By Samah Abdul Fattah | 2024-05-28

The children of "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) fighters in Syria's al-Hol camp are living in difficult and miserable conditions as a result of the poor decisions made by their parents.

Many were conceived with the sole intention that they would grow up to become the next generation of ISIS fighters, Roshan Kobani of the Women's Protection Units (YPJ) in al-Hol told Al-Fassel.

As such, they do not enjoy any of the benefits of a normal childhood, "the first of which is to be raised by a family and have access to basic medical care and education," she said.

Instead, these children have been imbued with violent extremist ideology and told they are the "cubs of the caliphate" who will be the future of the group.

"What future awaits these children as time passes without them receiving the necessary education and proper upbringing?" Kobani asked.

Their minds have been poisoned with terrorist ideology, which has made the issue of educating them "very difficult," she said.

Humanitarian organizations operating in al-Hol and the camp's administration are trying their best to educate ISIS children using various modern methods, she said.

But these efforts are often futile as their mothers -- the former wives of ISIS elements -- play an essentially negative role in this regard.

Some of the children who fared best, educationally and psychologically, are orphans, Kobani said. They were able to repudiate the extremist ideology they had been exposed to and adapted, albeit with difficulty, to their new reality.

Separating children from the adults is often the solution to stamping out extremist indoctrination, she added, but it also deprives the child of a mother.

"So work was done with many mothers to try to treat the issue from the top of the pyramid," Kobani said. "But the results were modest, as the mothers had deeply imbibed the terrorist ideology as well."