The Egyptian “Rania R.” did not know, when she left with her husband and their only daughter for Syria, that she would become forgotten by her family in Alexandria Governorate, or that she would later give birth to three more children in al-Hol camp in northern Syria. Today, years later, her four children have grown up inside the camp where she was detained in 2019. Three of them have no official identification documents, despite being born to Egyptian parents. Like hundreds of others in the camp, Rania is still waiting for any official Egyptian decision that would allow her and her children to return to Egypt.
Searching through phone directories, customer records of one of Egypt’s largest banks, and social media platforms led us to Rania’s brother, who lives in Alexandria Governorate and works as a feed trader. Through us, he learned that his sister, now 41 years old, has four children and became a widow after her husband, who had joined ISIS, was killed.
At first, Rania’s brother was shocked to learn that she was still alive. Years without news had left her completely forgotten. When we asked him whether he would demand her return, especially after her husband’s death and her continued detention in the camp with her children, the oldest now 14 and the youngest 9, he appeared cornered and confused. His only response was, “I don’t know, I don’t know,” before hanging up.
Rania is one of 431 Egyptian women and children held inside the al-Hol and Roj camps in northern Syria. Their husbands, who were involved in joining ISIS, were either killed, leaving their wives widowed and their children orphaned, or transferred to prisons in Iraq. The women are now stranded with their children, deprived of their freedom. Those who manage to secure thousands of dollars may risk attempting irregular migration with their children. For the rest, life has come to a standstill. As for their children, they are verbally recognized as Egyptian, but in reality have nothing to prove it in official records, leaving them closer to being stateless.
The position taken by Rania’s brother was no different from that of “Noha,” the sister of “Doha,” who initially feared disclosing that Doha was her sister. This was particularly the case given that Noha works as a journalist for a private religious-content website in Egypt. Admitting that you are the sister of one of ISIS fighters’ wives is no simple matter. Noha, who has become an “aunt” to children whose names she does not even know, said she would welcome any decision by the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to allow her sister and her children to return to Egypt.
Doha lives in al-Hol camp alongside 79 Egyptian widows, 33 Egyptian women whose husbands are imprisoned, and 318 unmarried individuals, including Egyptian adolescent girls and children. This constitutes the immediate circle of Egyptian women in the camp. The broader circle, however, is far larger. Al-Hol camp has hosted more than 37,000 displaced women and children of 60 different nationalities from families affiliated with ISIS. While Iraq and several European capitals have responded by repatriating their citizens, the fate of Egyptian women and their children remains shrouded in uncertainty, amid a lack of international will to resolve this issue.
A document containing the names of Egyptian women and their children, obtained by Daraj, shows the ages of the women and children at the time they were transferred to the camp. Notably, the ages of some Egyptian women reveal that they were minors when they left Egypt with their Egyptian husbands, only to be taken to a fate that was hell itself: fighting, bloodshed, and armed factions. In this reality, they gave birth to children who would ultimately be labeled and stigmatized as “ISIS children,” even six years after the collapse of the so-called “Islamic State caliphate” in March 2019.
“Amal” is a single dot in the orange data column indicating al-Hol camp. She was transferred to the camp in 2018, when she was just 19 years old. Before that, she had spent at least two years with her husband while he was fighting alongside ISIS, meaning she was only 17 at the time. Her husband was killed before she had any children. She now lives alone in the camp, without family. Today, at 26, her family in Egypt may not even know what became of her, or whether she is still alive.
“Meyar” was transferred to al-Hol camp in 2018, when she was 20 years old, and has since been described as a “widow.” As the years pass, she now has no possibility of marriage in a camp populated only by women and children, nor of having children, given her enforced immobility and social isolation. Like Fatima and dozens of others, she carries the label of “widow,” even though she was a minor at the time of her marriage in Egypt—a paradox that exposes both their young age and the severity of their fate.
Most striking among the ages of Egyptian women in al-Hol and Roj camps are those of three women: “Fayqa” (63, widow), “Samira” (60, widow), and “Buthaina” (72, widow). All three were registered in the camps while in their sixties, or on the cusp of it. Their presence in this part of the world, at such an age, raises questions that can only be explained by Egypt’s political context and the extreme polarization that began in 2012, which swept up both the young and the elderly alike. The key phrase here is the “Hazemoon” movement.
