Teenage sons of ISIS foreign fighters find help at Syria rehab centre

QAMISHLI -- The children of "Islamic State of Iraq and Syria" (ISIS) foreign fighters play football on a dirt field at a centre in northeastern Syria that Kurdish authorities hope will help rehabilitate minors raised on extremist ideology.

More than 50 boys aged 11 to 17 live at the heavily guarded Orkesh rehabilitation centre near the city of Qamishli in al-Hasakeh province.

Opened six months ago, it is the first facility seeking to rehabilitate foreign boys in the Kurdish-administered northeast, where prisons and camps are packed with thousands of ISIS relatives from more than 60 countries.

Another centre opened its doors in 2017 to rehabilitate young former extremists.

The success of the centres is crucial to "saving the region from the emergence of a new generation of extremists", said Khaled Remo, co-chair of the Kurdish administration's office of justice and reform affairs.

Boys wearing tracksuits played table football in one of the rooms, while others kicked around a ball outside in the sun, talking to one another in broken Arabic.

Once they turn 18, they will need a new rehabilitation programme -- or for their home countries to take them back.

"We don't want the kids to stay permanently in these centres, but diplomatic efforts are slow, and many children need rehabilitation," Remo said.

Since the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) ousted ISIS from its last Syria stronghold in 2019, with backing from the international coalition, tens of thousands of people have been detained in Kurdish-controlled camps.

Many foreigners are among the detainees at the al-Hasakeh camps of al-Hol and Roj, with 10,000 foreigners in al-Hol alone.

While girls also reside in the camps, this rehabilitation centre focuses on boys as they are the primary targets of potential ISIS recruiters, Remo said.

Last May, the United States sanctioned a network of financial facilitators that helped the group recruit children from displacement camps in Syria.

Therapy sessions

Kurdish authorities have called on countries repeatedly to repatriate their citizens, but foreign governments have allowed only a trickle to return home, fearing security threats and domestic political backlash.

The boys at the rehabilitation centre were transferred from al-Hol and Roj, authorities said, as well as from the Ghwayran prison, where hundreds were killed after ISIS elements stormed it early last year.

Some with their heads shaved or wearing knitted caps attend classes in Arabic and English, learning mathematics, drawing -- one teenager drew the sunset in shades of orange and pink crayon -- and even music.

The facility has dormitories, recreation areas and a dining hall, and the boys can play chess or watch documentary films and cartoons.

The centre's goal is to prepare the boys "to integrate into their communities in the future", said Aras Darwish, who heads the project.

"Our goal is to offer psychosocial and educational support," Darwish said of the centre, which provides individual and group therapy sessions.

The boys also are encouraged to draw in order to express their feelings and deal with memories, he said, pointing to a room decorated with artwork portraying trees, cars and houses.

Save the Children in December warned that about 7,000 children of suspected foreign fighters were "trapped in desperate conditions and put at risk on a daily basis" in overcrowded detention camps in northeast Syria.

Al-Hol is notorious for violence, with killings and attacks even targeting children, guards and humanitarian workers.

Slow process

Children in al-Hol "are in daily danger of indoctrination to violence", US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement Saturday, adding that teenagers with foreign parents "expressed a desire to return to their country of origin".

Earlier this month, United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called for the swift repatriation of foreigners from al-Hol.

Reem al-Hassan, 28, a counsellor at the Orkesh centre, said the programme was working, albeit slowly.

"We can see a big difference in the kids compared to when they first came," she said.

"At first, some of them refused to take part in classes with woman teachers," she said, as the extremist group had imposed a strict segregation of genders when it controlled territory in Syria and Iraq.

"But the situation is better now -- we see gradual, if slow, improvement."