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CNN One Thing
You’ve been overwhelmed with headlines all week – what's worth a closer look? One Thing takes you into the story and helps you make sense of the news everyone's been talking about. Every Wednesday and Sunday, host David Rind interviews one of CNN’s world-class reporters to tell us what they've found – and why it matters. From the team behind CNN 5 Things.
What Should Happen to the Detained Children of ISIS?
CNN One Thing
Jun 16, 2024
Five years after the fall of the self-declared caliphate, tens of thousands of ISIS followers and their families are being held in dozens of detention facilities in Syria that human rights groups describe as a ‘legal black hole.’ In this episode, CNN gets unprecedented access to some of these facilities and hears from mothers and children facing dire conditions and uncertain futures.
Guest: Clarissa Ward, CNN Chief International Correspondent
Episode Transcript
David Rind
00:00:00
'Earlier this week, federal agents made a series of arrests on American soil that are raising alarm bells. Two sources tell CNN that eight Tajikistan nationals were apprehended in multiple cities by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. One source said when the group initially crossed the U.S. southern border, there were no initial red flags. But a second source said, thanks in part to a controversial foreign surveillance program, authorities identified possible ties to ISIS. Yes, ISIS, the self-declared caliphate may have fallen five years ago, but U.S. officials are warning that overseas terror groups are part of a mix that's presenting an elevated threat to the U.S. and remember, offshoots like ISIS have recently carried out attacks overseas.
Matthew Chance
00:00:53
Bloodshed at the concert hall near Moscow. Gunman running amok before setting the crowded building ablaze. Killing more than 130 people inside.
David Rind
00:01:10
And it's worth noting the people who followed the original ISIS in Iraq and Syria were not just militants. There were plenty of women and children living under harsh rule. So five years later, what became of them? And who gets to decide what their futures look like? My guest today, CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward. She recently got unprecedented access to a series of detention centers in Syria that humanitarian groups are calling a legal black hole from CNN. This is One Thing. I'm David Rind.
David Rind
00:01:56
So, Clarissa, you've been tracking what happened in the Middle East after the fall of ISIS five years ago. Can you remind us, like, what exactly happened to all the women and children who were living under the caliphate?
Clarissa Ward
00:02:08
'I think, David, that a lot of people assume that after the defeat of ISIS, they just disappeared and went away. And everybody has been so focused on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza that the world's attention hasn't really been focused on ISIS so much anymore. People might be surprised to learn that five years after the fall of ISIS is self-declared caliphate, there are 50,000 ISIS followers and their family members who are being held in a constellation of prisons and camps across northeastern Syria. These detention centers are under the control of the U.S. backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, and they are the people who really led the charge on the ground in the fight against ISIS and have now been left with the responsibility of dealing with these tens of thousands of people who basically are living in a sort of black hole.
David Rind
00:03:13
Wow. That's a lot of people. So what does that look like?
Clarissa Ward
00:03:16
'The largest camp that has become pretty notorious is called Al-hol, and there are more than 40,000 people living there, among them, some 6700 foreign nationals. And the foreign nationals all live in a part of the camp that's known as the annex. The annex has become very dangerous and very difficult to govern, if you will. The SDF themselves don't go in there regularly except during security raids. On recent raids. They have found weapons. They have found explosives. They have found brutal videos that appear to show one showed a woman being beheaded. Another showed children being trained inside the camp. And these are videos that they have found on the phones of various people who are living inside that camp.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:04:19
You can see just how fast this place is. More than 40,000 people are living here in the most dangerous part of the camp.
Clarissa Ward
00:04:27
We managed to get very rare and unusual access to the annex, and it's very striking when you spend a bit of time in there. Firstly, how many of the women are still deeply radicalized?
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:04:42
But what about you? Do you still. Do you regret your decision to join ISIS or.
Woman
00:04:48
Why, why should I regret this?
Clarissa Ward
00:04:50
We talked to women who really had no regret or remorse about joining ISIS, but they did have a lot to say about the conditions in the camp.
Woman
00:05:01
Normally, even with, enemies. Yeah. Women and children. Any need for normal service. Right? Health services and. Medicine? Yes.
Clarissa Ward
00:05:13
And I want to be very clear. The conditions in the camp are dire. There is very little medical care. For example, the women complained that there wasn't enough water, that there's no electricity, that prices in the market were very high. But the most common complaint that we heard from the women that we spoke to, and we talked to woman from Russia, from Azerbaijan, we spoke to, Uighur Muslims from China. And all of them told us a similar story. Which is that when boys in the camp turn about 12 years old, the SDF come in often in the middle of the night and take them.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:05:57
She's asking if she can get her son back. Who's in a prison? He's 10 years old.
