Twenty-one-year-old Noah Sule is now a grown man. He is tall, slim and speaks English with an American accent. He says that he spent some time in New York during his childhood. He is now imprisoned in Syria.

When Sul was 12, his father brought him and his mother here from Trinidad and Tobago to join the Islamic State (IS) group. At the height of their power, the militant group controlled an area in Syria and Iraq the size of the UK.

IS's land grab and the reign of terror it imposed on the world has now faded into a strange chapter in history. But thousands of their former members from dozens of countries remain imprisoned in northeastern Syria.

30,000 of their children are imprisoned with them, many of whom have never enjoyed a day of freedom.

Sule, who spent his life in captivity, says, sometimes I feel like there is no hope. We live without a reason. My life has no meaning.

Sule was arrested at the age of 16. When he was apparently caught with an AK-47 rifle with experienced foreign militants. He has been imprisoned since then.

At first, Kurdish regional authorities put him in adult prison. But a few days later he was transferred to Al-Huri Rehabilitation Center, which houses the sons of IS families who have not been charged with any crime.

Al-Huri is surrounded by high concrete walls, topped with barbed-wire fences and armed guards. There is also a school within it where science, music, English and Arabic are taught.

Rehabilitation centers are better than prisons for adults in the region. In prisons, people are crammed into small, dirty rooms, with no fresh air, clean bathrooms, adequate food or medicine. But this center is also a prison.

A camp manager said on condition of anonymity that if we put them in adult prisons, they will become militants. He declined to be named for fear of those who killed a manager of al-Huri camp two years ago.

But al-Huri often overcrowded its capacity, and many boys were sent to adult prisons as soon as they turned 18. Questions of risk or injustice are not then considered. But foreigners are jailed indefinitely.

The current camp manager and others who have held the position admit that it is unfair to incarcerate children who have never been charged with a crime.

But they think that the countries where these boys come from should take the boys. Camp managers don't know what to do with them.

Boys say they are deeply depressed and lonely. They never wanted to be associated with IS.

Sule says I don't know what is happening to me. I just wake up every morning hoping that one day someone will come and tell me it's time to go home.

Even younger boys at the Al-Huri Rehabilitation Center were babies when they were brought to IS. Many of them have no memories of before IS.

When IS collapsed in 2019, at least 70,000 people, including 30,000 children, fled the last bloody battle in Baghouz, Syria.

I remember watching children disembarking from military trucks, which brought them from a battlefield that the war-experienced militants described to us as shaking the world.

One of the boys, in response to a reporter's question in Ghor, said that his father was present. When asked if his father is present in this field or in this world, the boy just stares

The children and their mothers were gathered in trucks and brought to the camp. The men were taken along the line to the prison.

In the following years, many of the foreign women and children were repatriated. Many Syrian families have gone to their homes. But most of them are still in Al-Huri and Al-Roz camps, where the tents are cold, wet and muddy in winter and sweltering hot in summer.

Sometimes aid workers run schools for children. But sometimes those schools are burned down by camp women because they oppose the school curriculum.

11-year-old Mohammad from Tajikistan told us in Al-Hal camp in 2020. She later admits that she wants to go to school to learn math and English. But he doesn't want anyone to trick him into being an atheist.

The bomb clock is ticking as security guards describe the camp as a time bomb. Because many of the camp's residents still hold IS ideology. According to them, those they consider to be heathens should be killed. At least 130 people have been killed in the last five years.

Fear of becoming a militant

As I pull out my camera, Mohammad hides behind our translator, Halan Akai. Later Mohammad says that he is 11 years old. Now it is close to being taken to jail. He doesn't want the prison authorities to see his picture and come to take him away.

When local officials were asked why they took boys so young, even 12 years old, away from their families, they responded bluntly. According to officials, they have no other option but outside help. Otherwise, they say, these boys will turn into militants.

We ask Mohammad if the children here want to grow up to be IS fighters. Some kids don't want to be, she said. But that's what 99 percent of us want.

There is no plan to stop boys being taken away from their mothers. And camp guards say the detention system is being expanded further. The girls are being lined up in the camp, their entire lives will be spent in danger and degradation.

Amnesty concerns

Amnesty International says taking babies away from their mothers is illegal and conditions in camps and prisons are inhumane and horrific. Most men and women here have never been formally charged with a crime or tried in court.

Amnesty International blames the local Kurdish authorities – the autonomous region of northern and eastern Syria that has civilian leadership, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and other allied military groups. They also blame the US, which supports the SDF.

A report by Amnesty published in April this year said that the US government played a key role in building and maintaining this system.

They felt humiliated when the Kurdish authorities were accused of human rights violations. They have protested many times against the inhumane treatment of IS prisoners. They said they need international help to solve this international problem.

A dozen states claim credit for defeating IS in Syria, but the onus is on the Kurds alone to solve the problems left behind. There are prisoners from more than 70 countries. While some prisoners have returned to their home countries, most remain in Syria.