Belgium takes back six orphaned ISIS children: SDF
Belgium has taken back six orphaned children of ISIS members
from Syria, the US-backed militia which is holding thousands of militants and
their family members said late on Thursday.
“This must be extended to men and women in our camps and
prison, not only children,” Mustafa Bali, a spokesman for the Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), said on Twitter, announcing Belgium’s move.
The SDF controls the quarter of Syria east of the Euphrates River
after driving back ISIS in a series of advances from 2015 that culminated in
March with the group’s defeat at its last territorial enclave in Baghouz, near
the Iraqi border.
However, it says it is unable to indefinitely hold the
thousands of ISIS fighters and members and their families who surrendered
during its offensive.
Many of those in custody or held at overcrowded displacement
camps in northeast Syria are foreigners, and many remain unrepentant supporters
of violent jihad.
ISIS members also brought a large number of children into
their zone of control or bore babies who are now orphaned, destitute or even
stateless, and whose future is uncertain.
The SDF has warned that keeping them in northeast Syria
where there is no long-term political settlement to underpin its control of the
area is a security risk, and has called for help in managing a humanitarian
crisis in the displacement camps.
Western countries have so far been unwilling to take back
their citizens who went to Syria to join ISIS – seeing them as a
security risk if they return home but knowing they may be unable to prosecute
them.
The United States, France and the Netherlands have each
repatriated a small number of women or children from northeast Syria, but many
others remain there.
The SDF has also handed over numerous ISIS militants to
Iraq, which is putting many former jihadists on trial and executing some of
them.
An Iraqi court sentenced a Belgian man, Bilal al-Marchohi,
23, to death by hanging in March for being part of ISIS. Pictures on his phone
showed him posing with weapons and cradling his infant son.