Suffer the children of terror
Conditions on the road are harsh, with limited food, water, and shelter
The screams were coming from the back of the heavy green lorry stopped on the side of Road 47. Two women in black niqabs stood in the trailer, crying out from behind the black veils that hid their faces. One held a bundled-up green and blue blanket. It was only when she leant over the edge of the truck that a pale face could be seen in the blanket folds. The 10-month-old girl was named Habiba. She had died in the back of the lorry the day before, the women said.
The girl’s mother, a jihadist’s wife from the suburbs of Aleppo, cradled her body all night as the convoy of trucks rumbled towards the Kurdish-run refugee camp where she would be buried.
Even as they mourned over Habiba, the women said they were afraid for her two-year-old brother, who lay weakly a few feet from his dead sister. “Look how thin his legs are, he can’t stand up. He’s going to die if he stays like this,” they said.
Habiba and about 80 other children have died in less than two months amid the chaos of Islamic State’s (IS’s ) collapse in eastern Syria, according to the International Rescue Committee (IRC). Hypothermia was the main killer.
Most of the children were born inside the caliphate but did not live long enough to see life outside it. They died during the journey from IS’s final territory in the village of Baghuz, or soon after reaching the camps where the families of jihadist fighters are being housed.
While the world debates the crimes of their parents, the children of the Islamic State are bearing the brunt of the misery.
Aid groups say the main reason for the deaths is that infants are emerging from Baghuz weak and malnourished after months under siege. “They have been going for an extended period without health care and in many cases without food and water,” said Paul Donohoe, a spokesman for the IRC.
Several IS wives said there had been shortages inside Baghuz and that many families simply had no money to buy food. The jihadists distributed some supplies but it was not enough for families, who often had more than five children, the women said.
The aid response has been vastly complicated by the fact that the final battle against IS is taking place in a remote area on the Syrian-Iraqi border, where it is difficult for humanitarian groups to operate.
I visited a site where hundreds of IS families were gathering shortly after leaving Baghuz. The only aid group visible was the Free Burma Rangers, a small evangelical Christian charity.
It fell to Kurdish fighters to provide much of the medical care and try to reunite a sobbing toddler with his missing mother. They wrapped blankets around children who had no coats to shield them from the cold and in some cases were walking barefoot through the mud.
Their mothers called out for help but made no apology for dragging their children into this desperate situation in pursuit of their fanatical ideology. “They can endure it because it is an obligation on the path of God,” said one Syrian woman, as her five small and frightened children huddled at her feet.
Lorries driven by Bedouins carry the families north from Deir Ezzor to the sprawling al-Hol refugee camp, which is run by the Kurdish-led government in northeast Syria. The UN has reported: “Conditions on the route are harsh, with limited food, water, shelter and health services taking a toll on the most vulnerable, including those sick and injured.”
Aid groups have opened a transit centre halfway between Baghuz and al-Hol, giving medics a chance to treat the most vulnerable before they reach the refugee camps. Their main aim is to curb the number of child deaths.
More than 51,000 people are in al-Hol but the figures swell each day as more people emerge from the Baghuz pocket. The camp has more than tripled in size in the past two months. About 3,000 people are sleeping in the open in the driving winter rain as they wait to be allocated tents. “The sky is our tent right now,” said one Russian wife of an IS fighter. “What am I supposed to do for my children?”
The Kurdish authorities say they are doing their best as they try simultaneously to defeat IS on the battlefield and care for its women and children as they flee. “Less than 5% of their needs are being met by the international community,” said Abdulkarim Omar, head of the Kurdish government’s foreign affairs commission. “The international community must assume its responsibility in rehabilitating the women and children.”
A striking number of the women coming out of Baghuz are pregnant with the children of IS fighters, meaning every day there are new births in the camp. Shamima Begum’s son Jarrah was born in midFebruary, soon after reaching al-Hol. The first few weeks of his life are being spent in a tarpaulin tent, without heat and with little medical care.
Camp authorities say 43 people have died in the camp in the past month, most of them children. A gas explosion this week seriously injured 15 workers. There is little lighting in the camp, which makes it easy for children to get lost and separated from their mothers.
The dire situation is being treated as a humanitarian crisis for now. But Kurdish authorities warn that if these children of IS grow up in misery and humiliation then a long-term security crisis looms.
“These kids were brought up according to the radical ideology of IS,” Dr Omar said.
“They need rehabilitation and reintegration into their communities. If we fail to do this they may become the terrorists of the future.”