'Really Tired': French ISIS Women Languish in Syria Camp

Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
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'Really Tired': French ISIS Women Languish in Syria Camp

Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)
Amal, from France, needs crutches to get around Al-Hol camp after she was wounded in what was the ISIS group's last bastion in eastern Syria. (AFP)

In an overcrowded desert camp for families linked to the ISIS group in northeastern Syria, a French woman begged for another chance so she and her children could go home.

In the same settlement, two other French women were more tepid about the prospect of repatriation, with one saying she feared being separated from her child.

In the squalid camp of Al-Hol, the question of return has sparked a divide among the French wives of ISIS fighters.

"We'd like the French government to give us the chance to make it up to them," 30-year-old Umm Mohammad told AFP in French.

"I think it's better they repatriate us... We'll be judged in France," said the mother of four from Paris, dressed in a black robe and face veil.

After years of fighting IS ISIS Syria's Kurds hold 4,000 women and 8,000 children from families linked to the extremist organization, mostly in Al-Hol.

Inside the camp, a veiled woman pushed a child in a pram, the bottom of her black robe caked in dry mud.

Two boys in jackets and rubber boots dragged a cart over a dirt field beyond rows of white tents, a little girl in a pink coat running alongside.

Umm Mohammad said that among her compatriots in Al-Hol's section for foreigners, "a huge amount want to go home".

"There's another half who don't want to go back, but that's their problem," said the widow, who says her French husband was killed in Hajin, once one of the last bastions of ISIS.

France has so far been reluctant to repatriate its nationals, allowing just a handful of children back on a case-by-case basis.

But in an apparent U-turn last week, Justice Minister Nicole Belloubet said she saw "no other solution" but to bring back extremists.

'Never killed'

Kurdish-led forces expelled ISIS from its last patch of territory in eastern Syria in March last year.

The extremists stand accused of a wide range of crimes during their failed five-year experiment in statehood in parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

But Umm Mohammad claimed she "did nothing at all" while living under ISIS.

"I never killed anyone," she said.

"We're really tired. Our children, we'd like them to go back to school."

In the camp's makeshift market, women dressed in black examined piles of colorful clothes laid out on blankets.

A woman carried a tray of white eggs, followed by another balancing a plastic crate of oranges on her head.

Away from the bustle, another French woman lamented the living conditions.

"I don't want to stay in this camp," said 23-year-old Nour, her brown eyes barely visible through the slit of her face veil.

"It's very difficult. We live in tents. It's cold. People are sick."

At least 371 children died in Al-Hol last year, the Kurdish Red Crescent has said, mainly from malnutrition, poor healthcare for newborns and hypothermia.

The Kurdish authorities have warned that conditions could deteriorate further after the UN Security Council on January 10 voted to restrict cross-border aid.

The Yaroubiya crossing on the Iraqi border was a key entry point for UN-funded medical aid reaching the area, including Al-Hol.

'France doesn't want us'

Nour, who said she was from the city of Montpellier in southern France, said she wanted to resume a normal life.

But she insisted she did not want to be separated from her children.

"If they're going to separate us, frankly I don't see the point of repatriating us," she said.

She too claimed she had not carried out any crimes.

"I stayed at home and educated my children," she said.

A third French woman -- who gave her name as Amal -- was more reluctant to speak.

"I having nothing to say," said the 25-year-old, after slowly gliding around the used clothes market on clutches.

She said she was wounded in the leg in Baghouz, a riverside hamlet where die-hard extremists made their last stand in 2019.

She would not reveal the nationality of her late husband and, under her face veil, her brown eyes avoided the camera.

"France doesn't want us... doesn't want ISIS," she said. "I don't want anyone to judge me."



War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
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War-weary Syrians and Lebanese Watch from the Sidelines as Missiles Fly in Israel-Iran Conflict 

A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)
A Syrian man takes pictures with his mobile phone of Iranian missiles on their way toward Israel, as they pass over Damascus airspace, Syria, Friday, June 13, 2025. (AP)

In a park overlooking Damascus, 25-year-old Khaldoun Hallak has spent the past few evenings with his friends, drinking yerba mate, snacking on nuts, smoking hookah pipes and watching the sky for missiles streaking overhead.

“We’ve been through 14 years of war, and this is the first time Syria has nothing to do with it and we’re just spectators,” Hallak said.

Since Israel launched a barrage of strikes on Iran last week and Iran retaliated with missile and drone attacks against Israel, neighboring countries have been in the flight path.

