(Qamichli) In a center in northeastern Syria, foreign children, including Westerners, listen attentively to the explanations of a teacher: they are sons of jihadists from the Islamic State group, who are following a rehabilitation program.
They are more than 50 boys aged 11 to 17, including French, Americans, British and Germans in this center of Orkech, the first of its kind established by the Kurdish administration.
Boys in tracksuits play soccer in the yard, others take lessons in Arabic and English, math and even music. They can play chess and watch documentaries and cartoons.
PHOTO DELIL SOULEIMAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
The aim is to prepare these boys “to accept others, to integrate into their society in the future and to behave normally”, told AFP Aras Darwich, director of the rehabilitation project.
Inaugurated six months ago, the heavily guarded center, near the Kurdish town of Qamichli, welcomes children and adolescents transferred from two camps in northeastern Syria, Roj and al-Hol, where relatives of jihadists are detained. .
Other students at the center were detained in Ghwayran prison, the target of a bloody attack by IS in January 2022 in an attempt to free detainees from this group.
” Big difference ”
The center is open to boys, who are more at risk of radicalization. “Daesh (Arabic acronym for IS, editor’s note) needs boys to be able to reconstitute itself militarily”, explains a Kurdish administration official, Khaled Remo.
Kurdish forces, backed by the international anti-jihadist coalition, spearheaded the fight against IS, defeated in Syria in 2019 after bringing terror to some parts of the country.
PHOTO DELIL SOULEIMAN, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Since then, the Kurdish administration has held thousands of jihadist fighters in its prisons and tens of thousands of their family members in these two camps.
The center offers psychological support sessions to these children of jihadists.
In the classrooms, dozens of student drawings hang on the walls.
“We see a big difference between the day the children arrived and today,” the centre’s psychological counselor, Rim al-Hassan, told AFP.
“At first, some refused to attend classes with female teachers,” due to the gender segregation that was imposed by IS. “Now we are seeing gradual, albeit slow, improvement,” adds the 28-year-old woman.
Boys are encouraged to express themselves through drawing. One of them draws a sunset, in pink and orange hues.
Diplomatic delays
The two-story building, which includes a dormitory, canteen and classrooms, is equipped with surveillance cameras.
The Kurdish administration had opened a first center in 2017, intended for the rehabilitation of former jihadists.
The fate of the jihadists and their families is a headache for the autonomous Kurdish administration which manages these regions of northeastern Syria.
It constantly calls for the repatriation of families of jihadists to their countries of origin, but most of the countries concerned are content with returns in dribs and drabs.
The al-Hol camp alone contains 56,000 people, mostly women and children, including more than 10,000 relatives of foreign IS fighters.
On Saturday, the Kurdish authorities in Syria handed over to a Russian delegation 49 Russian children of jihadists, aged five to 15, according to the Kurdish administration and Russian officials.
All orphans, they were in the Roj and al-Hol camps.
During a meeting with the Russian delegation, Roubil Biho, a foreign affairs official, accused the international community as a whole of “negligence” and of not “assuming its responsibilities”.
In December, the NGO Save the Children warned that around 7,000 foreign children, “trapped” in these camps, were exposed to the risk of attacks and violence.
Children in al-Hol “are at daily risk of being indoctrinated,” the US Middle East Command (Centcom) said on Saturday.
The fate of the children in the rehabilitation centre, once they reach adulthood, is another problem for the Kurdish administration.
There are two options: to set up a new rehabilitation program adapted to their age or to exert diplomatic pressure so that they are repatriated, adds Mr. Remo.
“We don’t want the children to stay permanently in these centers, but diplomatic efforts are slow,” he explains.
For him, if the experiment succeeds, it will “save the region from the emergence of a new generation of extremists”.