Years after their son left the U.S. to affix ISIS, a Minnesota couple discovered that they had two younger grandsons trapped in a Syrian desert camp. They have been decided to rescue them.
Dion MBD for NPR
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Dion MBD for NPR
In a small residence outdoors Minneapolis, I am watching two brown-haired brothers, ages 7 and 9, on a sofa enjoying chess. They’re talking Arabic sprinkled with English. They stare intently on the board, their little brows furrowed.
After a stretch of silence, the older boy strikes one in every of his items. “Test,” he pronounces with confidence.
“Good transfer,” says their grandfather, sitting close by.
I am impressed by their expertise and focus. “How did you be taught to play?” I ask. The grandfather places my query to them in Arabic. The older boy responds: al-sijn. I anticipate a translation.
“He discovered it within the jail, he mentioned,” the grandfather tells me. His spouse, their grandmother, nods. “Within the jail,” she says.
Sijn — jail — is a phrase these boys use with startling frequency. It’s not a phrase you anticipate to be an everyday half of a kid’s vocabulary, not to mention uttered so matter-of-factly. However months earlier than they got here to Minnesota, these two boys have been dwelling, parent-less, in an enormous desert camp in Syria for relatives of ISIS militants. It’s variously referred to as a “displacement” or “detention” facility, however it’s successfully a jail. And it was their dwelling for 5 years — the one dwelling the youthful one actually remembers. They have been 2 and 4 after they arrived there.
Now, they’re dwelling with their American grandparents in the USA, a politically charged household reunification brokered by the U.S. authorities. The State Division calls it a mannequin for addressing an intractable legacy of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq: what to do with the tens of thousands of people from around the globe being held in these Syrian camps, most of them the wives and offspring of males who belonged to the Islamic State, one of many world’s deadliest terrorist organizations.
An estimated 22 U.S. residents are among the many roughly 35,000 folks within the sprawling, primitive camps, together with about 17 American children, in keeping with the State Division. The 2 Minnesota boys have been there till Might 2024, after they have been flown in a army cargo airplane to John F. Kennedy Worldwide Airport in New York to start out a brand new life within the American Midwest.
They landed within the camps by means of no fault of their very own: Their father is a naturalized American citizen who left the U.S. to affix ISIS a decade in the past, and began a household whereas abroad. Nonetheless, many nations are reluctant or unwilling to absorb the youngsters of ISIS fighters out of fear they could have been radicalized by extremists and will turn into future jihadists. ISIS was identified for its excessive brutality, together with beheadings and mass killings.
However U.S. officers say leaving children within the camps — that are described as a humanitarian catastrophe, with restricted well being care and education and excessive ranges of violence — is the better threat. The earlier they are often eliminated, officers say, the higher likelihood they will have of a standard existence.
Each the Biden and Trump administrations have backed efforts to cut back the inhabitants of the camps. That entails taking again U.S. residents and pushing different nations, typically with American assistance, to repatriate their very own folks. The State Division beneath the present Trump presidency describes repatriations as a “excessive precedence,” one which includes prosecuting some adults and returning youngsters to their dwelling nations.
“They should be saved, I imagine,” mentioned the Minnesota boys’ grandfather, Ahmed, who requested that NPR not use his final title as a result of he’s involved concerning the safety of his household. “They’re innocents and they need to not bear the burden of their mother and father’ errors.”
“We could not discover him”
The last decade-long chain of occasions that introduced the 2 boys to the USA has created each disgrace and pleasure for his or her household.
The person who would turn into their father, Abdelhamid, vanished throughout a household summer season trip to Morocco in 2015. He was an 18-year-old scholar on the time, nonetheless dwelling at dwelling. His mother and father — Ahmed and his spouse, who additionally requested to not be named for safety causes — found him lacking one morning. They scoured the home the place they have been staying, to no avail.
“We went from room to room, from flooring to flooring,” recalled Ahmed. “We could not discover him.”
They contacted hospitals and police precincts, questioning if he had left the home in a single day and been injured or gotten in an accident. Finally, Moroccan authorities checked a flight manifest and located that Abdelhamid had flown to Istanbul, Turkey.
