Seven are at home – but 57 Swedish children are left in the mardrömsläger in Syria

We had not really come into the camp, al-Hol, in northeastern Syria, a photographer Lotta Härdelin and I. ”Security reasons”, was the explanation we got from the kurdish authorities.

After a few days in Syria, we knew that lägerledningen not had control over what happened inside the barbed wire. The Al-Hol was a nightmare, security, health and humanitarian. A refugee camp on paper – in practice, a detention facility with 73.000 people, many of whom were left in the Islamic state's genocidal ideology. Angry and defeated terrorsympatisörer, packed like sardines in a smelly overcrowded tented camps.

the Medic was not allowed to move in the camp without armed guards – it was too dangerous. Women and children attacked the police officers and lägerbesökare with stones.

In large sections of the camp lived alone, thousands of mothers and children. Here there were a lot of swedes, according to the lists that DN managed to get access to. In total we counted to 90 swedes in the al-Hol and in Camp Roj, another camp. 64 was a child. Almost all of them were under the age of ten, several were born.

was 21 listed as widows. They were young, often in the 25-year-olds. Here were women from Gothenburg and one from Malmö, as well as some from other Swedish cities. The largest group came from the northern Stockholm suburbs. The young women had left Sweden already as teenagers to join the ICE, recruited by a svensksomalisk IS-terrorist who should have been killed in 2017.

the ICE was defeated to end military intervention in Iraq and Syria. They terrorsekten that survived surrendered or were arrested by the kurdish forces. The men were put in prison, while the women and kids ended up in the Al-Hol, or in the Camp Roj.

After nearly a week in Syria, we managed to take us into the al-Hol. The misery, the desperation and the anger struck immediately against us. Everywhere we saw people without arms or legs, dripping swabs, kids that cried and screamed straight out.

Our plan was to meet with Swedish adults, and interview them about why they left Sweden to join to perhaps the world's most aggressive and extreme terrorist group. It we had not. However, we managed to locate us up to seven small children. In a tent in the al-Hols area for the orphaned children sat they, the brothers and sisters.

was eight years old, but all the children in the siblings looked smaller and younger than they were. The last months had many ICE-terrorists and their families starving, and boiled herbs and grass for the children to satisfy their hunger. The brothers and sisters we met were emaciated and moved slowly, like the elderly. They ate couscous and white beans in the tent. Food was. But the care and love, it was bad.

In a corner sat a woman who was hired to see to the kids, but she seemed to barely care. When the hard undernärde stay broken down together on the tältgolvet stalked the woman and lifted the rough handling him up in one arm. When we had to go and asked a boy we would take him with me to Sweden. ”Go,” he said, again and again, at his gothenburg dialect. He tried to climb into our car. Finally I had to carry back the boy to the tent. He cried when I put him down. The woman who would take care of the children made no move to comfort him.

Now they have seven siblings landed in Sweden. They are taken care of by social services and placed in the jourfamiljehem. Then selects the social authorities temporary guardian. It is not likely that all seven children end up in the same foster home. It is not very likely that the grandparents are awarded custody, " says a government official familiar with the matter.

the children rescued from the al-Hol camp the question is what will happen with the 57 Swedish children who are still in Syria – and with their mothers. This issue is being discussed right now in government offices, but any decision is not taken.

When we were in al-Hol in mid-april and died four to five children each day in the camp. Many could have been saved if they received proper treatment and care. But how would it go to a camp full of angry ICE-sympathizers, where the nursing staff can not even move freely?

A bit outside of the camp, we saw a grässlänt with hundreds of small hills of reddish-brown soil. Where were the children who died in the al-Hol down, in unmarked graves. Cut and light blue barnfiltar low folded between the dirt piles.