“I simply no longer know what to do. The situation is an absolute catastrophe.”
Marie Dosé sighs deeply, pushing back her brown locks. Tortoiseshell spectacles frame her serious gaze. Various legal briefs sit tidily on her oversize desk. Dosé is the lead lawyer representing Le Collectif des Familles Unies, a group that brings together the families of more than a hundred French citizens stranded in detention camps in Syria since the collapse of ISIL, the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Her law offices, in a converted classic Parisian apartment in the Ninth Arrondissement, are spacious, but far from luxurious. Children’s books are tidily laid out in the waiting area, together with a Smurf toy figurine dressed in a lawyer’s robe, holding a yellow scroll.
This year marks the seventh anniversary of the loss of most of ISIL territories in the Levant, most notably the two large urban centers of Mosul and Raqqa, which ISIL had seized in 2014. It is also the seventh anniversary of the start of the detention in northeastern Syria of hundreds of European women and children: the families of European men who heeded ISIL’s siren call back when the terrorist group seemed unstoppable. The detainees have spent those years in camps run by the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF—an anti-ISIL, U.S.-backed Kurdish-Arab militia—alongside tens of thousands of non-European women and children.
It was also seven years ago that the first family contacted Dosé to seek her help to bring back their daughter, together with two young grandchildren, from Syria. Dosé laughs bitterly as she recounts how at the time she simply took it for granted that the French government—Emmanuel Macron’s government—would want to repatriate French citizens, especially minors. Her hopes would be repeatedly dashed. Perhaps it was the scars of the series of ISIL terror attacks on French soil, or the right-wing political threat of Marine Le Pen, Macron’s two-time rival for the presidency. Regardless, though its policy evolved, France, unlike Germany, Finland, and other European countries, has not brought back many of its women and children.
Today, at least 50 French women and 120 French children are still detained in the camps. Many have perished in the harsh conditions of the desert, with only basic medical care available. Back home, a code of omertà has set in among France’s political class as regards the return of these French families. In a country where marches and strikes are frequent, there is little visible political and social agitation for repatriation. There are no MISSING or KIDNAPPED posters of these children plastered on lampposts. To Dosé, “childhood is the last sacred thing there is … yet neither policymakers nor the public give a damn.”
What’s more, after this summer’s snap elections, Macron is a lame-duck president, initially forced into cohabitation with a minority right-wing coalition government, having rejected the progressive parties’ candidate for prime minister. That government collapsed in early December. The next parliamentary elections are widely expected next summer. As unforgiving as Macron’s France has been with the stranded women and children, an even more severe policy would be expected under a Le Pen government. The question of the children’s return grows ever more urgent. Matters are further complicated by the fall of Bashar Al Assad’s regime, which for the moment has deepened the uncertainty surrounding the detainees’ future.
One of the most striking phenomena of the rise of ISIL in 2014 was its transnational appeal: An estimated 53,000 men, women, and minors, including 40,000 fighters, were said to have joined ISIL forces. Up to 4,761 of the foreign volunteers were women; another 4,640 were minors. These volunteers and their families hailed from 80 to 110 countries, spanning the borders of the Islamic world and beyond. Around 6,000 came from Western Europe, 7,000 from Eastern Europe and Russia, and 750 from the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand. Of the Western contingent, around 40 percent were women and minors. The largest group by far were the French: Approximately 1,900 joined ISIL. A Collectif representative confirmed to me that the relatives of those members represented in his association span “all of France’s class, ethnic, geographic, and religious backgrounds.”
One ISIL Frenchman was Patrick Pascal (all names of the family members have been changed). Patrick was born and raised in a middle-class, mixed-faith Parisian household. Both parents were educators. Pierre, the father, was born in French Algeria to a Pieds-Noirs family of Protestant and Roman Catholic stock. Patricia, the mother, is partly of Jewish heritage and lost an aunt to the Nazis during the wartime occupation of France. The family would spend the school year in Paris and summers in a holiday cottage in the countryside, a short drive away from the beach. Today, both are retired and in their sixties, with the gentle manner common to many grandparents, except that their four grandsons are detained in a Syrian camp. When I first visited them this past summer, they were busy packing bags for a third trip to Syria, where they would visit their daughter-in-law and grandchildren. “This was not what we imagined when we said we would travel once we retire,” Pierre quipped, “yet here we are.”