The “Hazemoon” Phenomenon: A Radical Bridge from Tahrir to al-Sham
In mid-2012, while Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood was deeply absorbed in parliamentary politics and political calculations, a movement known as “Hazemoon” emerged. It formed the popular base of Sheikh Hazem Salah Abu Ismail and took shape alongside his announcement of his intention to run for president in Egypt.
That period (April–May 2012) witnessed major events, most notably the “Abbasiya clashes.” During this time, young supporters began training for street confrontations in Egypt under the slogan “Dignity and Sovereignty.” It was also when a group known as the “sons of al-Zawahiri” appeared. Rejecting the disqualification of Hazem Salah Abu Ismail from the presidential race, they took up arms and entered a phase of organized recruitment, exploiting the fervor of revolutionary youth and steering part of it toward jihad in Syria.
Throughout 2012 and early 2013, Abu Ismail’s campaign headquarters and the sit-ins organized by his supporters, such as the Abbasiya sit-in, became spaces for networking and coordination. From these spaces emerged groups that later concluded that political action in Egypt was “blocked,” and that “jihad for the sake of God” in Syria, by their own claim, was the “purest path.”
Social media platforms affiliated with Hazemoon played a crucial role in disseminating videos of “massacres in Syria,” intertwined with the sheikh’s impassioned sermons. Recruitment was carried out by appealing to young men’s sense of chivalry and heroism.
This background explains the role played by older figures within the Hazemoon current. Some of them were former leaders in Egypt’s Islamic Jihad organization and acted as “facilitators” and “connectors” to jihadist groups inside Syria. They were able to arrange travel routes through Turkey and direct Egyptian recruits, upon arrival, toward specific factions, particularly those initially described as “revolutionary Salafi” groups, before later merging into Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS.
A dramatic turning point in the life of Hazemoon came with the arrest of its symbol, Abu Ismail, followed by the events of July 3, 2013, and the dispersal of the Rabaa and Nahda sit-ins. At that moment, a sense of “total closure” over political action inside Egypt took hold. Hundreds of Hazemoon youth who had once filled the streets found themselves facing the threat of arrest and a profound sense of defeat. For them, Syria was no longer merely a “land of jihad,” but had become the “last refuge.”
The largest wave of Egyptian displacement began after the dispersal of the Rabaa sit-in, as young men left Egypt through informal routes via Sudan and Libya, eventually reaching Syria. They fled carrying what amounted to a “personal vendetta” against state authorities, which made them the easiest prey for groups such as ISIS.
Egyptians affiliated with the Hazemoon movement did not dissolve into Syrian society. Instead, they initially formed a solid core within factions such as Ahrar al-Sham and Jund al-Aqsa. They were known simply as “the Egyptians” and were regarded as part of the factional elite, both religiously and militarily.
The irony is that many of these young men, who had learned the “basics of revolution” in Tahrir Square, later became “religious judges,” issuing harsh rulings in areas controlled by armed factions, attempting to replicate the model of an “Islamic Republic.”
This context explains the large number of Egyptian families in the al-Hol and Roj camps. Many women who left Egypt alongside their husbands—both young and older members of Hazemoon—viewed jihad as a “religious duty.” These women did not go as “fighters,” but as “migrants,” tasked with “building the new society.”
Today, the data on “mothers’ names” that we are analyzing reflects their stories clearly: hundreds of “widows,” and children burdened with the consequences of the most dangerous decision their fathers made—before the children were even born—namely, listening to Hazemoon’s polarizing recruitment discourse.
Fear of a Returning Ideology
Fear and caution dominate the statements of all sources interviewed for this investigation, starting with families, then lawyers, and finally members of parliament.
In the course of this investigation, I contacted two members of the Egyptian parliament. Despite their close attention to the data contained in the leaked document, both agreed to refrain from making any official statement due to the sensitivity of the file, promising instead to comment after publication. One remark, however, was particularly striking: “These are not Egyptian children; these are ISIS children.” The other parliamentarian said he would not offer an opinion simply because they are women or children, adding that even European countries themselves are unwilling to receive their nationals from the camps, so why should Egypt do so?
