Inside a detention camp for women and children linked to ISIS

0:02Alex Rossi:Sky News, the full story first.

0:08Alex Rossi:Coming up, Sky News takes you inside the Islamic State detention camps in Syria.

0:16Alex Rossi:Have you spent much time thinking about Syria recently? No, me neither. But perhaps we all should.

0:23Niall:You drive through the gates and you're just surrounded by kids. to start throwing stones at you, making throat-slitting signs at you. We're talking about kids, 6 to 14.

0:33Alex Rossi:Sky News has been inside an Islamic State detention camp in the north-east of the country. That's the part of Syria controlled by the Kurds. The West supported them in their campaign against ISIS. But that support has now gone, and significant tensions with the new Syrian government put the security of the camps at risk.

0:51Niall:ISIS is given a chance to resurge in this area, And that would not just be a terrible tragedy for Syria. It would also be extraordinarily dangerous for the West as well.

1:04Alex Rossi:Our international correspondent is Alex Rossi. Alex, you've been to the northeast of Syria.

1:09Niall:We went in to really try and understand what was happening in terms of the dynamics of the country. You do need to go back all the way to the Arab Spring 2011. And effectively, Syria tore itself apart. massive sectarian violence, which eventually saw President Bashar al-Assad toppled. But at the beginning of the Arab Spring, a year into it, 2012, the Kurds took over an area of the northeast. Then into this mix, remember what happened in the power vacuum as the fighting went on. We had the Islamic State, who ended up ruling over huge areas of Syria and Iraq. Now, the key ally in rolling them back were the Kurds in Syria and Iraq.

1:52Niall:And as they managed to push the Islamic state back, they took even more of the country. So by about 2019, the Kurds in Syria had about 25 % of the country. Now, of course, when Bashar al-Assad fell, there's a new president, a new interim president, Ahmad al-Shirah. And what he is now trying to do is unify the country, extend his authority over the entirety of Syria. Now, that's a problem when the Kurds have their own semi-autonomous region, but he wants to bring it all back under government control, which leads us to where we are now, a standoff between Kurdish forces and the government forces of Syria.

2:33Alex Rossi:Alex, what is it about the northeast of Syria that the interim government is so interested in? This isn't just about territorial integrity, is it?

2:40Niall:No, it's not. I mean, that is a massive part of it. territorial integrity and making sure that you don't have a separate military force, and the Kurds are a sizable and powerful military force, outside the structures of the national military command. So that's part of it. But the story doesn't just end there, because in the northeast of the country is the majority, it's hard to put a figure on, about 90, perhaps even 95 % of Syria's oil and gas. When you drive across the border from Iraq, you see all these nodding donkeys, you see these gas refineries. And that has, until now, been under Kurdish control.

3:17Niall:But of course, the new interim government, they need to get that because they need the revenues to get back on their feet. So it's also about the riches of the country to a certain extent as well. It's from their point of view, very important that they take control of those gas and oil fields.

3:32Alex Rossi:At one point, the Kurds were in control of practically a quarter of the country. They've given up a significant amount of territory since that high point. It sounds like this has been a brutal and bloody conflict.

3:43Niall:I suppose the context to this, Neil, is remembering that Syria is a country that hasn't healed yet. It's still exiting the pain and dealing with the wounds of the civil war of the Arab Spring. You're seeing in these areas there is still suspicion and sectarianism. Now, the Kurds, when they managed to take control of areas that were previously ISIS, like Raqqa, for instance, in Deirazur. These are predominantly Arab areas. And it seems that what happened when the government started its advance in the beginning of January, yes, there were shots fired, yes, there was fighting, but effectively they retreated from Raqqa and Deirazur and moved back up to areas that are more Kurdish majority.

4:26Niall:So you had this standoff between Kurdish and government forces. It was extremely tense, huge suspicion about the motivation of the interim government. And that's because the leader, Ahmad al-Sharah, is a controversial figure. He was a rebel leader originally in the civil war, but he had links, which he has renounced, to al-Qaeda. He also fought against the Americans in Iraq and was actually imprisoned by them. And lots of the Kurds view him with an element of mistrust. They say, effectively, how can we trust this guy? He's actually no different from ISIS, which we've just spent a long period of time trying to defeat on behalf of not just obviously for ourselves, but also for the West as well.