His mother and father have been baffled. Why would he do this? Their confusion shortly turned to shock: Moroccan police informed them their son’s habits match a well-recognized sample, and when younger Muslim males disappear with out saying the place they are going, they’re typically making an attempt to affix a radical group.
The police have been right: Their eldest little one, who had grown up in suburban Minneapolis and gone to a U.S. highschool and neighborhood faculty, had crossed the Turkish border into Syria and, later, Iraq, and turn into a member of ISIS.
“He left us,” Ahmed mentioned. “It is laborious for me to speak concerning the previous. It hurts, to be trustworthy with you. He was a good man, a useful man to us, an obedient man, doing chores, going out along with his mates, a standard man…I imply, I could not clarify it.”
Investigators concluded that Abdelhamid, who was born in Morocco and moved along with his mother and father to the U.S. in 1998, when he was 18 months outdated, had been drawn to a jihadist mindset as an adolescent by ISIS-run Twitter accounts promising a greater life, from camaraderie to free housing to the possibility to fulfill a partner.
In keeping with court docket information, he was “satisfied by an knowledgeable ISIS recruiter” on social media to ask himself, “How will you within the West sit in your bedrooms understanding that Muslims are struggling abroad?” and to “check his religion and to turn into an actual Muslim” by becoming a member of ISIS. On the time, the group was enslaving girls, finishing up mass executions, and staging terrorist assaults around the globe. Nonetheless, the advertising and marketing labored on him, and he selected to enter the ranks of ISIS.
His mother and father, who grew to become naturalized U.S. residents within the mid-2000s, and their two different sons — Abdelhamid’s youthful brothers, who have been born within the U.S. — flew again to Minnesota with out him. Within the months that adopted, Abdelhamid often reached out to his household with reassuring messages.
“He mentioned, ‘I am okay. Don’t be concerned about me,'” Ahmed recalled. Abdelhamid informed them he was finding out to turn into a physician to assist injured folks; his mother and father have been not sure if he was telling the reality. As months handed, Ahmed and his spouse saved their household scenario a secret from virtually everybody, even most of their family.
Finally, Abdelhamid startled them once more with information that he had acquired a spouse and youngsters whereas overseas. In keeping with Abdelhamid, he had married the widow of one other ISIS fighter, and that girl had a son by her earlier husband. She and Abdelhamid then produced a son of their very own, elevating the 2 boys collectively as stepbrothers.
That meant Ahmed and his spouse have been now grandparents to a pair of youngsters that they had by no means met, dwelling a continent away, whose father belonged to an armed extremist group.
“Did you not know that it was a terrorist group?”
Then, for almost a 12 months, Abdelhamid went silent. His mother and father mentioned that they had no thought what had occurred to him — till they noticed a CBS Information report in September 2019, filmed in a jail in northeast Syria housing ISIS militants. Their son was there, behind bars, being interviewed on nationwide tv.
“Did you not know that it was a terrorist group if you joined it?” the interviewer, Holly Williams, requested him.
“To be trustworthy, I used to be sort of a conspiracy theorist somewhat bit,” Abdelhamid replied.
“Nevertheless it’s a terrorist group, Abdel. It is a terrorist group that is carried out assaults,” Williams mentioned.
“Here is the factor,” he responded. “Folks like me that see this, initially, do not actually imagine the information.”
On display, Abdelhamid had a stump for one arm and was limping from two damaged legs, wounds he mentioned he sustained in Iraq. The U.S. Division of Justice says he was injured in 2016 “whereas conducting army actions on behalf of ISIS.” His mother and father barely acknowledged him. They have been shocked and relieved. Surprised by his situation. Relieved to know the place he was.
With Abdelhamid’s whereabouts now public, the U.S. authorities organized to convey him again to the States for felony prosecution. At that time, he had been in a Syrian jail for 18 months. In September 2020, at age 23, he was transferred into FBI custody, returned to Minnesota, and charged with offering materials assist to a delegated overseas terrorist group.
However the place have been his two boys?
