In the aftermath of its 2019 defeat at Baghouz, ISIS abandoned thousands of women and children to Kurdish custody. The Kurds responded by establishing the al-Hol and Roj camps, where tens of thousands of women associated with ISIS and their underage children remain confined to this day. These camps have become a lasting stain on the group’s legacy.
Far from confronting this enduring humanitarian crisis, ISIS has sought to turn it into a financial opportunity. The group has created networks of online accounts to solicit donations in the name of these imprisoned women, presenting the appeals as charitable aid while in reality using them as tools of extortion.
What began as a fundraising effort has spiraled into scandal. Rival factions within ISIS now openly accuse each other of siphoning off the funds for personal enrichment. The disputes have grown so sharp that the group’s own propaganda channels have become a battleground for these allegations.
An anti-ISIS monitoring outlet, Fadh Ubbad al-Baghdadi and al-Hashimi (“Exposing the Worshippers of al-Baghdadi and al-Hashimi”), recently drew attention to a post on a Telegram channel known as the Central Channel of Prisoner Camps. Believed to be linked to ISIS’s administration of detention facilities in Syria, the channel accused several members of misappropriating money raised in the name of al-Hol and Roj. Among those singled out was Ahmad Ra’s al-Ayn, an ISIS member alleged to have collected donations under the pretext of aiding prisoners but failed to deliver any assistance.
Such disputes are not new. Reports of infighting over the collection and distribution of financial aid have surfaced repeatedly in recent years. Together, these episodes reveal a consistent pattern: ISIS exploits every possible avenue, whether the suffering of its own women and children or even the sacred concept of jihad, as a means to extract money from Muslims, only to misuse it in ways that tarnish the very cause they invoke.
