vehicles driven by our escorts from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia coalition that has battled the Islamic State for years. Others hide. One boy raises his right index finger — a gesture often associated with the Islamic State."

"Since 2019, over 150 killings have been documented inside al-Hawl; an average of more than two murders per month. A few weeks ago, authorities discovered the mutilated remains of a woman in Section 6, partly mummified and discarded in a ditch between tents belonging to extremists."

New Lines Magazine 

Mostly women and children live in the al-Hol camp    BBC

 

Most of the detainees in the Al Hol Camp located in northeastern Syria where a fence with barbed wire surrounds the immense compound, are family members -- the wives, sisters and children -- of the Islamic State fighters imprisoned nearby. Prisons close by the women's prison house over 8,000 of the ISIS fighters. Kurdish-led Syrian forces supported by the United States fought to reclaim land in Syria that ISIS had ruled for years as well as in Iraq, when it established its 'Islamic Caliphate', planning to conquer ever greater tracts of land until it was finally brought to heel.

 

The Kurdish-led forces that had protected the minority groups such as Yazidis, Christians and their own from the  brutal Islamists detained thousands of ISIS fighters and tens of thousands of their relatives, many women who had entered Syria from abroad responding to an appeal from ISIS for 'brides' for their terrorist fighting men. Ever since that wind-down of ISIS and the capture and imprisonment of their cohorts, the Kurds have been left to the task of guarding them. Despite years-long appeals to the international community by the Kurds to repatriate their citizens, few have complied.

 

The United States, allied with the Kurds, is now preparing to completely withdraw their presence and expects the new government of Syria to take responsibility for the thousands of residents in the detention camps, part of its plans to have the  Syrian Democratic Forces led by  the Kurds merge with the reconstituted military of the Syrian government under one-time ISIS affiliate, President Ahmed Al Sharaa, once known as Abu Mohammad al-Julani, in his earlier role as a bona fide jihadist. 

 

Although the Trump Administration has given the new Syrian administration a clean bill of health, that hasn't stopped the Al Sharaa military from aiding and abetting parts of its Sunni alliance jihadist militias in deadly reprisal attacks against the Syrian Alawites as well as Syrian Druze and Christians. Understandably, given the Kurdish experience with Sunni Jihadist militias and its battles over the years to free the geography from the hold of the Islamic State, the Kurds have little trust in the new government and its stated commitment to fight ISIS. 

 

The al-Hol camp holds families of alleged Islamic State fighters [Getty]

 

 Kurds view the likelihood that the former al-Qaeda-linked new government may turn the ISIS prisoners free, despite their public stance of battling ISIS. By no means is the Islamic State dead and gone as a violent ideological threat to global stability and security. It continues to target northeast Syria's Kurdish-led forces, expanding reach and frequency and lethality, reflecting the assessments by the UN and U.S. Two American soldiers were killed in one such attack in mid-December.

 

According to camp officials, ISIS operatives remain inside the camps, their focus that of radicalizing the children. Over 27,000 family members of ISIS fighters are held in Al Hol and nearby Roj camps. And while none of the women have been charged with  any crimes, the officials are under no illusion that many of these women are dangerous as ongoing proponents of the ISIS agenda, intent on teaching their children to become future acting members of the terrorist group. 

 

The most extreme of the detainees are those from countries outside the Middle East; Tajikistan, France and Russia; among them, about 6,000 women and children living separately in the camp, off limits to visitors. Violence and ill-health are the lot of the residents of the camp, where weapons are smuggled in and women and older adolescent boys attempt frequent escapes. Among the hundreds of vehicles entering daily with supplies, some carry human contraband out of the camp. 

 

"Every day people are fleeing, and it seems it is an organized operation", observed Al Hol administrator Jihan Hanan. 

  

All the residents at the camp are under indefinite detention, even though many have no links to the Islamic State and fled to the camp to escape the punishing U.S.-led bombing campaign. Photograph by Ivor Prickett

 

 

 

Islamic State Foreign Collaborators

"What is inevitable is that the government will continue to create obstacles ... they will continue to delay."

"They'll continue to create secret frameworks without notice, and then change their position at the last minute. That's what's inevitable."

"Yes, it's complicated. And yes, it's difficult. And yes, it's challenging. And yes, there are logistical [challenges]."

"But what we're talking about here is the life and liberty of 23 Canadian men, women and children."

"There is no reason why these constitutional violations need to continue. Canada has the consent [to bring citizens home]."

"They have the ability. They've done it already without incident."