This brings us to a review of Egypt’s nationality law and the state’s experience with reintegrating women and children from the al-Hol and Roj camps back into their country.
Egyptian nationality law stipulates that citizenship is granted to anyone born to an Egyptian father and mother, or to one Egyptian parent, upon request. It also grants citizenship to minor children of a foreign woman who acquires Egyptian nationality. This means that “Ruqayya, Omar, Balqees, Sara, Fatima, Dawoud, Youssef, Abdel Rahman, Abdullah, Hudhayfa, Mohamed, Youssef, Atta, Maymouna, Munzi”—children born in al-Hol camp—as well as “Saad, Mohamed, Abdel Rahman, Khadija, Sara, Hamza, Omar”—children born in Roj camp—are Egyptian citizens.
However, Article 15 of the Egyptian nationality law allows for the withdrawal of citizenship from a citizen “if a judicial ruling is issued against him in a crime harmful to state security, internally or externally.” This raises critical questions: if verdicts are issued against fathers who were formerly affiliated with ISIS, will their citizenship be revoked, thereby preventing it from being granted to their children? And what about fathers who were killed and never subjected to judicial rulings—what will be the fate of their children?
Regarding the repatriation of nationals from al-Hol and Roj camps in northeastern Syria, states’ responses have varied between swift action and prolonged hesitation. However, recent years have witnessed a noticeable shift.
Central Asian countries, led by Kazakhstan, carried out large-scale repatriation operations involving hundreds of citizens, followed by Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Russia, which brought back hundreds of women and children in successive waves. In Europe, countries such as France, Belgium, and the Netherlands abandoned their former “case-by-case” policy and moved toward broader repatriation operations, driven by legal pressure from the European Court of Human Rights. Germany also repatriated large groups, emphasizing the importance of prosecuting adults while protecting children.
In Sweden, the repatriation process unfolded amid intense political debate. The country brought back several groups of women and children, with some returnees facing war crimes charges immediately upon arrival. The Swedish approach relies heavily on placing children under social services supervision to ensure their separation from extremist ideologies to which they were exposed in the camps.
In countries such as Kazakhstan, notable success stories have emerged following the establishment of specialized rehabilitation centers offering intensive psychological and religious support, enabling many women to enter the labor market. By contrast, European countries face greater challenges related to “social stigma,” which some experts at the Brookings Institution identify as a major obstacle to healthy psychological reintegration. Field reports, however, indicate that children generally demonstrate a high capacity for adaptation to new educational and social systems once removed from the camp environment.
In a study titled “Children and Wives of Foreign ISIS Fighters: What Are the Obligations of States of Nationality?”, legal scholar Francesca De Vittor examines a central question concerning the legal obligations of states toward their nationals held in these camps. She addresses the arguments used by states to evade responsibility, particularly claims of lacking “jurisdiction” beyond their territorial borders. De Vittor argues that the concept of jurisdiction has undergone a significant shift, with a state’s ability to issue travel documents and coordinate crossings now considered a form of effective legal control that obliges it to intervene to protect the fundamental rights of its citizens, even when they are outside its geographic borders.
De Vittor further notes that children detained in these camps are entitled to special protection under international law and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. They are classified as victims of circumstances and armed conflict and must not be held accountable or punished for the actions of their parents. Repatriation of women and children from al-Hol and Roj is no longer merely a political option subject to government discretion or public pressure; it is a legal obligation rooted in human rights principles that prohibit leaving citizens exposed to death or torture. Failure to act only prolongs the crisis and creates fertile ground for the reproduction of extremism. Comprehensive, systematic repatriation is therefore the only viable path to ensuring international security and upholding the rule of law.
According to a study conducted by Tanya Mehra for the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague, conditions in al-Hol and Roj camps are dire and risk further deterioration amid significant reductions in U.S. aid to northeastern Syria. No criminal charges have been brought against any of the detained women or children, nor has any of them been put on trial. Although around forty states have repatriated some or many of their detained nationals, some governments remain hesitant to do so due to perceived security risks.
The study warns that “the continued presence of women and children in camps in northeastern Syria is not merely a humanitarian crisis, but a strategic failure in counterterrorism, one that will lead to the emergence of a new generation of extremists if these camps are not immediately emptied.”
