PERSPECTIVE: The Future Fighters of ISIS Are Adolescents Being Smuggled Out of Al-Hol by Their Mothers and Financial Networks

Despite notable repatriation progress in early 2023, involving 14 countries returning their nationals, including children, the issue of detention centers and camps in Northeast Syria remains a critical challenge for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the U.S.-led anti-IS coalition. Likewise, Al-Hol camp continues to prove a breeding ground for IS resurgence. The tough security regime and the robust monitoring and surveillance efforts undertaken by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) over the years has facilitated the camp administration in maintaining a semblance of relative security and stability, but the ideological influence of IS and its reign of terror spreads gradually through the group’s foreign female stalwarts who are passing on the Islamic State’s extremist ideology to the next generation.