Isis children: do we have a duty of care?
The situation in al-Hol is desperate, said Letta Tayler in The Washington Post. The camp in northeastern Syria holds 70,000 women and children from 50 countries who were detained by Kurdish forces when Islamic State was defeated. Things were “dire” even before Turkey’s recent invasion of northern Syria. Over the past year, more than 340 of the children who make up two-thirds of al-Hol’s occupants have died of malnutrition and disease. And now, with the region in chaos, latrines are overflowing, food and water supplies are dwindling, and the inmates are terrified – of invading forces and each other. It’s time for the countries the mother came from – many of them in western Europe – to take them and their children back.
It’s easy to call for action, said Catherine Philp in The Times. But let’s not forget the “violent” reaction that followed the discovery of Shamima Begum in another Kurdish-run camp in February. Days after the 19-year-old from Bethnal Green in London expressed her desire to return to the UK, the Government said it was stripping her of her citizenship, amid public fury at the prospect of this largely unrepentant Isis bride coming home. The news last week that Begum was appealing that decision in a UK court prompted another spasm of public rage. But there are signs now that ministers are softening their position, said Dipesh Gadher in The Sunday Times. The Government has committed to rescuing some of the 60 or so British orphans estimated to reside in the Syrian camps.
Surely it’s hypocritical to help the children while refusing to acknowledge that Begum herself was a child when she left Britain, said Catherine Deveney in The Press and Journal. She was 15 when she was groomed by Isis propagandists and lured to Syria. The Home Office’s own anti-terrorist strategy argues that Isis brides should be given a “managed” return, said Sarah Baxter in The Sunday Times – they should be charged with supporting terrorism and made to attend deradicalisation sessions. Of course, Isis brides such as Begum are deeply unsympathetic characters. But “it doesn’t matter how hostile or sympathetic we feel towards them”. They are British and they are “our responsibility”.