A life in limbo for the wives and children of ISIS fighters

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2022/03/15/ [login to see] /a-life-in-limbo-for-the-wives-and-children-of-isis-fighters
The camp for displaced persons sits in a dusty limbo in northern Iraq, in between security checkpoints that separate Iraq's Kurdistan region from the rest of the country.

Most of the residents of the Hassan Sham camp are the wives and children of ISIS fighters. And they sit in limbo, too.

"If this camp closes, where would we go?" Noora Majeed, a mother of 4 originally from the city of Mosul, asks. Her voice is just a few decibels short of a yell. "Nobody wants us," she says.

Majeed and the other residents say they are outcasts. They say they're no longer welcome in their hometowns. Police, militias and former neighbors harass them, they say.

"Nobody welcomes us," Majeed says. "Nobody takes us in. They don't like us. Even my family. None of them."

Standing outside her canvas tent surrounded by a group of children, including four of her own, Majeed says she can't return to her old neighborhood in Mosul.

"We are afraid to go back there," she says. "They say you are the wives of ISIS. They harass us."