Six years after the collapse of the so-called Islamic State caliphate in March 2019, dramatic leadership changes in Washington, DC and Damascus open a rare window of opportunity to end the continuing, unlawful detentions of some 26,000 foreign ISIS suspects and family members in northeast Syria. The detainees, who come from dozens of countries, are held in camps and prisons. Most of those held in the camps are children, 40 percent of them under age 12.
Conditions in the camps and prisons are dire. They could deteriorate further amid sweeping US aid cuts to northeast Syria and continuing armed challenges to Syria’s fragile de facto government. None of the detainees have been criminally charged or even brought before a judge. Though nearly 40 countries have repatriated some or many detainees, most governments, fearing security risks, are reluctant to take their nationals back.
This article examines prospects for resolving this mass detention crisis as US President Donald J. Trump cuts at least $117 million in vital humanitarian aid to northeast Syria, and weighs pulling American troops and support for local counter-terrorism forces from the region. It considers the role that Syria’s caretaker President Ahmed al-Sharaa could play in revitalising repatriations, including through his political and military pact with the Kurdish-led majority in largely autonomous northeast Syria.
The article argues that allowing detainees to return to their countries of origin for rehabilitation, reintegration, and, as appropriate, prosecutions is the only international law-compliant and durable path forward. It warns that inaction holds a greater potential to strengthen ISIS, including by returning detained adults to their ranks and recruiting their children, than at any time since the caliphate’s fall.
Mass, Unlawful Detentions of Suspects and Families
Six years ago on 23 March 2019, a US-backed regional militia toppled the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in northeast Syria. The militia, called the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), captured tens of thousands of foreigners and Syrians believed to be ISIS members and their relatives, and detained them in local camps and makeshift prisons. About 46,500 of them remain held today, with the knowledge of their home countries.
More than 38,000 detainees are held in two heavily guarded camps, al-Hol and Roj. As of 17 March 2025, about 23,000 of those in the camps were foreigners and more than 60 percent were children, most under the age of 12, two humanitarians and a third source with direct knowledge of the camp populations told this author. (This article does not cite published material on camp figures as the numbers are fluid, and media and official reports are often outdated or otherwise incorrect.) Most of the rest are women, including many trafficked by ISIS. Roughly 15,000 of the foreigners in al-Hol and Roj are from neighbouring Iraq. More than 8,000 others are from nearly 60 different countries states as dispersed as Australia, China, France, Indonesia, Russia, Trinidad, Tunisia, the UK, and South Africa.
The SDF is also detaining about 8,500 or more foreign and Syrian males suspected of ISIS links in over two dozen detention centres, according to well-informed sources. They include several hundred teenage boys and young men who were boys when the militia first put them behind bars. About 5,400 of these prisoners are Syrians and at least 3,100 are foreigners, including about 1,600 Iraqis. A few hundred other boys and young men are held in so-called rehabilitation centres, most after being forcibly separated from their mothers in the camps.
The detainee population is significantly lower than at its peak in May 2019, when al-Hol alone held more than 73,000 suspected ISIS members and relatives. But repatriations have slowed with notable exceptions such as Iraq, which has brought home more than 3,000 detainees since the fall in December of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, including around 600 on 12 March 2025.
Conditions in the camps may amount to torture. Women and children suffer chronic shortages of food, clean water, and medical care. Hundreds have died from preventable diseases, violence, or accidents. Conditions are worse still in the prisons, where several hundred detainees have died from malnutrition and tuberculosis, several have alleged physical torture, and most have had no contact with family members in months or years. The children held in the so-called rehabilitation centres also suffer grave deprivation, including rare contact with family members and basic services. At one centre, children have gone without heat this winter, two humanitarian workers told this author.
United Nations experts and treaty bodies, and human right defenders have found multiple, grave violations of the detainees’ rights, including their rights to challenge the necessity and legality of their detention, and to be free from the risk of torture and other cruel and degrading treatment. Some of these abuses may amount to war crimes or crimes against humanity. The European Commissioner on Human Rights, UN human rights experts and, in cases involving France and Finland, the Committee on the Rights of the Child, have found that states have an extra-territorial obligation to protect their citizens from such risks and that repatriations are the only way for states to do so. In 2022, the European Court of Human Rights found that France had violated the rights of French children and their mothers by failing to take appropriate safeguards against arbitrary refusals to repatriate them, although the court stopped short of recognising that France had outright jurisdiction over its detained citizens. The detentions also violate the rights of ISIS victims by failing to hold accountable those responsible for human trafficking, sexual enslavement, and genocide.
