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Indonesia’s dilemma: What to do with the children of its ISIS fighters
Stranded in camps in Syria, they are viewed with suspicion back home. Reintegrating them into society is not easy but it is the only way forward.
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Released detainees preparing to leave the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp, which holds relatives of ISIS fighters in Syria, on Sept 3, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
Noor Huda Ismail
In the dusty, overcrowded confines of camps like Al-Hol and Ar Roj in Syria, hundreds of Indonesian children – born under the black flag of ISIS – wait. They are the forgotten casualties of a war their parents waged, trapped in a limbo between radicalisation and rehabilitation.
As the world turns its attention once more to the war in Syria, the smouldering embers of an earlier chapter of violence remain unresolved: what to do with the thousands of family members of foreign fighters who headed to the Middle East to join the ranks of ISIS a decade ago. Most of the wives and children were detained in early 2019, when ISIS’ self-styled “caliphate” was defeated.