In keeping with Abdelhamid, his sons had been taken away from him when he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019, quickly after their mom was killed in Iraq. They have been 2 and 4 years outdated on the time. Abdelhamid did not realize it then, however it might be greater than 5 years earlier than he noticed them once more. Within the meantime, their grandparents — who knew the boys solely by means of images texted by their son — have been decided to seek out them.
Ahmed and his spouse had already misplaced one little one. They did not need to lose one other two.
“I’m writing to see in case you may also help me”
Peter Galbraith is a former U.S. ambassador to Croatia who traveled to Syria to assist discover Ahmed’s grandsons.
Lucy Lu for NPR
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Lucy Lu for NPR
Their quest to find the boys led them to a former diplomat named Peter Galbraith, who had been a U.S. ambassador to Croatia, held quite a lot of roles on the United Nations, and served as a state senator in Vermont.
Galbraith has connections to Kurdish officers who assist oversee two camps in northeast Syria, referred to as al-Hol and Roj, that maintain largely the youngsters, widows, wives and different feminine family of useless, captured and surrendered ISIS fighters. The camps are primarily populated by Iraqis and Syrians, but additionally embrace folks from greater than 60 nations, together with the USA.
In keeping with the State Division, an estimated 25,000 youngsters reside within the camps, that are administered by the Democratic Autonomous Administration for North and East Syria, the civilian counterpart of the Syrian Democratic Forces. A few of the youngsters have been born there. Some have been introduced there by their mother and father. Some are orphans. Utilizing his Kurdish connections, Galbraith mentioned, he has helped get greater than two dozen youngsters of varied nationalities out of the camps.
A girl walks within the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria’s Hasakeh province on Jan. 30. Tens of 1000’s of largely girls and youngsters linked to the Islamic State group have been dwelling right here for years.
Bernat Armangue/AP
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Bernat Armangue/AP
After studying of Galbraith’s work, Ahmed wrote to him in August 2021. “Hi there, Mr. Galbraith,” his e mail started. “I lately learn [about] your involvement in serving to…to find lacking youngsters in Northern Syria. I’m writing to see in case you may also help me find my two lacking grandchildren.”
Galbraith agreed to supply help, and questioned if the boys is likely to be within the Syrian camps, which he describes as squalid locations unfit for long-term habitation: “Infinite traces of tents, latrines which can be disgusting…tents surrounded by wire in order that no person can go away,” he mentioned in an NPR interview.
Galbraith despatched images of the boys to camp officers, together with their names, dates of delivery, and their mother and father’ names. Over the course of a 12 months, he made three journeys to Syria to seek for them. On his third go to, in November 2022, camp officers introduced two younger boys to fulfill him in a small workplace. Primarily based on their age and look, they gave the impression to be the youngsters he was looking for. Galbraith mentioned the older boy appeared cautious, even distrustful.
“You possibly can utterly perceive why they have been fearful, why they thought no good would come from it,” Galbraith mentioned. “Principally, any time they encountered any individual they did not know, one thing dangerous had occurred. Now this individual reveals up, a foreigner, an American.”
However that encounter started the method of eradicating them from the camps. After a DNA check proved their identities, the boys have been transferred to an orphanage-like facility inside the camps, the place they have been in a position to have weekly video calls with their grandparents in Minnesota.
Then a community of U.S. authorities businesses — the State and Protection departments, Citizenship and Immigration Companies, Customs and Border Safety, and the Workplace of Refugee Resettlement, amongst others — labored collectively on the authorized and logistical steps required to get the boys out of the camps and to the USA.
In Might 2024, after a 12 months and a half of difficult negotiations, the boys arrived in New York following a prolonged journey. They have been flown from Syria to Kuwait to Germany — the place they stopped to drop off the households of some European ISIS fighters — to their last vacation spot within the U.S. Arrival photos at JFK airport present the boys trying very critical, in all probability somewhat dazed, as relations they’d by no means met in individual greeted them with hugs and balloons. One of many boys holds a small American flag.
“They definitely have been scared. I feel they have been additionally simply confused,” mentioned lawyer Ian Moss, a former State Division official now in personal follow who helped coordinate the boys’ exit from the camps. “They’d been on 20-some hours of flights and are actually arriving at 3 o’clock within the morning at JFK to fulfill with grandparents that they’d solely seen by way of video. It needed to be disorienting, to say the least.”