Outside the scope

Downed missiles and drones have fallen in Syria, Lebanon and Iraq, damaging houses, causing fires and reportedly killing one woman in Syria. But those countries have so far not been dragged directly into the conflict, which had killed at least 224 people in Iran and 24 in Israel as of Tuesday, and many in their war-weary populations are hoping it stays that way.

In Lebanon, which is still reeling from last year’s war between Israel and the Hezbollah party, videos making the rounds on social media have shown revelers dancing on rooftops while projectiles flash across the sky in the background.

Firas Maksad, managing director for the Middle East and North Africa at the Eurasia Group, a New York-based risk consultancy organization, happened to be visiting Lebanon when the conflict broke out and was attending a wedding when a parade of missiles began lighting up the sky as the DJ played ABBA’s disco hit “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”. He posted a video of the scene that went viral.

“Certainly most in Lebanon and also Syria are very satisfied to be outside the scope of this,” Maksad said.

No longer in the spotlight, a sense of relief

For some in the region, there is also measure of schadenfreude in watching the two sides exchange blows.

There’s a Syrian expression that literally translates as, “The fang of a dog in the hide of a pig.” It means that two people perceived as despicable are fighting with each other. The phrase has surfaced frequently on social media as Syrians express their feelings about the Israel-Iran conflict.

Watching from a park

Many Syrians resented Iran’s heavy-handed intervention in support of former President Bashar al-Assad during the country’s civil war, but are also angered by Israel’s incursions and airstrikes in Syria since Assad’s fall. The Syrian population also widely sympathizes with the Palestinians, particularly with civilians killed and displaced by the ongoing war in Gaza.

“May God set the oppressors against each other,” said Ahmad al-Hussein, 18, in Damascus, who was sitting in a park with friends waiting to see missiles pass overhead Monday night. “I hope it continues. We’ve been harmed by both of them.”

Hallak echoed the sentiment.

“Every time we see a missile going up, we say, may God pour gasoline on this conflict,” he said. “If one side is hit, we will be happy, and if the other side is hit, we will also be happy. We will only be upset if there is a reconciliation between them.”

In Lebanon, where last year’s Israel-Hezbollah war killed more than 4,000 people, including hundreds of civilians, and left destruction in wide swathes of the country’s south and east and in Beirut’s southern suburbs, some see retribution in the footage of destroyed buildings in Tel Aviv.

Hezbollah remains largely quiet

A US-brokered ceasefire deal brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in November. The group, which lost much of its senior leadership and arsenal in the conflict, has remained largely quiet since then and has given no indication that it intends to join the fray between Israel and Iran.

Israeli forces have continued to occupy several border points in southern Lebanon and to carry out regular airstrikes on what Israel says are Hezbollah facilities since the ceasefire.

“Of course I am against the Israeli occupation, and Iran is an Islamic country standing up to it,” said Hussein al-Walid, 34, a welder in the southern coastal city of Sidon.

Iran's axis

Despite the dramatic scenes of buildings reduced to rubble in Israel, Tehran and other Iranian cities have taken a worse pounding and other regional countries, including Lebanon, could still be pulled into the conflict.

Caroline Rose, a director at the Washington-based New Lines Institute think tank said that while it seems “clear that Iran-backed proxies across the region, particularly Hezbollah, just do not have the capacity” to enter the fray, Israel could decide to expand the scope of its offensive beyond Iran.

One of the goals announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was to eliminate Iran’s “axis of terrorism” - the coalition of Tehran-backed armed groups across the region known as the “Axis of Resistance.”

That goal “is ambiguous and offers Israel the operational space to expand this war to countries it deems are hosting Iran-backed proxies, no matter how weak they may be,” Rose said.

Al-Walid shrugged off the possibility of a new war in Lebanon.

“The war is already present in Lebanon,” he said. “Israel isn’t abiding by the agreement and is striking every day.”

Hassan Shreif, a 26-year-old student from the city of Baalbek in eastern Lebanon, where Hezbollah has a strong base of support, said that after last year’s war in Lebanon and the heavy losses suffered by the group, many of its supporters “were clearly anguished and didn’t feel vindicated.”

“So, anything, even a window breaking in Tel Aviv, is (now) a victory for them,” he said. Every time Iranian missiles pass overhead, he said, people in the area break out in shouts of jubilation.

At the same time, Shreif said, “there’s always a silent group hugging the wall as we say in Arabic, treading carefully and praying we stay out of it.”