5:07Niall:And now we have this situation where we are being forced to compromise, we're being forced to assimilate. So there is an enormous amount of mistrust.

5:14Alex Rossi:We know, at least during the days of Bashar al-Assad's regime, that there was plenty of international assistance being provided to the Kurds by the Americans and by others. Where is that international assistance now?

5:27Niall:Well, that's a really good question. The SDF is the Syrian Democratic Forces. It was formed to take in everybody, but effectively is really a Kurdish-led force. And that was the sort of boots-on-the-ground tool to defeat ISIS. The coalition provided air power and also on the ground, there would be special forces working as well alongside the Kurds. But as far as the Kurds are concerned, bearing in mind how much blood they have spilt in the defeat of ISIS, they feel betrayed by the international community and also the Americans. I heard from many fighters that we spoke to. I heard from people who were running the camps.

6:01Niall:We've done this. We've given up blood, skin, sweat to defeat the Islamic State. And now here we have the United States apparently siding or aligning strategically with a guy who was linked to al-Qaeda. They feel as though they have been betrayed. But I think ultimately they realise that the experiment with this semi-autonomous state kind of has to be over if Syria is going to be united as a country.

6:31Alex Rossi:But there is a problem, isn't there, Alex? And it's potentially a very big one. In taking on Islamic State, plenty of Islamic State prisoners were taken. The Kurds have been tasked with looking after them. And in this kind of tug of war, this tussle with the interim Syrian government, those camps are now under risk.

6:46Niall:Yeah, and remember how ISIS formed in the first place. ISIS formed as a result of chaos, as a result of a power vacuum. And the Islamic State is still there. It's not nearly the force it was, but it will exploit any chaos and any gaps. You have these vast, sprawling detention camps in northeast Syria, where the women and children, the family members of ISIS fighters are being housed. And then there are also prisons as well. Now, when government forces moved forward earlier in the year, there were reports of ISIS escapes. We're told now that those people have been apprehended and arrested, but some did manage to get out.

7:30Niall:Now, part of the ceasefire agreement, the new one, was so the United States could transfer, you know, these hardened ISIS fighters who are in the jails into more secure locations in Iraq, about 150 at a time. But there are thousands of them. And clearly, I mean, America will remember from what happened in Iraq, when people get out of the prisons, they go off and they form, whether it's ISIS or something else, and it kind of blows up in your face. That's the risk, That's the jeopardy. And I think the other fact is, as we know very well, it doesn't just end in the Middle East. It spills out and it spills out all over the world.

8:07Niall:So the warning that we've been kind of given and the Kurds who run the camp that's still under their control in our whole is really be very, very careful with this because we have seen this story before. And it's possible if this has got wrong, you won't just see attacks here and ISIS resurgent. You'll also see it in the West as well.

8:27Alex Rossi:Alex, you've actually been to one of those detention camps still in Kurdish hands.

8:31Niall:The Al-Raj camp is near the border with Iraq. There are about, I don't know, two, two and a half thousand women and children being held there. It's in three sections. So the section that we visited was with the least radical family members. And then there's two other sections where there are kind of more extreme believers in the Islamic State project. It's run by the Kurds. If you just saw it, it would look like a camp for internally displaced people or a refugee camp. Lots and lots of tents. But this one, they are not at liberty to leave. They are being detained. They're not facing or haven't been charged with any crimes.

9:08Niall:But they're just kind of living in this legal limbo because mainly their countries of origin don't want to take them back. We also spoke to some women there who wouldn't have gone back to their country anyway because they potentially face the death penalty. I spoke to a number of Australian women who were in the camp and they had been there for years. But the other interesting thing is the number of kids that are there. There are plenty of kids there who would have actually been born after the Islamic State was defeated in 2019. So it raises huge questions. What happens to these children ultimately?

