As Syrian government forces advance into the formerly Kurdish controlled north east of the country, the issue of future arrangements at the camps holding Isis members and their families has become a matter of increasing urgency. This issue has two levels – one more immediate, the other more structural and long term. The first level is concerned with ensuring the continued incarceration of the jihadis; the second relates to the nature of the emergent Syrian regime.

Isis maintained its own court system within al-Hol. This extended up to and included the passing and carrying out of death sentences

There are around 8,000 Isis fighters held in facilities in Syria east of the Euphrates at the present time. These are for the most part men captured when the Isis ‘Caliphate’ collapsed after its last stand in the town of Baghouz in the lower Euphrates river valley in the summer of 2019. Around 30,000 Isis family members – wives and male and female children up to the age of 18, are held in the vast and sprawling al-Hol camp, close to the border with Iraq, and in the smaller Roj camp, which houses among other jihadi spouses and widows, the former British citizen Shamima Begum.

I visited both camps on a number of occasions over the last half decade. The impression was that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the West’s now apparently former partner in the war against Islamic State, were just barely keeping the lid on a boiling cauldron. This was particularly the case at al-Hol.

In talks with the camp’s authorities and with residents as we walked about the market area maintained at the camp, I learned that a new generation of Isis members were........

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