Lawrence Greenspon, lawyer representing ISIL detainees, Al Hol Camp, Syria 

 

The camp where foreigners are kept by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces is a squalid, miserable place filled with women and children living squalid miserable lives behind barbed wire. Some of those incarcerated are hard-core Islamist members of Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, and some are not of that ilk entirely. It is the hard-core Islamists that virtually govern the interior of the camp and those who fail to subscribe to their version of Islam are known to have been murdered, while all others live in fear.

The camps housing the ISIL male members are also densely crowded and squalid, miserable places to spend hours, days, months, years. So it is helpful to remember that these men did not hesitate to brutalize and murder thousands of Iraqis and Syrians, along with Yazidis who faced a genocidal effort on the part of ISIL jihadis who slaughtered Yazidi men, and took women and children into slavery, many of whom have never been returned.

Islamic State favoured producing shocking videos of captured British and American journalists and humanitarian care workers whom they filmed being hanged, set on fire in cages, crucified and most horribly photographic of all complete with mocking commentary, beheaded. The grislier the mode of death, the more viral their reputation as vendors of lethal terror, a bleak, dark celebrity they valued hugely. Their reputation as conscienceless purveyors of torture and death made them invincible.

 

Children at the Kurdish-run Al Hol detention camp in northern Syria in March. Some 70,000 people have been living in increasingly dire conditions there.  Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times

Military opposition melted away as they advanced to occupy greater swaths of territory in Iraq and Syria, expanding their 'caliphate', spreading terror and subduing a cringing populace the military tasked to defend the citizens had abandoned. These are the prisoners that Kurdish defence forces rounded up and incarcerated to help make the world a safer, more sane place. Kurdish defense forces, unlike the two countries' formal military forces were fearless in combating the ISIL militias and protecting the minority groups they terrorized.

Now, the Federal Court of Canada is hearing arguments for Canada to rise to its international obligations to repatriate Canadian citizens who chose to join this odious group of murdering Islamists. Their family members in Canada have spearheaded a drive to have 23 Canadians returned to Canada, citing the violation of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by ignoring their plight abroad as prisoners. Canada is held to have breached its international obligations according to a United Nations special rapporteur by not repatriating these extremist fanatics.

Two ISIL-linked women and their children have previously been brought back to Canada, both women immediately arrested, one now free on bail conditions. As for other countries, France has absorbed 58 of its ISIL members, Australia 17 nationals, Germany a dozen, Netherlands, 40, Russia 38 and Britain two. Family members of these ISIL prisoners are looking for a declaration that the government's lack of action is unreasonable; they seek a formal repatriation of the detainees, emergency travel documents and authorization of a Canadian representative to accompany them on their return to Canada.

A 1960s-era government prison in Hasaka, Syria, that the Syrian Democratic Forces has used to detain male members of ISIS.  Credit...Charlie Savage/The New York Times

Credit Where It's Due

"Baghdadi's death represents a huge blow to the organization's capacity to swell is ranks, mobilize its existing supporters and develop the momentum that could restore it to its past glories."
"That said, ISIS [Islamic State] will still be a potent, underground terrorist threat."
Ranj Alaaldin, fellow, Brookings Institution, Doha

"[The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces] played a key role [in the raid on Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's compound]."

"[The US has been] in close touch [with SDF Commander Gen. Mazloum Abdi] about all aspects of what we’re doing."

"He, his people, and his intelligence sources, played a key role in all of this. It’s a very, very important role. Nobody should underestimate how key the SDF was in all of this."

U.S. Senior State Department official

We have declassified a picture of the K-9. Donald Trump

"We’re not releasing the name of the dog right now. The dog is still in theater. The dog, the K-9, the military working dog performed a tremendous service as they all do in a variety of situations."

"Slightly wounded and fully recovering but the dog is still in theater, returned to duty with its handler."

"So we are not going to release just yet photos or names of dogs or anything else."

Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

An agent of the Syrian Democratic Forces had successfully infiltrated ISIS to become a vital informant. He was able to lead the special U.S. forces to the exact location where Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was in hiding, and to relay to them vital information on how to access his hiding place; warning that the front entrance would be booby-trapped, leading the special ops group to blast a hole in the side of the building for entry, according to SDF spokesman Mustafa Bali. In addition, a piece of Baghdadi's underwear and blood sample obtained by the information was used to verify the terrorist leader's identity through an on-site DNA test prior to the raid taking place.

