Al-Hawl is not just a refugee camp. It is a reliquary of the defeat of the Islamic State group and, at the same time, its lingering ghost. Here, among rows of dust-covered tents, the wives and widows of the caliphate survive alongside their children — children who had no say in where they were born but are growing up in the shadow of a war that has already scarred them.
We are in northeastern Syria, in the region governed by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), within the governorate of Hasaka. Al-Hawl camp lies about an hour’s drive from the city of Hasaka, reached by a road cutting through a vast, barren expanse of land whipped by harsh winds.
When we arrive, we are met by camp authorities and the military escort assigned to us by the AANES for the duration of our visit. “This,” they tell us, “is the most dangerous refugee camp in the world.”
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.
“This camp is a ticking time bomb,” warns Jihan Hanan, the camp’s director. “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.”
Located on the outskirts of the town of the same name, close to Syria’s border with Iraq, al-Hawl camp originally opened for Iraqi refugees after the Gulf War in 1991. It expanded dramatically in 2019, following the battle of Baghuz — the final confrontation that ended the Islamic State’s existence as a territorial entity. “But the caliphate still exists as an ideology, as a project waiting to be realized,” Hanan says. Some believe it could be reborn right here, inside al-Hawl.
Because of this, the fate of the Islamic State’s children has become pivotal in negotiations between AANES and the new authorities in Damascus, following the overthrow of the Bashar al-Assad regime in December. In an interview with North Press Agency, the SDF’s commander Mazloum Abdi claimed that Syria’s interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa requested the handover of Islamic State detainees and SDF-held security files to Damascus as part of a broader integration agreement between the two. So far, no final decision has been made on al-Hawl’s detainees.
“We’re trying to address this together with the National Security Agency and the [U.N. Refugee Agency],” Hanan says. 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.”
In this climate of uncertainty, Syria’s Kurds increasingly feel abandoned by their most crucial ally: Washington.
Under a funding freeze for international cooperation initiated by President Donald Trump, all funding was cut on Jan. 25 for Blumont, the nongovernmental organization that had managed essential camp services — including data collection and security database analysis — for the past seven years. “For three days, we had no bread, no water and no way to process repatriation cases. It was chaos,” Hanan says. “They made this decision without warning.”
The temporary suspension of all U.S. funds for international cooperation is having devastating consequences, not only in al-Hawl but in all the camps in northeastern Syria, including Camp Roj, where foreign women who came to Syria to join the Islamic State are held. The U.S. has always been the largest donor supporting these camps, making those funds indispensable for the survival of the people living there.
On Jan. 28, Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver for “lifesaving humanitarian assistance.” That same day, Blumont received a two-week exemption from the funding freeze, allowing it to restart most of its operations. Other organizations have picked up some of the slack, and it remains to be seen what services will be permanently cut. But many in the camp see this merely as a temporary fix for a worsening crisis.
“This waiver is just a countdown until we’re back in the same situation as before,” warns the camp director. “ISIS is watching. ISIS is waiting. And I want President Trump to understand: ISIS is still dangerous. ISIS is still alive.”
Inside the camp, we only see women dressed in black. Some refuse to speak; others hold their children’s hands as though they are all that remains for them. Life here has repeated itself, unchanged, for seven years. Though al-Hawl is now bigger than the nearby town from which it takes its name, it feels like a ghost town. Clothing stores, bakeries and even cellphone vendors form a semblance of normalcy, but behind this facade is the grim reality of the largest and most violent open-air prison in the world.
When I ask a child how long he has been here, he merely shrugs. Time no longer exists. School, play and freedom do not exist. These children have known only war and fences. They live in U.N. Refugee Agency tents, buffeted by scorching heat in summer and bitter cold in winter.
According to Save the Children, the children in al-Hawl are “slowly wasting away, constantly at risk of violence and disease.” The organization’s latest report notes that, in 2021, an average of two children died every week, succumbing to disease or violence, or the victims of accidents: Some were run over, others drowned in filthy water and still others vanished without explanation. The radicalized Islamic State women in the camp use violence to punish those who step outside the group’s rules. The violent atmosphere affects the children, who are surrounded by weapons that are smuggled into the camp. When they turn 18, these children fall into a legal void. Young men are often sent to prison, not because they have done anything wrong but simply because they are the sons of Islamic State suspects. The girls stay in the women’s camp but have no future; no way out.
Social structures in this tent city mirror those that sustained the Islamic State for five years. Many of the detained women were not only wives and mothers but also enforcers, torturers, morality police or trainers. Yet not all women share the same level of culpability. Some were forced to join the group.
“My husband dragged me to Raqqa, then abandoned me,” says M., a woman in Section 3, living with two children, who asked to withhold her full name. Her eldest was born in Raqqa; her youngest in al-Hawl. “When ISIS fell, they brought us here. I’ve never been able to choose anything for myself or my children. Even now, I can’t. I’m forced to stay here, just like my husband forced me to live under ISIS,” she says, a tear escaping through the slit of her niqab.
Many Yazidi women remain in al-Hawl, despite having no ties to the Islamic State. “It’s not uncommon,” the camp authorities explain, “for Yazidi women who were kidnapped and raped by ISIS to end up here.” But the Yazidi women are afraid to speak about their identity or their experiences, lest the radicalized women in the camp attack them. Even if they were released from the camp, there is the question of where they would go: For many, their biggest fear is being rejected by their own communities.