$117 Million of Cuts in Humanitarian Aid
In January and February 2025, the Trump administration cut at least $117 million in humanitarian aid from fifteen US State Department and US Agency for International Development (USAID) projects northeast Syria, part of $60 billion in foreign aid freezes worldwide. Twelve projects in northeast Syria were for essential services such as medical care and water deliveries, according to the Northeast Syria Non-Governmental Forum (NES NGO Forum), a coalition of aid groups. “The majority of life-saving humanitarian work has been gutted,” one senior humanitarian official in the region told this author. Like nearly all humanitarians interviewed for this article, the official spoke on condition of anonymity.
Funding was cut for fifteen projects in al-Hol and five in Roj, according to the NES NGO Forum. The first cuts in January 2025 forced camp coordinators to reduce security forces and halt deliveries of bread and fuel for two days. Since then, the camps have several times come perilously close to lacking funds to deliver bread and other essential supplies, three sources with direct knowledge of camp operations told this author. “That continues to be an absolute wreck of a situation because realistically if bread stops, that’s kind of our litmus for whether things fall apart,” the senior humanitarian officer said.
In al-Hol, the cuts forced the Italian aid group Un Ponte Per to close one of its two primary care clinics serving up to 300 people daily, and reduce its emergency ambulance runs. Those cuts “will soon have dire consequences, including loss of life among the most vulnerable,” Luca Magno, Un Ponte Per’s programme desk officer, told this author.
The US also froze assistance to hundreds of children in the camps with learning disabilities, or suffering from neglect or abuse. Absent the education services, these children have few learning alternatives to informal classes run by camp detainees promoting violent ideology. The cuts ended programmes in some camp sectors but not others, creating inequalities that could fuel violence among detainees and against a shrinking number of aid workers.
Ssince the first Trump administration and particularly under former President Joe Biden, the US has taken the lead in urging countries to repatriate their nationals, in many cases coordinating the returns. Yet one frozen grant was to have assisted repatriations to more than two dozen countries, including by assessing the risk of prospective returnees, representatives from two aid groups told this author. Authorities in neighbouring Iraq warned in March that the aid cuts could jeopardise Baghdad’s schedule for repatriating all detained Iraqis by year’s end.
Aid groups are looking to the UN to cover the gap, but UN officials told this author that their agencies are also strapped for cash. Exacerbating the cash crunch, the Trump administration has not paid many aid groups for work that the US had previously authorised, defying a court order.
Potential US Military Withdrawal
The Trump administration is also poised to make sweeping, multi-year military spending cuts that could include US counter-ISIS operations in northeast Syria. The US heads the 88-member Global Coalition Against Daesh and has 2,000 troops in northeast Syria, where it conducts joint missions with the SDF. Since 2019, the US has spent over $1 billion to support the SDF and other forces in northeast Syria with training, equipment, and salaries, including for those guarding the detention centres holding ISIS suspects and family members. The US allocated nearly $148 million in such aid for 2025. The SDF is the main ground force keeping ISIS at bay in northeast Syria and has lost at least 13,000 fighters since 2014 in the process. Asked in January about northeast Syria, Trump replied that “Syria is its own mess…They don’t need us involved.”
Some political observers consider it unlikely that the US will withdraw from northeast Syria. Nevertheless, media report that the US military has prepared contingency withdrawal plans. Trump drew down US troops from northeast Syria during his first presidential term, allowing Turkey to launch a cross-border incursion into the region that diverted the SDF from guarding ISIS suspects.