9:40Niall:Do they just live their lives there? We met one girl who was called Zilan. She was from Turkey. She told us that she was 12 when her parents went to join the Islamic State. She's now 20. So her point to us was, I didn't choose to join the Islamic State. This was a choice and a big mistake that my parents made. But now I'm paying the price for it. There's another big camp similar, although much more radical, called Al-Hol camp, which the government forces or the government of Ahmad al-Shara have taken over now. The question is, what do they do with all of those people? Are they going to try and repatriate them?

10:18Niall:Will the government forces now take over Al-Raj camp as well?

10:21Alex Rossi:Alex, these camps, they don't sound like particularly pleasant places to visit, let alone a place in which to raise children.

10:29Niall:Absolutely not. I mean, the conditions in the camp are pretty grim. People also have this concept, this idea that the Middle East is very, very hot all the time. At the moment, since we have been here, it's been absolutely freezing. Snow on the ground and people are living in these tents. So, yeah, conditions in these camps are really not good at all. I think the issue that humanitarian organisations warn about is the longer these kids spend in the camps, the greater the chance of them becoming radicalised. So they will never be able to be integrated into society. So interestingly, when Bashar al-Assad was defeated just over a year ago, I was in Rojava, which is Syrian Kurdistan, when that happened.

11:11Niall:And we went to Al-Hulk camp that has been taken over by government forces. and the mood there compared to Al-Raj, it's night and day. It's a really disturbing, dark place. We walked around Al-Raj camp. You could talk to people. When we were driven into Al-Hul camp, we went in an armoured personnel carrier. We had armed guards with us. Doors were locked. You drive through the gates and the APC is just surrounded by kids. You start throwing stones at you, making throat-slitting signs at you. It's a really dystopian, really disturbing place. We're talking about kids from the age of 6 to 14 or younger.

11:50Niall:What can you do about this? How can you reintegrate these people? What's the answer? And the solution is not an easy one.

11:56Alex Rossi:Given the retaking of the al-Hol camp, what are the detainees, what are the Kurds in control of al-Raj thinking about the advance of the Syrian interim government forces?

12:08Niall:Well, that's a good question, because many of the Kurds, because of the past of the interim president, see him as being an extremist and a radical. Now, I was told by the woman in charge of Al-Raj that actually the mood had changed significantly. It had become much darker in Al-Raj camp since they knew this government offensive had happened. And the people being detained there see now a like-minded radical group now running the Syrian nation. And they think that their lives will get better or they might even be let out. That's the warning from the Kurds. We should, of course, say that the interim president, Ahmad al-Sharah, has rejected those links.

12:50Niall:His posture on the international stage is one of a statesman, a man who goes and shakes hands with Donald Trump in the White House and a man who pursues international diplomacy, says he's rejected his extremist links. But that cuts back to what we were talking about at the beginning, this huge mistrust of the other within Syria. And it's that that is going to have to be overcome for Syria to heal and knit back together and unite and become a proper, functioning, stable country again.

13:20Alex Rossi:What is your best guess then as to what happens next?

13:23Niall:They've now got these negotiations which have delivered what seems to be a more permanent ceasefire. And this will see integration of Kurds into the national army. Interior ministry troops will now take control of the security in Kurdish cities like Khamishli. And I think in the short term, the expectation is that that may have some success. And if they can get past this initial phase without any significant bloodletting, there is a chance that Syria can get back on its feet. But of course, it will need massive international assistance as well to do that. I mean, the economy is in a parlous state.

14:00Niall:They need money. The hope is that if they can get past this bit and reintegrate the Kurds or the Kurds reintegrate with them, then it might just have a chance.

14:10Alex Rossi:But if the violence recommences between the Kurds and the interim government forces, those camps look very precarious. And I suppose we in the West need to be mindful of the fact that up until this point, the Kurds have been doing us a favour in keeping some very, very dangerous people locked up.

14:28Niall:And that really cuts the heart of it, Neil, about why they feel betrayed. But we know from the history of terror attacks that they are often people have been taken into custody and detained, but have either escaped or been released and gone on to do terrible things. I mean, the worst case scenario is that ISIS is given a chance to resurge in this area. And that, as you say, would not just be a terrible tragedy for Syria and possibly neighbouring countries. It would also be a tragedy, extraordinarily dangerous for the West as well. ISIS still has its propaganda wing. It still has the ability to inspire attacks.