By Samah Abdel Fattah | 2025-02-21

Women recruited by the "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) are now trapped in Syrian detention camps with their children after their home governments stripped their citizenship, leaving them stateless and with no path to return.

The situation has created severe medical, legal and security challenges in camps across northern Syria, where thousands remain detained.

"ISIS specifically targeted young women and girls from its inception, reducing them to mere vessels for producing fighters and brides for their men," said Azad Dudeki, who runs a Kurdish Red Crescent medical station at al-Hol camp.

Vulnerable young women were targeted through systematic propaganda campaigns promising a meaningful life under the group's so-called "caliphate."

The situation has deteriorated into a moral and humanitarian emergency that defies simple solutions, particularly as many women remain indoctrinated even after ISIS's territorial defeat, Dudeki said.

Camp authorities report widespread health issues, with children especially vulnerable to malnutrition and preventable diseases.

"Beyond the immediate dangers of malnutrition and disease, these children absorb extremist ideologies and risk becoming the next generation of extremists," Dudeki said.

Children who reach adulthood in these camps are often transferred to prisons housing ISIS fighters.

"It's like moving from elementary school to university for extremist ideology -- they continue absorbing the group's teachings," Syrian lawyer Bashir al-Bassam told Al-Fassel.

"These individuals become time bombs with no solution, since they lack citizenship rights from either parent's country."

Few options

Camp administration efforts to rehabilitate former ISIS elements and their families show limited progress due to resource constraints and continued extremist influence.

The case of Shamima Begum, who left Britain as a teenager in 2015 to join ISIS, exemplifies this crisis, al-Bassam said.

Begum lost her British citizenship and has lost three children in Syria, reportedly due to inadequate medical care and malnutrition. Her story shows the complex legal challenges facing women who now regret their decision to join ISIS.

"The ISIS women and children crisis is among the most dangerous facing the international community," al-Bassam said.

Some nations' decisions to revoke citizenship "have left many stateless, making their release nearly impossible as no country will accept them, even for prosecution," he said.

The harsh conditions in camps like al-Hol and Roj, where medical supplies and basic necessities remain scarce, leave women and children with few choices.

They can attempt to escape, or remain in deteriorating circumstances that often reinforce extremist beliefs.

While camp administrators work to counter extremist ideology among ISIS mothers and their children, progress remains slow, Dudeki said.

"The group continues to spread its poisonous ideas to control them, using the same tactics that drew them in initially," he added.