For AANES, distinguishing those who pose a genuine threat from those who are victims is nearly impossible — particularly because access to some camp sectors is limited, even for the authorities. “The danger has grown since the day after the [Assad] regime fell,” Hanan says. People inside still refer to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham — the militia led by Syria’s now-President al-Sharaa, formerly known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani — using the militia’s previous name, the Nusra Front, underlining its erstwhile links to al Qaeda. “In the past few weeks, we’ve found weapons hidden in tunnels. People say al-Jolani is coming to free them.”
Al-Hawl is not the only Islamic State legacy. A few miles away, elsewhere in Hasaka governorate, lies a hidden facility that we visit under strict security protocols.
This is where the children born to Yazidi women who were raped by Islamic State men live. Most are 6 or 7 years old and know nothing of life outside the camp. We are allowed in only through authorization from the AANES Women’s Authority. The facility stands alone in a desolate area, surrounded by dire poverty, but inside its walls it shelters 46 children abandoned after the Islamic State’s fall.
A bright playground and welcoming atmosphere greet us. “The children know nothing of their past,” says the center’s director. “Even the women who work here don’t know the children’s real stories. I chose to keep everyone in the dark for safety.”
The staff call it an “orphanage,” believing the children lost their parents in the war. In reality, following the Islamic State’s defeat, some Yazidi women — having borne children after being raped by Islamic State men — fled Syria through international protection programs. Others returned to their communities in Iraq, forced to leave their children behind. Yazidi society generally does not accept children born of such rapes, so these infants remained alone in this institution.
Their mothers are alive but no one knows their whereabouts. Their fathers are dead or imprisoned, likely in SDF facilities nearby.
The building is split into dormitories for boys and girls. “They have everything they need here — school, toys, recreational activities,” the caregivers say. “None of them has ever left.” Only women work inside; the only men we see remain outside, armed for security.
As we pass by bright carpets and children busy with games, a little girl glances up. Asked if she likes school, she nods. “Yes, religion is my favorite subject.” Ironically, we have no idea which religion she means. For now, she is safe here, but one day she will ask about life beyond these walls — and about her parents. No one yet knows how to answer that question.
Farther northeast, beyond Hasaka and Qamishli, near the border with Iraq’s Kurdistan Region, stands Camp Roj — where foreign women who joined the Islamic State in Syria are detained. Its location is strategic for the Kurds and the U.S.-led coalition, since it facilitates the repatriation of detainees to their home countries. Nonetheless, Western governments have been slow to accept back individuals deemed dangerous, so repatriations have been limited.
Hundreds of foreign women and their children live here. We manage to speak with one of them, a 28-year-old Italian national, Meriem Rehaily, who left her home country at 18. For the past seven years, she has endured life in this camp with her two children under a terrorism conviction in Italy.
A fighter from the SDF escorts her to meet us. “You can interview me, but no audio or video,” Meriem insists. “That’s my lawyer’s advice,” she adds. “I ran away from home at 18 and reached Syria alone. My dream was to join the Islamic State, and I did. It was all I ever wanted.”
She wears a blue niqab and wool gloves. Officials explain that only colored niqabs are allowed, so detainees can be identified. Yet, even with this rule, we struggle to see anything identifiable in her face. We can only glimpse her eyes through a narrow slit, allowing us to meet her gaze. She speaks fluent Italian, while her children speak only Arabic and English. According to camp authorities, she personally oversees their religious education, hoping to raise them as future jihadists — a pattern the Kurds say is increasingly common among these detainees, many of whom expect to be released in the fluid post-Assad period.
Asked about her life in the camp, Meriem replies, “We all want to leave this place,” yet she refuses to return to Italy. “They convicted me there; I’d only find prison. All I want is freedom for myself and my children — maybe in a new Islamic State. That was the only time I was truly happy.”
Meriem speaks with an unsettling composure, but the Kurdish militias standing by are far from calm — they are eager to take her away. They urge us to wrap up the interview quickly.
Exiting the camp, we pass other women. Some, who wish to remain anonymous, say they were trafficked or exploited under the Islamic State. One British woman calls her arrival in Syria “a huge mistake” and says she wants only to go home. Others claim they were forced here by their husbands. Although Camp Roj is smaller and better equipped than al-Hawl, it remains an open-air prison. As one child says, it looks “more like a pigpen” than a place fit for humans. The phrase is almost certainly something they heard their mother say, since the children have never seen a pigsty or anything else outside the camp.
Within al-Hawl and Roj combined, more than 42,500 people — about 18,000 of them foreign nationals — are detained without formal charges. They come from over 60 countries. None has had a day in court, making their captivity not only indefinite but also a violation of international human rights law and the laws of war. Countries are obliged to repatriate their citizens, prosecute those who committed crimes and support reintegration. So far, only 36 nations have taken back detainees.
Iraq has repatriated over 10,000 citizens. The rest of the world, collectively, has accepted only about 3,365 people — mostly children. Many European countries have been reluctant or outright refused to repatriate their citizens, while others have stripped suspected Islamic State members of citizenship, leaving them stateless. Australia has repatriated 24 citizens but continues to stall on bringing back the rest. In 2023, a federal judge in Australia dismissed a lawsuit filed by Save the Children, which sought to compel the Australian government to repatriate 20 children and 11 women from the camps. Although the U.S. has facilitated some repatriations, its appeals for broader international action have largely gone unheeded.
As Human Rights Watch notes: “The fate of those allegedly affiliated with ISIS, whether in camps or SDF prisons, should be central to any discussion of Syria’s future. The mass detention of families of suspected ISIS members amounts to collective punishment, a war crime.” The vacuum left by international inaction is not merely a moral failure — it creates a prime opportunity for the Islamic State to stage a return.
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