As in many neighborhoods across France, Patrick grew up with many Muslim friends. In the park nearest the Pascals’ Parisian home, one does not have to listen hard to hear the staccato Arabic of the Maghreb. Patrick’s familiarity with Arab culture evolved into interest in the Muslim faith, and eventually led to him converting during his teenage years. He moved to Egypt when he turned 18 to try to learn Arabic and deepen his knowledge of the faith. Yet he returned to France shortly thereafter.
Back home, he would meet and marry Leïla, a Parisian of Arab heritage. By 2015, the couple had two young boys. Patrick would also fall in with a fundamentalist crowd. During a picnic that summer, he shared with his parents that he planned to take his young family “on holiday.” Patrick managed to leave France, despite being technically under “judicial supervision.” One month later, in August, he told his parents that he would “extend his vacation.” The following month, he would share with them that the young family had arrived in ISIL territories.
The Pascal family may have arrived during ISIL’s zenith; yet, as sudden as ISIL’s rise was its downfall. By the winter of 2017, after intense attacks from an international coalition and SDF forces, ISIL lost control over all its major urban areas. Many ISIL fighters, civilian members, and their families were killed in combat. Those who survived, like the Pascal family, fled for their lives. In April 2018, the family was captured unharmed by SDF forces. Patrick was separated from his family. He would later be sent for trial in Iraq, with France’s permission. Leïla and her three boys—the third son was born in Syria—would be interned in Al Roj camp, in northeast Syria. (A fourth son was born later.)
Thousands of foreign women and children were stranded in SDF camps in northeastern Syria. As of 2021, the two main camps of Al Hol and Al Roj held more than 60,000 people, of whom around 12,000 were third-country nationals.
The SDF itself has a mixed reputation, despite its success in overcoming ISIL. The group is closely linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which has been designated as a terrorist group by the United States, the European Union, NATO, and the United Kingdom, among others. The SDF has been repeatedly accused of ethnic cleansing, torture, and other war crimes.
Syrian Kurdish officials have repeatedly called on third countries and the international community to “urgently” repatriate their citizens. These calls were echoed by the United Nations and humanitarian NGOs. Vladimir Voronkov, undersecretary-general of the United Nations Office of Counter-Terrorism, publicly warned that countries’ failure to repatriate would “bring about the very outcomes we intend to prevent,” including “the radicalization and recruitment of a new generation of terrorists, and the strengthening of terrorist groups in the region and around the world.”
An average of five children per week were reported to have died in Al Hol during 2019 and 2020. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria described conditions in Al Hol as “inhumane.” Children have drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been run over and killed by trucks.
What is striking is that the vast majority of the detained were, and remain, minors. The latest counts estimate children make up two-thirds of those detained in camps. Moreover, according to United Nations estimates, 77 percent of the children in camps were under the age of 12 at the time of internment, with 33 percent younger than five. The sanitary conditions within the camps are dire. An average of five children per week were reported to have died in Al Hol during 2019 and 2020. Save the Children reported that two children were dying every week in Al Hol in 2021. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry on Syria described conditions in Al Hol as “inhumane.” Children have drowned in sewage pits, died in tent fires, and been run over and killed by trucks.
The security situation is equally challenging. Children are at constant risk of being trafficked, injured, or even murdered. The U.N. reported more than 90 murders in Al Hol in 2021. Forty-two murders, including 22 women victims, were documented in Al Hol in the first 11 months of 2022 alone. In November 2022, two Egyptian girls, both younger than 15, were found dead with stab wounds in a sewage ditch in Al Hol, days after being raped, according to the U.N. report.
A precise number is not known, but at least hundreds of the detained children were citizens of Western democracies. In 2019, France’s Minister of Justice Nicole Belloubet confirmed that 75 percent of the French children detained in the camps were younger than seven. These children ...
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