David Rind
00:06:05
Why?
Clarissa Ward
00:06:07
'The SDF basically says that this is a policy that they've come up with, because the mothers are radicalizing their children, and their concern is that if the boys stay with their mothers, they're going to become more radical. They're going to become older and stronger. And before they know it, they're going to have an ISIS army in the Al-hol camp.
David Rind
00:06:28
It's like this ideology will just keep going and going and going.
Clarissa Ward
00:06:32
'Exactly. Because they don't have a system set up to try to de radicalize these women. They say it's too dangerous to leave young boys in the camp. The other very disturbing allegation we heard is that boys as young as 14 are being married off. And I use that kind of an inverted commas to try to repopulate the next generation of ISIS fighters. But you can understand, David, and we have heard from many human rights organizations, also from a UN special rapporteur who did an extensive report on the Al-hol camp and these various detention facilities, that this constitutes a major violation of the rights of the child.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:07:21
Okay, so, I'm a journalist....
Clarissa Ward
00:07:21
We visited a place called the Orkesh Rehabilitation Center, and that's where some of these boys, after they're separated from their mothers, are taken to. And it was really striking. We interviewed a young man called Shamil who could not remember how old he was,.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:07:40
you don't know?
Shamil
00:07:40
I don't know.
Clarissa Ward
00:07:42
He said that he grew up in Cologne in Germany, until his parents decided to move the family to Raqqa in Syria, which was the capital of ISIS's caliphate. And Shamil was separated from his family in the middle of the night a few years back, he said. It was a pretty traumatic scene. His mother was screaming.
Shamil
00:08:07
Then they came and pulled my hand back. Then my mom screamed
Clarissa Ward
00:08:10
Twisted his arm behind his back and started telling Shamil to put his shoes on, and Shamil refused. He said that the man hit him. Shamil says that he has never seen a lawyer, that he has no idea what the future holds for him, where he will end up.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:08:28
Well, tell me again what is your name? And your last name?
Islam
00:08:33
Islam.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:08:33
Islam.
Clarissa Ward
00:08:35
We talked also to a 12 year old boy called Islam who did not know his last name. He is from Dagestan in Russia. He had been in the rehabilitation center for three to four months.
Islam
00:08:49
'3-4 months.
Clarissa Ward
00:08:52
'He talked about missing his mom a lot, about wanting to return to the camp with his mom. And you can see that for a child that young, that vulnerable who has ended up in Syria through no fault of their own, just how terrifying and horrifying frankly, that ordeal is. The counter argument that the SDF gives is hold on a second, rather than criticizing us. Why don't you come and work with us to try to improve this situation and help us deal with it? Because the SDF, they don't have the resources to set up a full de-radicalization process for the women. They don't have the resources to set up some kind of a court system. Even the ones who go through the de-radicalization process, there's nowhere for them to go at the end of it, because most of these countries, or many of them, are just not taking ISIS detainees and their families back to their countries of origin. And that's where the U.S. comes in.
David Rind
00:10:10
I'm struck that this is all being run by the SDF, which is backed by the United States. You and I have talked a lot about how the Biden administration has come under a ton of pressure for continuing to back Israel as it fights Hamas in Gaza, despite these accusations of war crimes and starvation, which of course, Israel denies. But I guess I'm wondering how a power like the U.S. response to backing the SDF in the face of these stories that you heard firsthand.
Clarissa Ward
00:10:36
'The first thing that the US is really shouting from the rooftops right now is that all of these countries and in Al-hol camp, there are more than 60 different nationalities represented. All of these countries need to take their citizens home. It has become a political issue, particularly here in Europe, in the UK, in Belgium, but also in Australia and a number of other countries where people have basically said, we don't want you back. You made your choice. The SDF will say, well, hold on a second. It's not our fault that your citizens went and joined ISIS, and why should we be left with the responsibility to take care of them? So the U.S. has really tried to push for countries to repatriate their people, not just for reasons of humanitarian law, international law, but also for reasons of security. The big fear here is that with these prisons and with these camps, if there was a massive convulsion of violence or instability in the region, which is not impossible, sure that you could have an ISIS army reconstituting overnight just.
David Rind
00:11:49
Because you have all those people there that they could draw from, and then it becomes this big thing.
Clarissa Ward
00:11:55
Exactly.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:12:00
Can I look inside?
