AL-HOL, Syria – Foreign children wounded in the final desperate days of the Islamic State (ISIS) caliphate in eastern Syria have still not been repatriated to their home countries. Instead they await their fate in the “apocalyptic” conditions of al-Hol camp in Hasaka province.

Tens of thousands of people flooded out of Baghouz – the final sliver of territory held by ISIS – in March 2019 as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) eliminated the jihadists’ last holdouts.

Among this wave of starved, exhausted, and traumatized humanity were militants, their wives, their children, and their captives. Each had to be screened before they were trucked to prison facilities and refugee camps, or deported to their home countries.

After years of savage fighting in an ever-shrinking patch of territory, the children of ISIS members were left vulnerable to bullets, shrapnel, landmines, falling debris, airstrikes, disease, and the harsh climate.

Many now living in al-Hol bear the scars of war.

Among them there are thousands of children of ISIS fighters from Syria, Iraq, Europe, the Americas, the former Soviet republics, and further afield.

Photographed here is a five-year-old Russian boy. He lost an arm in the battle for Baghouz.

Another Russian boy is confined to his bed. He was trained by ISIS, who called him the ‘Lion of the Caliphate’. He sustained his injuries during the fight in Baghouz. Unable to get proper treatment, a bullet remains lodged in his body.

Other children in the camp have burns and broken bones. Without proper identity papers, they are deprived of schooling and proper healthcare.

Foreign governments have been reluctant to take back their citizens, fearful they will pose a security risk if successful prosecutions cannot be brought against them. Kurdish authorities have called for an international court to be established to process them.

“It is just apocalyptic,” Fabrizio Carboni, who heads the International Committee of the Red Cross’s Near and Middle East operations, told reporters in Geneva last week.

“Our position is to say to states ‘take your nationals back’.”

Carboni condemned the stigmatization of people, especially children, and efforts to create “categories of good victims and bad victims”.

“As if kids can be something else than just victims.”

Carboni said two thirds of the residents in al-Hol were children, mainly under 12, insisting it was unconscionable to leave them there.

“You don’t leave kids in the middle of nowhere exposed to extreme heat, extreme cold, violence,” he said.

He warned that countries needed to recognize that “at one stage there will be a price to pay,” and that if they put off dealing with this issue, “it is going to be higher”.

Photos by Barzan Jabbar