Tens of thousands of women – many of them Westerners – who married men from the Islamic State group remain detained in two closed camps in the war-torn country, nearly five years after the fall of the extremist terror group.
Shamima Begum – who ran away to join ISIS as a teenager at school in east London – is not the only woman She has been effectively disowned and abandoned by her homeland.
We found dozens of families who lived in the so-called Islamic State caliphate urging their governments to rescue them from the fortified camps guarded by armed guards where they are now being held in the country's northeast. Syria.
Mrs. Begum, who last week She lost her final legal challenge in the High Court in London She defied the decision to strip her of her British citizen status, and chose not to speak to us when we arrived at the smaller of the two camps, the Rouge.
The 24-year-old, whose lawyers say she was trafficked to Syria as a minor, left when she saw us, running through the maze of tents to avoid meeting us.
But we found many others desperate to speak up after what they say are several agonizing years of not being heard and nothing being done to help them.
“We are human beings, not animals.”
We spoke to British, Australian, Belgian, German, Dutch and Caribbean women who all insisted that they and their children were being punished for the sins of their partners and parents.
Many claimed they were raped or tricked into going to Syria, and in some cases were trafficked. Everyone said they couldn't escape.
Sky News' Alex Crawford speaks to a UK resident
Most Western women and their children are in Al-Roj, where they have been without electricity for the past month and where conditions are extremely harsh.
“We are human beings, not animals at the end of the day,” an Australian mother of three told us, on the condition of anonymity because she is in the middle of a legal process to repatriate her.
“The animal will not be able to handle these conditions. My son almost died last year…and my government knows that!”
She continued: “Not only children, but most of the women here are being punished because of a decision made on their behalf… decisions that we did not make ourselves.”
“And our government, despite our continued outreach, refuses to acknowledge that its citizens are still trapped here in the camps. Australian-born children are still here.”
Many countries saw their citizens travel to the region to answer ISIS's call to create a caliphate around 2014.
The terrorist group continued to control vast swaths of Syria and Iraq, imposing a harsh and terrifying version of Islamic law, carrying out executions and crushing any form of dissent.
ISIS fighters have slaughtered thousands of men from the Yazidi ethnic group because they consider them devil worshipers, and have kidnapped thousands of Yazidi women, turned them into slaves and brutalized them for years.
More than two thousand Yazidi women are still missing, and are believed to remain in captivity in ISIS sleeper cells ten years after ISIS began its massacre.
“Let's go back”
A British woman from Leeds told us how her husband, who was from Birmingham, convinced her to go to Syria but has since died in the fighting that followed. Her seven-year-old son Adam was born in Raqqa, the capital of the ISIS caliphate in Syria.
She said of her decision: “It was a terrible mistake, but I want to go home. There are no schools here, no reading or writing – nothing and no doctors. No, don't. 'If you don't do this to Adam he is innocent.'
She also requested that her name not be revealed following advice from lawyers, but appealed to the prime minister to allow her to return, saying she was ready to stand trial and face any legal consequences.
She pleaded: “Let's go back. My family, my mother, my father and my brothers all live in England and I want to go back and face trial there… For five years I've been here. I'm tired and I'm sick.”
She walks with a crutch, and was left paralyzed on one side after the car she was traveling in was hit around Baghouz during the fighting to expel ISIS, leaving her injured.
We continue to hear her story repeated many times with a range of different nationalities telling us that their governments have forgotten or abandoned them. Cassandra Bodart, a Belgian national with blond hair and a T-shirt and jeans, told us that she realized shortly after arriving in Syria that she had made a huge mistake.
“For a long time, I tried to escape from there,” she told us.
She added: “But my husband did not want me to do that, because it is extreme, you know, in the ideology of the Islamic State (to leave your husband) and he told me, if you try to run away, I will kill you with my own hands.”
“I tried to escape twice”
Zakia Kajar told us that she lived in Germany for 29 years, had a job and gave birth to two children there before her husband deceived her and took her to Raqqa.
“I tried to escape twice but they caught me and beat me – so where do I go? I stayed and then he died four months later and I was pregnant, so what can I do?”
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She says she was forced to marry another man she did not know or love, and gave birth to two more children, one of whom was in Al-Roj.
Her youngest daughter, who was five years old, did not know any life outside the walls of Al-Roj camp and the armed guards.
“I hope they give me a second chance,” she said.
Her ten-year-old daughter, who was born in Stuttgart, has forgotten her German and now speaks Arabic.
Safia wants to study to become a doctor, but “the situation here is not good,” she told us. “We are trapped like chickens. I want to get out and go to the parks.”
“My children have done nothing wrong.”
The vast majority of the camp's residents are children, and a series of human rights groups and relief agencies have condemned conditions in both camps, as well as what they call the arbitrary detention of minors because of what their parents may have done.
No one in the camps was tried or questioned in court for any crimes they may have committed.
United Nations experts said in a report last year: “The mass detention of children in northeastern Syria because of what their parents may do is a flagrant violation of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which prohibits all forms of discrimination and punishment of children.” child based on the condition, activities, opinions or beliefs of his or her parents.”
In one section of the camp, called Australia Street because of the predominance of Australians living there, there are rainbows and drawn maps of Australia.
A Melbourne mother called Kirsty Rossi-Emile told us she had two young children, aged seven and four, who she desperately wanted to bring home.
“My children have done nothing wrong at all. My daughter was two years old when we came here and they don’t know anything and I try to protect them from everything.”