Ian Moss is a former official on the U.S. Division of State who helped coordinate the grandsons’ journey to the USA.
Caroline Gutman for NPR
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Caroline Gutman for NPR
Nonetheless, added Moss, who was a part of the small crowd gathered in New York to welcome them, “To be there for that first second when the boys have been walked again to fulfill their grandparents…You would simply really feel that they have been greeted with a lot love.”
“Each day is a brand new day to them”
Late final September in Minnesota, I stood in entrance of a suburban residence constructing with Ahmed and his spouse as they waited for his or her grandsons to return from their native public elementary college. They have been simply ending their first week of courses. An enormous orange bus pulled into the parking zone, and pressed in opposition to one of many home windows was a brown-haired little boy with a large smile, waving fortunately. He had noticed his grandparents, who lit up on the sight of him.
“Hey! Hey! The way you doing?” Ahmed referred to as out because the boy, adopted by his older brother, ran to fulfill them. “How was college?” Ahmed’s spouse requested, wrapping her arms round them.
By then, the boys had been within the U.S. for about 5 months, and their grandparents have been displaying and instructing them every part they might — from swimming to drawing to rising tomatoes to enjoying tennis — to make up for what they hadn’t discovered within the camps, Ahmed mentioned.
“They’ve by no means been at school,” he defined. Once they have been being held in Syria, “there was only a small classroom you’ll be able to attend for perhaps one hour,” he mentioned, however now “on daily basis is a brand new day to them. Going to highschool and studying issues they by no means noticed or touched — quite a lot of issues: fruits, toys, know-how.”
The boys arrived within the U.S. talking primarily Arabic, however that is shortly altering. I peppered them with questions in English, they usually typically started answering earlier than their grandfather had completed translating what I would mentioned into Arabic.
They informed me their favourite reveals are Shaun the Sheep, Tom and Jerry, and Mr. Bean. Their favourite toy is Spiderman. Their favourite meals are cereal, milk, oranges and bananas — however not apples. Their favourite English phrases are, “How are you?” they usually prefer to follow asking the query, all the time responding with a cheerful “good!”
After I first arrived on the household’s residence, I used to be stunned to discover a toddler there. Ahmed, who’s 56, and his spouse, who’s 48, informed me that they had a shock being pregnant a couple of years in the past, so they’re now mother and father to a 3-year-old. That makes the 2 older boys, who are actually 8 and 10, the 3-year-old’s nephews. They name him their “child uncle,” and their grandparents informed me that the boys assume it is humorous they’ve an uncle who wears diapers.
It is a crowded home full of the sound of laughing youngsters who like consuming pizza, enjoying soccer and watching cartoons on YouTube. However the boys additionally casually inform tales concerning the deprivations of their earlier life, a reminder of how uncommon their childhoods have been by American requirements.
They’ve informed their grandparents, as an example, that after they lived within the Syrian camps, they’d gather erasers and crayons of their pockets, and later chew them like chewing gum. “I mentioned, ‘Why?'” Ahmed recalled, “they usually mentioned, ‘As a result of there was not sufficient meals.'” They’ve additionally described playtimes that concerned digging within the floor, mixing filth with water, and utilizing the combination to attempt to construct issues, like makeshift toys, Ahmed mentioned.
Ahmed and his spouse know the boys would possibly want counseling some day to course of every part they’ve gone by means of, however “no matter dangerous issues occurred previously, we simply make them comfortable, and we’re comfortable,” Ahmed informed me. His spouse nodded, saying that she needs the boys to “overlook every part.”
I requested if she thinks they’re younger sufficient for that to be doable. She informed me she believes they’ve already began to overlook.
“They know the distinction” between their life within the camps and their life within the U.S., Ahmed mentioned. “And so they love us greater than anyone else as a result of they know that we deal with them,” he added. “We need to erase something dangerous of their recollections. Might God assist us to attain that.”
