‘Maybe I deserve this. But do

Five-year-old Khatab Khalaf wonders why he can’t go to school like other boys his age. He cannot because, officially, he does not exist. Like 45,000 other children born during Isil’s rule and now living in camps across northern Iraq, Khatab is not acknowledged by the government.

During its three-year-reign, the jihadist group established its own state bureaucracy; registering births, deaths and marriages as well as collecting tax and distributing welfare benefits.

But since the defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant here in early 2017, the records – stamped with its notorious black flag insignia – have become worthless.

In Iraq, identification papers are required for everything from enrolling in school to receiving medical care, from owning property to gaining formal employment.

Khatab and his mother Ashwaq, whose own ID cards were destroyed in an airstrike on their home, have effectively been rendered stateless.

“He knows nothing of the world,” says Ashwaq, 41, who has three other children. “For the last two years he has not left this camp. He fetches water and brings it back to the tent. That is all he does.”

Human rights groups are warning that these 45,000 disenfranchised children are increasingly vulnerable to radicalisation, raising further doubts about peace in the region after the fall of Isil.

Khatab, a shy boy who hides behind his mother in the presence of strangers, thumbs through a colouring book that has already been filled in. His name in Arabic means “writer”, but Khatab can neither read nor write.

“I have nothing to do all day. I would like to be learning,” he says, looking up at his mother. “They say we can’t because we are Daesh [Isil].”

Khatab suffers the double misfortune of also being born to members of Isil. His father, Mohammed, was killed fighting the Iraqi army in their hometown of Hawija three years ago. Ashwaq, a housewife, had been sympathetic to the group.

Obtaining new documents requires security screening by the Interior and Intelligence ministries, which families like Khatab’s automatically fail because of their Isil affiliations.

Ashwaq has not been charged with any crime but nevertheless feels she and her children are serving a sentence. Only the eldest of Khatab’s siblings, whose birth was registered before Isil’s takeover, is able to attend school and Ashwaq complains that even getting rations to feed the younger ones is a struggle.

While they are not forced to stay in Hammam al-Alil camp, without IDs it has become virtually impossible to return home.

“Our husbands were all either killed or arrested. How long must we continue to pay for their sins?” asks Ashwaq, who is reluctant to talk much about the role her husband played in Isil. “OK, fine, maybe I deserve this treatment. But do not punish my children. They now believe they are Daesh because that’s what they are told. How can a child be Daesh?”

Those thinking about heading back to their home towns to live out a quiet life have been met with another hard reality.

Vigilante justice in the form of revenge killings of Isil relatives is a constant threat to which some believe the government is turning a blind eye.

In another tent in the “Isil section” of Hammam al-Alil camp, Khawla Hassan, 39, has been trying to apply for papers for her and her children.

After she officially denounced her Isil fighter husband in court she was told she needed to go to the local government office in her hometown of al-Shura with the court papers.

“I went there but the official told me