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Iraq
Residents of al-Hol camp in the northeast Syrian province of Hasaka content with camp security. File photo: Delil Souleiman / AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq has to date repatriated 828 children born to members of the Islamic State (ISIS) group to their home countries, Iraq’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Wednesday.
The children originate from several different countries, including Russia, Tajikistan, Germany, France, and Turkey, among others.
This week, Azerbaijan repatriated 82 children who had been held with their mothers in prisons across Baghdad, foreign ministry spokesperson Ahmed al-Sahaf said in a statement Wednesday.
“The Foreign Ministry participated in the deportation of 82 children from the Republic of Azerbaijan who had been kept with their mothers, who are imprisoned by the Iraqi judiciary for joining the Daesh terrorist organization, bringing the number of deportees to 828 children of various nationalities,” Ahmed al-Sahaf said in a tweet, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
At the height of its power, ISIS controlled an area across both Iraq and Syria equivalent to the size of the United Kingdom, drawing some ten million under its extreme brand of Islam.
Thousands of Westerners flocked to the region to fight for and build the so-called caliphate, many of them smuggled across Turkey’s border with Syria. Among them were many women who chose (or were tricked) to become jihadi brides.
After the territorial defeat of the group in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in March 2019, attention turned to the prosecution of ISIS militants and the repatriation of detained fighters, spouses, and children.
Many await their fate in overcrowded prisons and camps in both countries, including the notorious al-Hol camp in Syria’s Hasaka.
Around 70,000 people, including the wives and widows of ISIS fighters and their children, have been held in al-Hol since the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) seized the last ISIS holdout of Baghouz in March 2019.
At least 12,000 al-Hol residents are foreign nationals, mostly women and children.
Several European states have refused to take back their citizens, fearing they will pose a threat to national security if they lack the evidence to successfully prosecute them.
On a case-by-case basis, Azerbaijan, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, and Russia’s Chechnya among others have taken back several children born to ISIS-affiliated parents.
UNICEF, the United Nations children’s fund, has routinely called on governments to repatriate their nationals from the conflict zone.
“In line with the best interests of the child and in compliance with international standards, governments should ensure the safe reintegration of Syrian children into their local communities and the safe, dignified and voluntary repatriation of foreign children back to their countries of origin,” UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore said in a statement late last year.
“All member states should provide children who are their citizens, or born to their nationals, with civil documentation to prevent statelessness,” Fore added.
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