Clarissa Ward
00:12:02
We also managed to get access to Panorama Prison. There are roughly 4000 ISIS inmates or ISIS affiliated inmates being held there at the moment. So it's basically the largest concentration of ISIS fighters in the world.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:12:18
So the head of the prison has asked me to put on a head scarf when we walk through here, because these are some of the most radicalized prisoners they have.
Clarissa Ward
00:12:26
'Now in 2022. There was a prison break. Hundreds of fighters escaped. There was days of fighting. Ultimately, most of those who escaped were either killed or re-arrested. But nonetheless, it sent a shiver down many people's spines because it made it clear just how vulnerable a lot of these prisons are. Panorama has been partially now rebuilt, primarily with U.S. funding, but there are other prisons as well. Across this part of the country, and just a few weeks ago, we were told by a senior U.S. official that there had been a car bomb outside of a detention facility in a town called shady, which they believed was again a sort of dry run or a trial run to look at attempting another prison break. Wow. So it gives you a feel for the complexity of this situation, which is growing into a larger crisis by the day, which has profound ethical and humanitarian implications, but which also could rapidly turn into a very dangerous situation.
David Rind
00:13:45
Yeah. And I guess I'm wondering, because, like, there is the argument for some of these adults anyways, that, you know, you went and joined ISIS, then this is the kind of punishment that you have to deal with. But did you meet anybody that was really repentant about their situation and feel hopeless that they kind of been forgotten, even though they, you know, renounce what they did?
Clarissa Ward
00:14:08
We did. I think what you see a lot in these camps is that. Repentance is required or demanded, but forgiveness is rarely given.
Clarissa Ward (nats)
00:14:24
I have to ask you. I'm seeing all of the women here are fully covered, a lot of them covering their faces. You're not covered. You're wearing a t shirt. Is that hard?
Hoda Muthana
00:14:34
Yeah, it was hard when I first took it. I would say for the first 2 or 3 years, people were not accepting of it, you know, and they harassed us a lot. They stole our stuff, you know, and I had to stay strong as true example for my son, you know.
Clarissa Ward
00:14:50
And and so we spent some time with a 30 year old woman called Holder Muthana, who has been in our camp for more than five years with her seven year old son.
Hoda Muthana
00:15:01
If I didn't have my child out, I couldn't have handled this at all.
Clarissa Ward
00:15:06
She was born and raised in the US and became radicalized when she was about 1920 years old online, and decided to leave her family in Alabama and traveled to live under ISIS. And she pretty quickly realized that this was a huge mistake that she had made, and she desperately wanted to escape and to return home. Now, the U.S. has essentially said that hold them. Athena is not actually American because her father was a diplomat. And so technically, because of diplomatic immunity, they say she was not a U.S. citizen. However, she had two U.S. passports. She traveled to Syria on a U.S. passport. She was born and raised in the US. Her entire family lives in the U.S., and she has never lived anywhere else. But like so many, she finds herself in this kind of legal limbo.
Hoda Muthana
00:16:11
If I were to have the choice between an American prison and this camp, I would choose an American prison any day, any day.
Clarissa Ward
00:16:21
And again, I think this just goes to illustrate the complexity that you see here. And even for those who demonstrate genuine remorse, who have suffered, who, like Hoda, are willing to go through the judicial process in their home countries and face trial and do the time.
David Rind
00:16:43
Oh, she's saying like, if I go back to the U.S., if I have to go to prison, so be it.
Clarissa Ward
00:16:47
So be it, she said. Her words to go to prison in the U.S. will be a step forward. It would mean at least my life is moving forward, and I would serve my time and then start my life with my son.
Hoda Muthana
00:17:01
I just want to breathe American air and be around people. I love the people of America. They're very open and they're very forgiving, and they're very, they're people who give second chances. And I think if they were to sit down with me and listen to my story from the beginning, they would give me a second chance.
Clarissa Ward
00:17:20
But for now, that isn't an option for Hoda and many like her, and they continued to sit and wait in these camps.
David Rind
00:17:29
Clarissa, thank you so much.
Clarissa Ward
00:17:30
Thank you. David.
David Rind
00:17:41
One thing is a production of CNN Audio. This episode was produced by Paola Ortiz and me, David Rind. Our senior producer is Faiz Jamil. Our supervising producer is Greg Peppers. Matt Dempsey is our production manager. Dan Dzula is our technical director. And Steve Lickteig is the executive producer of CNN Audio. We get support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, John Dianora, Leni Steinhart, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. Special thanks to Brent Swails, Eliza Mackintosh, and Katie Hinman. We'll be back on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.