Just as the U.S. special forces were instructed, after they raided Osama bin Laden's compound at Abbottabad, Pakistan, to bury his body at sea to ensure that his corpse would not endure as a venerated inspiration buried in a shrine dedicated as an Al-Qaeda memorial, so too was the body of Baghdadi taken by helicopter as the special forces withdrew after destroying Baghdadi's compound, to be similarly buried at sea. What will remain as a testimonial to the psychotic killer's memory is the bitterness of those whose loved ones were butchered by his command.

Eleven children were found in the compound, aside from the three that Baghdadi dragged along with him when he fled the American soldiers closing in on him with their K-9 dogs. The eleven children were evacuated from the compound and taken into safe custody, their near future presumably given over to a humanitarian effort to decompress them psychologically from the hate-filled Islamist screed they were programmed with. Their mothers -- at least two of Baghdadi's wives who were present at the compound, were found shot dead, though they were wearing intact suicide vests.

Later that same day, according to the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which coordinated with the U.S. on the joint operation, ISIS spokesman Abu al-Hassan al-Muhajir was also killed, along with two other ISIS leaders, near Jarablus, norther Syria. Al-Muhajir was viewed as Baghdadi's second-in-command. On the death of the two principals, however, another groomed leader was  elevated to succeed Baghdadi. Neither the 'ideas' of the ideology of death nor the faithfulness of Islamic State followers will die for lack of oxygen, unfortunately.

People look at a destroyed houses near the village of Barisha, in Idlib province, Syria, Sunday, Oct. 27, 2019, after an operation by the U.S. military which targeted Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the shadowy leader of the Islamic State group. President Donald Trump says Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is dead after a U.S. military operation in Syria targeted the Islamic State group leader. (AP Photo/Ghaith Alsayed)

There were eight U.S. stealth helicopters involved in the well co-ordinated raid, long in the planning, with Delta Force and Navy Seals who flew over Barisha, a village holding a few thousand Syrians in Idlib province close to the Turkish border. Close to midnight when they arrived, the group was fired on from the ground, and they reacted by demolishing the source of the fire, then the special forces  troops rappelled to the ground close to the Baghdadi compound.

Russia and Turkey were advised beforehand of the passage of the group overhead, but not of the raid, since the helicopters had to fly over northern Syria now controlled by Russia and turkey. While Seals set up a perimeter after landing, Delta Force approached the compound wall in the knowledge they had to bypass the booby-trapped main gate They entered through the wall they had penetrated with explosives instead, encountering a number of close cadres of Baghdadi within the compound, killing a half dozen, themselves sustaining no injuries.

This is when the dead wives were encountered and the eleven children moved into custody, and the presence of a number of tunnels discovered, one of which Baghdadi fled down; a dead-end tunnel, not the one that was believed to be open-ended. With three children in tow, soldiers and military dogs in hot pursuit Baghdadi chose to detonate a suicide vest ending his life and those of the three children. The tunnel roof collapsed, and the bodies were laboriously excavated from the rubble, a DNA test concluded again, positive.

All Hell Breaks Loose

"[The assault against Turkey's Kurdish militia enemies] will not stop ... no matter what anyone says."
"[The intention is to set up a] safe zone [inside Syria where many of the millions of Syrian refugees Turkey has been hosting can be resettled."
"The assault will continue] until all the terrorists go further south than the 32 km border [strip] that Mr. Trump mentioned."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan

"We did everything we could."
"We have called upon the West [and] the Arab Union but no one is coming to help, so we have no one other than ourselves to defend [Kobani]."
"Kurdish youth should come and defend their homes, and people should not abandon their homes – this is our land."
"It looks like this is the fate of the Kurds, to go through this each time."
Kobani official General Ismet Sheikh Hasan

"We know that we would have to make painful compromises with Moscow and Assad."
"But if we have to choose between compromises and the genocide of our people, we will surely choose life for our people."
SDF commander General Mazlum Abdi

Rojda Felat, who commanded the battle against ISIS in Raqqa, surveys a flank of Tal al-Samam with other SDF commanders. Image: ©Joey L./JoeyL.com

"This deployment occurred through coordination and agreement with the Self-Administration Authority for Northern and Eastern Syria and the Syrian Democratic Forces."
"To counter and prevent this [Turkish] attack, an agreement with the Syrian government, which is responsible for protecting the borders of the country and preserving Syrian sovereignty, has been reached for the Syrian army to enter and be deployed along the Syrian-Turkish border."
Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (NES)

"You have given up on us. You are leaving us to be slaughtered."
"I need to know if you are capable of protecting my people, of stopping these bombs falling on us or not."
"I need to know, because if you're not, I need to make a deal with Russia and the regime now and invite their planes to protect this region."
SDF General Mazloum Kobani Abdi to William Roebuck, Deputy Special Envoy to the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS 

Turkish military vehicles carrying tanks as they are on the way to northern Syria. Sedat Suna/EPA

Desperate times call for desperate decisions, and so it is that people whose back is to the wall are left with little option but to decide which of their deadly enemies is more likely to spare lives than to butcher the vulnerable among them. Which led Kurdish authorities to the decision to call upon the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad which has never been a champion of Kurdish autonomy and security, much less the human right to have sovereignty over their own ancestral lands, to help defend the lives and territory within Syria from the military might of the Turkish army.