“Life is gorgeous now”
In January 2021, Abdelhamid — after a number of months in custody again in the USA — admitted to being a “soldier of ISIS” and pleaded responsible to offering materials assist to a delegated overseas terrorist group. Final 12 months he obtained a ten-year U.S. federal jail sentence. Throughout his June 2024 sentencing listening to in Minneapolis, he mentioned he regretted having joined a “dying cult” and informed his mother and father that his two sons are “the one good factor I’ve given you in a decade.”
His boys have been within the courtroom throughout his sentencing, marking the primary time Abdelhamid and his sons had seen one another since he surrendered to Syrian Democratic Forces in March 2019 and was separated from his youngsters. He now telephones them frequently from behind bars.
In an interview with NPR, Abdelhamid referred to as himself “a traitor to my nation” and mentioned he’s cooperating with U.S. authorities in different ISIS prosecutions – a declare verified by court docket information – and hopes to do counterterrorism and deradicalization work after he’s launched.
Abdelhamid’s mother and father say as soon as his jail sentence ends, they need him to maneuver in with them and their grandchildren, their complete household beneath one roof.
“I all the time inform myself I overlook no matter he is performed to us, so far as put us on this scenario and this turmoil,” Ahmed mentioned. “I will all the time forgive him. He is my son.”
Having their grandchildren with them, Ahmed and his spouse informed me, has been extra rejuvenating than tiring, regardless of the challenges of elevating young children throughout center age whereas each holding down different jobs.
“We really feel youthful. We really feel extra energized than earlier than,” Ahmed mentioned. “We acquired our child again and we acquired our grandkids again. I imply, life is gorgeous now.”
They are saying they’re grateful for the USA authorities’s efforts to reunite their household. “I do know America work[ed] laborious to convey my grandkids” to the U.S., his spouse added. “Thanks a lot. I respect America for that.”
And their household might develop even bigger: Abdelhamid says he additionally had a second spouse, a daughter, and a stepdaughter whereas abroad. As was the case along with his first spouse, his second spouse was the widow of an ISIS fighter, she had a toddler from her earlier relationship, after which she and Abdelhamid bore a toddler collectively. Galbraith can be looking for these two women, however he informed NPR it’s unclear the place they’re or whether or not they’re alive.
“A critical humanitarian and a possible future safety drawback”
In fall 2024, officers from throughout the Center East, Europe and Asia convened at the USA Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C., to confront a worldwide problem: decreasing the inhabitants of Syria’s al-Hol and Roj camps and addressing the dangers they pose, significantly to younger folks.
Girls and youngsters stroll at Camp Roj, the place family of individuals suspected of belonging to the Islamic State group are held, in Syria’s northeastern Hasakah province in October 2023.
Delil Souleiman/AFP by way of Getty Photos
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Delil Souleiman/AFP by way of Getty Photos
“Greater than 25,000 of the displaced individuals are youngsters rising up in dire circumstances with out entry to schooling, alternative or social assist,” Richard Verma, a deputy secretary on the State Division till January 2025, informed the gathered crowd.
Of the roughly 35,500 folks being held within the camps — down from a peak of greater than 60,000 after ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate collapsed in 2019 — greater than 90 p.c are girls and youngsters, in keeping with the U.S. State Division. Roughly two-thirds are beneath age 18 and roughly half are under age 12.
As well as, roughly 8,600 former ISIS fighters are in jail services throughout northeast Syria. Since 2021, about 19,000 folks have been returned to their dwelling nations from the camps and prisons. The U.S. says it has repatriated 51 of its residents from Syria and Iraq since 2016, together with 30 youngsters. These U.S. repatriations additionally embrace a minimum of a dozen American adults who have been prosecuted upon return, some now in jail.
Getting children out is very vital, Verma mentioned.
“So long as these youngsters stay within the camps,” he warned, “the worldwide neighborhood faces a critical humanitarian and a possible future safety drawback.”
The camps are closely populated by ISIS wives and widows who stay loyal to the Islamic State. Due to that, there’s concern they might radicalize the youngsters round them. “The older the youngsters get, the extra possible that they will purchase into the ideology there,” mentioned Galbraith. “That is why it’s so pressing to get the youngsters out at a younger age.”
Peter Galbraith can be looking for Abdelhamid’s daughter and stepdaugh
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