Sweeping Power Shifts Within Syria
Sweeping political and military changes inside Syria could also shape the detainees’ fates. On 10 March 2025 Syria’s caretaker President al-Sharaa and Mazloum Abdi, the SDF commander, unveiled a potentially groundbreaking eight-point accord, in which northeast Syria is to “integrate all civil and military institutions” into the Syrian state by the end of 2025, including the SDF and the region’s oil and gas fields. The SDF pledged to support Damascus in its fight against pro-Assad forces, a win for al-Sharaa as his government reels from a bloodbath between pro-Sharaa Sunni Muslims and pro-Assad Alawites in Syria’s coastal region. In return, Damascus promised to guarantee all religious and ethnic groups in Syria the right to political representation and participation. However, the pact did not specify whether the SDF would continue to guard the ISIS suspects and families, though Kurdish officials say that will remain the case for now. The SDF does not want to relinquish detention operations, which have brought them US support and international attention. Nor did the pact specify whether regional authorities had won their demands to keep their fighting units in northeast Syria and or how they would share power there.
Turkey, which is widely viewed as a key backer of al-Sharaa and his Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist fighters, has urged Damascus to take over the detention centres in northeast Syria and has offered to assist. But the SDF particularly opposes any role by Turkey, which has repeatedly attacked into northeast Syria. Turkey, in turn, considers the SDF an extension of the insurgent Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which it lists as a terrorist organisation. In February the PKK declared a ceasefire in its decades-old conflict with Turkey, which the SDF said did not apply to its forces.
The rights and security impacts of transferring the detention operations to Damascus and possibly, by extension, to Ankara, remain unclear. Though al-Sharaa swears to embrace democracy and the rule of law, he remains something of a wild card given his extensive jihadi past, which has landed him and the HTS on UN, US, and UK terrorism lists. The UN and human rights groups have accused HTS of torture and summary executions.
Risks of ISIS Resurgence
The US funding cuts and potential military pullout, combined with the volatility in Syria and continued detentions of ISIS suspects and their families, create a perfect storm for ISIS to regroup, regain territory, and plan further attacks. Aid cuts are likely to increase frustration and despair among the detainees, increasing their vulnerability to join or return to ISIS, while a US military pullout and withdrawal of support for the SDF could create a security vacuum in the northeast. Fewer and under-trained guards would also increase the risks of riots and other violence, including by ISIS hardliners.
Already, ISIS has exploited the collapse of the Assad regime to capture weapons, and is seeking to attempt more prison breaks to bolster its ranks. ISIS in 2024 tripled attacks in Syria over the previous year and continued that pace into January 2025, with reported increases in sophistication and intensity.
Repatriation Opportunities Amid Uncertainty
Notwithstanding the potential pitfalls, the leadership changes in Washington and Damascus provide a rare opportunity to inject new energy into repatriation efforts, and to facilitate the returns of more Syrians from the camps as well. Amid Trump’s rupture of the post-war global order, leaders in Europe, Canada, Australia and beyond could agree to US calls to bring home the rest of their detained nationals in an effort to seeking to salvage historical alliances with Washington. Concerns over a possible US military withdrawal or a return to civil war in Syria might also spur countries to repatriate before ISIS capitalises on the security vacuum. Engagement by many Western and regional capitals with Syria’s caretaker government could also facilitate repatriations, in part by depriving many leaders of their weary excuses that they lacked diplomatic channels in Damascus, or risked angering Assad by directly negotiating their citizens’ returns with regional authorities in northeast Syria.
Domestically, al-Sharaa’s promises of inclusion and his ex-jihadi credentials could encourage more Syrians to return to their communities; during the Assad era many had feared retribution if they went home. Notably, the 10 March pact between Damascus and the SDF commits to “the return of all displaced Syrians to their towns and villages” and “their protection by the Syrian state.” Bringing home the Syrians and Iraqis would shrink the detainee populations in al-Hol, Roj, and the prisons to about 10,000 people, dramatically improving services and security.
Rather than waiting to see who will control the detainees and whether security in Syria improves or devolves, governments should seize this moment to promptly repatriate any nationals who want to come home. Six years of experience has shown that repatriations can successfully lead to rehabilitation, reintegration, and for adults, prosecutions as warranted. Many repatriated children are thriving, adults not serving time are rebuilding their lives, and both men and women accused of ISIS crimes are being brought to justice, including in some cases for war crimes, crimes against humanity, or genocide.
Repatriations would not only deprive ISIS of potential recruits in Syria. They would also represent a stand against the global erosion of human rights and the rule of law. With authoritarianism ascendant in many parts of the world, the need to draw that line is more urgent than ever.
This article represents the views of the author(s) solely. ICCT is an independent foundation, and takes no institutional positions on matters of policy unless clearly stated otherwise.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
