Thread by @JamesAALongman

One year after the 'defeat' of ISIS, what of the men & women who joined?

In Syria, I spent time with British woman Shamima Begum & US/Canadian Kimberly Polman. In a tent next-door Hoda Mothana & her son Adam, from the US

Part of an @ABCNewsLive special report to air soon

1/23

You might argue that those who joined ISIS sealed their own fate, and should be left in Syria.

But there are thousands of ISIS fighters, women and children, sitting in camps and prisons in NE Syria. Western countries are doing very little to sort the problem.

2/23

The security implications are huge. In the camps, escapes are thought to take place almost daily. Huge numbers of children are being kept in appalling conditions, and any radicalisation that may have been a problem when ISIS finally fell a year ago, is only deeper now

3/23

Local authorities have now said they may begin putting western men on trial - to join the thousands of Syrians that have already passed through their courts. But they don't have the capacities to do this properly, nor to hold the men for any proper length of time

4/23

Judge Khalid Ali says he's long been asking for help setting up an international tribunal & building prisons. But there's uncertainty about the future - and whether Assad returns. He wrote a letter to the US Dept of Justice 9 months ago & is still waiting

5/23

Shamima Begum & Kimberly Polman share a tent at a camp for foreign women in NE Syria. Begum is 20, & left the UK for ISIS 5yrs ago. Britain has said she'll never be allowed back. Polman is in her 40s, also joined in 2015. She is waiting on a decision from the US or Canada

6/23

They have made the best of what they're given by the authorities, but have also somehow managed to furnish their tent with extras. It is heated, has electricity, satellite TV & cooking appliances. They're lucky - Roj camp is better than Hawl - the main camp for over 65,000

7/23

It feels like a minimum security prison in the west - they have fairy lights up for Valentines day when I meet them, and talk about baking a cake with their group of friends that night. Other women in the camp are allowed to work, and the pair tell me money is shared.

8/23

From the UN blankets they're given, they've made a small sofa. And Kimberly has knitted cushions with the flags of the countries that seem not to want them anymore, for each of her friends. Signs and pictures of loved ones are out on display.

9/23

Polman: "We're trying to stay sane and try to group together to try to protect each other here."

She says the majority of the women in the camp of about 2000 are dangerous radicals, and their group - Mothana, Begum and a group of Dutch and German women - stick together

10/23

Begum is upset at the decision to revoke her citizenship

"When my citizenship got rejected, I felt like my whole world fell apart right in front of me. You know, especially the way I was told. I wasn't even told by a government official. I had to be told by journalists"

11/23

Begum: "I kind of saw it coming because I did do my research just before I came out. I thought I would be a bit different because I had not done anything wrong before I came to ISIS."

12/23

I suggest to the women that there is little sympathy for them at home. That these tents are nicer than any refugee tent I've ever seen, and that perhaps being left to rot in these camps is the punishment they deserve.

13/23

Polman: "I hope that people will look at this in a balanced way. And do what I know to be the right thing - to take the children back, take the women back, take the men back, judge them normally and deal with the problems instead of shoving them under the rug..."

14/23

She says ISIS is a growing problem in these camps. "We can't pretend that they will just be a Syrian issue. It won't be. I can personally guarantee that it will never be because I know the mentality of these people. They will take it as far as they could ever go."

15/23

When Baghdadi died, Begum says, some women celebrated because for them, he wasn't radical enough. Polman: "I've seen a child chop the head off a doll." The issue of children being radicalised is a real one in the camps.

16/23

I tell Begum she seemed sulky, almost unrepentant in her previous media appearances. She had become a poster child for ISIS and her seeming refusal to disavow its teachings was concerning

17/23

Begum: "I had just come into the camp. I had just given birth. I was hearing all these stories about women threatening other women, you know, folk uncovering their faces or speaking to men or doing interviews or anything like that. I just was afraid for my life."

18/23

I first met Hoda Mothana a year ago. Her son Adam is 2 now. She too says she is repentant. The US has argued that because her father was a Yemeni diplomat when she was born, she was never American in the first place. But she was born in the US and had a US passport.

19/23

She has had appeals rejected twice. A third process is ongoing. She says she would send Adam back if it came to it, for his own sake. She says she will apologise to him when he's older. "But the way I look at it, he wouldn't be here if I hadn't come." A difficult paradox

20/23

With all the women, you sense a feeling of victimhood. I often suggest that the ones ISIS killed or maimed, the families bereaved and the towns lost paid the real price. There is a sense, even now, of their inability to fully comprehend the magnitude of ISIS crime or evil

21/23

Because they are largely cut off, they can't read about its many crimes. This means their own small part as they lived it, in their own minds, seems forgivable. Perhaps because of the trauma they say they've experienced, it is impossible for them to truly digest the facts

22/23

The FBI has visited both US women, but they remain unable to go anywhere for now. All three women say they would be wiling to face jail time back home. Begum and Mothana have had appeals against the revoking of their citizenship rejected. Polman is still in limbo.

23/23 ENDS