This is largely the story of one young woman, and ended up being hugely interesting, as well as hugely sad.
The Open-Air Prison for ISIS Supporters—and Victims
Since the Islamic State fell, tens of thousands of people—many of them children—have been herded into Al-Hol, a giant fenced-in camp in Syria, and effectively given life sentences.
By Anand Gopal
The dead turned up everywhere. Two decapitated corpses in a cesspit. The remains of a woman with a pierced skull. A child with a bullet hole in his temple. Men clustering around a ditch suggested the worst, as did women running at full speed through the dirt. With each grim discovery, Jihan Omar renewed a promise to herself: she had to find a way out.
Jihan lived in Al-Hol, a detention camp in eastern Syria which could more properly be called a concentration camp. Al-Hol was created decades ago, in a stretch of scrubland about ten miles west of the Iraqi border, as a haven for refugees. But in 2019, when the U.S.-led coalition vanquished isis—the armed group that had briefly established a breakaway caliphate within Syria and Iraq, imposing an extremist interpretation of Islamic law—tens of thousands of people who’d been living under its rule were herded to the camp. Guard towers and armored vehicles and concertina-crowned walls appeared, and residents could no longer walk out the gate.
About fifty thousand people are currently imprisoned in Al-Hol, which is named for a dilapidated nearby town. The detainees hail from more than fifty countries: Chinese and Trinidadians and Russians and Swedes and Brits live alongside Syrians and Iraqis. Many of the adults had either joined isis or been married to someone who’d joined. But many others have no links to the Islamic State and fled to the camp to escape the punishing U.S.-led bombing campaign. Some were thrown into isis’s orbit by force: Yazidis enslaved by commanders, teen-age girls married off by their families. More than half the population are children, the majority of whom are younger than twelve. Dozens of babies are born each month. All the residents are under indefinite detention, as no plans have apparently been made to prosecute any of them—imagine if Guantánamo were the size of a city, and its inmates were mostly women and children. The United Nations has called Al-Hol a “blight on the conscience of humanity.”...
On the day of the show, the sun was brilliant and children crowded outside a U.N.-issued tent serving as a big top. Abu Hassan arranged the boys and girls into lines. No performance had ever been given in the camp, and the children discussed what they might see. One girl suggested that there was no such thing as a clown, that it was a ruse to get them to school. A boy said that he’d heard clowns came bearing gifts. I asked what he wished for most in the world, and he said a soccer ball. A boy standing nearby, who looked to be six or seven, raised his index finger—a gesture of the Islamic State.
Some thirty kids crammed inside: young boys in tracksuits, little girls in head scarves or niqabs. Balloons were littered about. Behind a partition, Ali and Abu Reem were assembling their costumes. More children were trying to force their way into the tent, which was at capacity, but Abu Hassan and his friends held them back. The commander looked pleased with himself about the crowd control.
Suddenly, a whistle pierced the air, and Ali appeared among the children. There were shouts of confusion. A girl in a leopard-print scarf burst into tears and fled in terror. Ali wore a neon wig, and a red nose that kept popping off. In the heat, his makeup ran, making him look like something that might poke its head out of a sewer. I asked him to sneak off for a touch-up, and he returned in better form, goose-stepping with Abu Reem. The clowns distributed candies, sang songs, cracked jokes; slowly, the children were won over. They began singing along. The boy who’d raised his index finger danced. The leopard-print girl reappeared, laughing and clapping.
For the whole article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/03/18/the-open-air-prison-for-isis-supporters-and-victims