The Islamic State terrorist organization drew men and women from all over the world, many bringing their children along, and many more giving birth to children and building families. Now that the caliphate has collapsed, and many of the male fighters were killed, what happens to the remaining children and mothers?
An estimated 49,000 children remain in dreadful conditions in the al-Hol refugee camp in Syria because their home communities or countries refuse to take them back. Additionally, about 1,300 children from European countries remain in Syria and Iraq. These countries are afraid that the children cannot be rehabilitated and pose too great of a risk to public safety.
The recent stabbing in London by a convicted Islamist terrorist released after serving six years in prison underlines those fears.
A relatively small number of children and mothers have been repatriated to their countries. The United States has accepted only about a dozen returnees. Kazakhstan, a Central Asian country and former Soviet republic, is an example to other countries, having repatriated hundreds of children and women.
Kazakh officials told me they have returned more than 400 children and 100 mothers, along with 30 adult male fighters. The government developed a national rehabilitation and reintegration program with local nongovernmental organizations to support this effort.
A cautious, but growing, success story
In June, I was the first American psychiatrist and academic to visit the rehabilitation center in Aktau, Kazakhstan. In November, I visited other regional centers and met with the directors and staff, some mothers and children, and ministry officials. As a psychiatrist with more than 25 years of experience working with refugees, I was invited by the U.S. State Department to assess and advise.
No country is doing what Kazakhstan is trying to do, and I came away duly impressed, but I could also see that the centers were grappling with serious challenges.
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I heard the locals express many concerns about the older child returnees, ages 10 to 13. They are old enough to have received training in how to use guns and wear suicide vests and may have been involved in combat, torture or killings. They received ideological instruction and indoctrination and were asked to pledge allegiance to ISIS, yet they may also have been told that, if captured, they should reveal nothing of their beliefs and plans.
Kazakhstan fully recognizes these risks but still regards these children and mothers as victims who deserve a chance to return home rebuild their lives.
Kazakh practitioners and policymakers wanted to know about what could be learned from prior experiences, so I told them about the lessons from earlier successful work, such as from disengaging terrorists, criminal gang members and especially child soldiers. What made a difference was helping them find practical success in school, providing counseling to help them disengage from violence even if they still held some extremist beliefs, treating their mental health conditions, and strengthening decision-making skills.
Women and children queue for food in a refugee camp for people displaced by fighting against the Islamic State in Debaga near Mosul, Iraq, in October 2016. (Photo: Carl Court, Getty Images)
I heard how the tween returnees were doing, and what kind of help they were receiving. They had no or highly inadequate schooling in Syria, and many didn’t speak Russian or Kazakh. They were sent to summer school to catch up, or placed in vocational or night school. To protect against bullying, the program prepared their extended families, schools and communities to accept and not discriminate against them.
Rebuilding lives after ISIS
I found that Kazakh service providers are not familiar with what in America we call “trauma-informed care,” which promotes a culture of safety, but they recognize those tweens who, because of adversity, grew up too fast and became more of an adult in the family than even their mothers. Children in this age group could benefit from having their trauma treated, as the service providers already do for younger children and women.
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Unlike their younger brothers and sisters, the tween returnees are old enough to remember their homes, family and country from before joining ISIS. I saw some of the first tween returnees draw pictures of their grandparents’ homes, to which they would soon return. They carried positive memories that can be the building blocks for renewed relationships, a new identity and a new life.
The tween returnees I met very much want to fit in with their peers. This could help propel them to leave behind what they learned in the Islamic State. One child told his mother that he now understands that nothing good comes from religion, so why make them read the Quran daily? The mother conceded.
I heard of tween returnees putting their brains to work by thinking critically about ISIS, how the reality of the caliphate didn’t live up to the dream. They are able to reflect upon their parents’ decisions that brought their family from a “normal” existence to a war zone. It certainly helps when children get support from a counselor or theologian, who can also help their mothers or other family members to work with this kind of questioning.
Ultimately, these returnees present causes for concern but also opportunities for healing and change. All the practitioners prioritized helping these children now, before they become teens and young adults.
The U.S. government has called for countries to take back the children and wives of the ISIS fighters. A big challenge for these countries is to build and carry out strategies for rehabilitation and reintegration that incorporate both government and civil society, and which includes both managing extremist ideologies and ameliorating the social, psychosocial and mental health vulnerabilities that can drive people to embrace those ideologies.
Because the government of Kazakhstan made this hopeful choice, and their front-line practitioners are working daily with these children and mothers, they are learning lessons about how to rebuild lives after the Islamic State, not just for their country, but also for the rest of us, who sooner or later will likely face similar challenges.
Stevan Weine, professor of psychiatry, is director of Global Medicine and director of the Center for Global Health at the University of Illinois, Chicago.
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