The Democratic Administration of North and East Syria, which governs the de facto autonomous area, has confirmed what seemed at first to be but a wild rumour -- that it had reached an agreement with the Baathist Alawite regime that would see Syrian troops deployed along the Syria-Turkey border. That same border corridor that Recep Tayyip Erdogan has marked out for control by Turkey, with the intention to make it impossible for the dominant Kurdish population to continue living there.

In the best of all possible worlds, the situation could conceivably see the Turkish and Syrian militaries confronting one another for dominance in the area -- an area that is, geographically, within Syrian borders, but which Turkey contests, with its unwavering eye on freeing it from the presence of the YPG, the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units whose majority position within the Syrian Democratic Forces Erdogan identifies as 'terrorists'. Just as Syria's Bashar al-Assad identified the Sunni Syrian rebels as 'terrorists' when he set out to destroy them by all means possible inclusive of forbidden chemical weapons.

Turkish-backed Syrian fighters evacuate a wounded comrade near the border town of Ras al-Ain on Oct. 13. NAZEER AL-KHATIB/AFP via Getty Images

Thanks to the decision of U.S. President Donald Trump -- who views the Kurds upon whose fighting spirit the United States leaned heavily to defeat the Islamic State caliphate, now being expendable in the greater interests of catering to the noxiously destructive plans of NATO ally Erdogan whose dictator-qualities Trump obviously admires -- the Kurds have become a liability that Trump is willing to sacrifice for improved relations with Erdogan.

That Donald Trump failed to raise the curtain concealing the future to visualize the ignominy that would fall on his administration with that casual decision to abandon a true ally whose mettle and usefulness had been proven, in an act of absolute disloyalty to honour, is remarkable only if one can readily discount the man's overweening hubris, his egotistical belief that his word is law and it is spelled out as 'j.u.s.t.i.c.e.' Something he believes implicitly and fewer people than ever give credit to.

Thanks to Trump's short-sightedness and utter lack of responsibility, the consequences of his casual opening of the dam is beginning. The horror of the Syrian rebel groups allied with the Turkish military, shouting "Allahu akbar", waving Syrian rebel flags and slaughtering Kurds wherever they find them, with no distinction between civilians or fighters to lend an air of humanity and adherence to the conventions of war has resulted. Just like their counterpart Islamic State, the Syrian rebels have videoed their atrocities for public show-and-tell.

A Turkish-backed Syrian fighter fires during clashes in the border town of Ras al-Ain as Turkey and its allies continue the military operation on Kurdish-held border towns. Nazeer Al-khatib/AFP

And while the Kurdish forces have been sturdily defending their people and their towns from the military might of the second largest standing army in NATO, along with its technically advanced weaponry, intense fighting has mandated that all Kurdish fighters be deployed in defence, leaving the prison camps full of Islamic State terrorists and those devoted to the incarceration of their women and children unguarded, paving the way for escapes and the re-emergence of Islamic State strength of numbers.

A wholly predictable horror show, thanks to the rank stupidity of the world's most powerful imbecile.

Smoke rises from Ras al-Ayn, Syria, during bombardment by Turkish forces on Sunday. Photograph: Erdem Şahin/EPA

Islamist Demands

"Then finally he said you have to come, but I was studying English and Middle Eastern studies. I didn't know anything about ISIS or anything. He said just come and see. Come and see."
"You're eating Pringles and Twix bars ... you don't feel like you're in a war."
"Do I regret it, coming [to Syria] you mean? No, I don't, in the sense I had my kids here [in the ISIS caliphate]."
“Briefly, just briefly I heard about some executions taking place. When I came here I heard [of the Islamic State atrocities committed against the Yazidi minority]. I haven’t seen one but…. Well, having slaves is part of Sharia [Islamic law]. I believe in Sharia, wherever Sharia is. We must follow whoever is implementing the way, the law."
Dura Ahmed, 28, Torontonian, obedient Muslim and ISIS wife

Dura Ahmed, 28, from Toronto has no regrets about traveling to join her ISIS husband. The mother of two is now trying to get out of Syria.SCREENGRAB/ CNN

"He's like, 'it's obligatory for you to come here. You have no choice, and as your husband I'm telling you to come here'. And as a Muslim wife you have to obey, even though it was really hard for me to do it. I had to."
"I was just trying to be an obedient wife." 
"I'm not the kind of person who watched the news. I didn't follow any of this kind of stuff. I used to be a graphic designer and I used to work from home and just take care of the kids. I was never interested in what was going on in the world."
"It was too dangerous [to send her children to school in Raqqa] and there were too many bombings. They don't speak Arabic. So I taught them myself."
Name withheld, Albertan Muslima, 34

Two Canadian citizens. Two women who grew up in Canada, attended school in Canada, the younger still a university student when she left Canada in 2014 to join her husband, an ISIL fighter in Syria, in the capital of the caliphate, Raqqa, the other a stay-at-home mother to her two sons, working from home as a graphic designer. Cosmopolitan you might think, given their youth and occupations and the country they lived in. But no, Muslima who subscribed to Sharia, Islamists by inclination claiming to have known nothing about the war being waged by Islamic State against everyone else; Shiites, Kurds, Yazidis, Christians, insufficiently devout Sunnis and of course Western interlopers.

Neither had any idea of the beheadings of British and American journalists, of the videoed butchery of prisoners. ISIL children in Raqqa were being fiercely indoctrinated into the ideology, shown gruesome videos, taught how to use weapons, encouraged to take part in executions, proudly displayed as ISIL 'lion cubs', but these women, though living within the caliphate, in its very centre and capital, had no knowledge of any of this. Too busy eating Pringles, evidently.

In any event, it was the men who were at fault. The men they married. They were totally innocent of any wrong-doing, just doing their thing, whatever it is that Sharia requires of unquestioning, obedient Muslim wives subservient to the wishes of Muslim husbands. The meter on their humanitarian instincts appears to have gone off-kilter, verified by their frank responses to an interviewer. Frank, or simply expressions of entitlement as stalwarts of Islamist conquest?

Civilians who have fled fighting in Bagouz wait to board trucks after being screened by members of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) at a makeshift screening point in the desert on February 9, 2019 in Bagouz, Syria. Chris McGrath/Getty Images

These are only two who have been identified as Canadians. Presumably there are many more. More just like them from all over the Western world who gravitated to Syria to join the brave new world of the caliphate. Women with the children they happily begot with ISIL terrorists. only to them they're Islamic heroes, merely performing pious acts required of them by Islamic tradition which is not to be questioned; duty is to enlist in jihad and that is final. The caliphate they were so anxious to join they are now equally anxious to leave, prepared now to embark on another life experience; rescue from discomfort in a refugee camp for displaced ISIL family members as the Free Syrian Army, mostly led by Kurds destroys what little remains of the caliphate.

The unnamed woman's Bosnian swain died after leaving Canada to fight with ISIL, leaving her on her own for two years in Raqqa until she married another Canadian ISIL fighter whose spawn she now carries. From graphic designer to hanger-on in a Syrian war zone. Obedient to Islam and the sequential husbands. Second husband too now dead, although to be sure, he was a cook for ISIL, not an active fighter, she insists, leading one to the impression that ISIL had a whole lot of cooks, a non-combat contingent who just happened to die in battle.

Fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) attend the funeral of a fellow fighter from the Kurdish women’s protection units (YPJ), who was killed while fighting against ISIL in northeastern Syrian Kurdish-majority city of Qamishli on February 9, 2019. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images

While the Syrian Democratic Forces are busily eliminating the last of the geographic caliphate, reports are circulating that ISIL forces are re-assembling, prepared to re-enter those areas they once held as soon as the military forces supporting the FSA militias take their leave of Syria. Those sleeper cells in Syria and Iraq are not inactive, laying groundwork for an insurgency, much as the Taliban in Afghanistan have done for many years. Counterterrorism is not a part-time occupation wherever violent Islam has taken root, and that is just about everywhere in the Muslim world.

Bring these women and their children back 'home' to Canada? They've found their spiritual home in Syria, why deprive them of it? Why on the other hand, burden Canada with the upkeep of such detestable creatures with their ghoulish preoccupation with Sharia and how slavery is permissible, consigning women of other cultures and religious beliefs to rape and soulless degradation? To spread their venomous beliefs back in Canada?

The good old days in Raqqa where the Pringles were plentiful. GETTY IMAGES