Reema Iqbal is talking to us from behind the plastic sheeting which marks the tented area which is now her home in Roj camp in northeast Syria.

She is not wearing the all-covering black Islamic dress and veil that most of the women walking around the camp are dressed in.

She's instead in a T-shirt with shoulder-length hair which is wavy and flowing.

The first thing that strikes me is how healthy she appears. Her hair is shiny; her skin is glowing and flawless, and her teeth are white.

Image: Alex Crawford spoke to the British women in their tents - they did not want to be shown

It stands out in this windswept, damp, miserable, shabby tented detention centre where she's been with her two children for the past year.


Her appearance is out of kilter with her surroundings. She looks like she should be watching her sons in a park in east London - which was her home before she travelled to Syria to live in the Islamic State caliphate five years ago.

Instead she is now viewed as an IS family member and held under armed guard with her children, along with about a thousand other mainly women and children.

They are all relatives - wives and children - of men suspected of being IS fighters and now in prisons guarded by soldiers from the US-led coalition which has been fighting the extremists.

Their lives are pretty miserable. There is no running water. They're living on top of each other in small tents which look grubby.

Some of them have been given small heaters to take the chill away. Their small bits of washing are hung on bits of string.

IS militants target Kurdish forces in Baghuz

They are utterly reliant on the guards from the Syrian Democratic Force (SDF) for pretty much everything. And they are under armed guard 24/7 with no-one allowed in without express permission and no-one allowed out.

Reema Iqbal, who is around 30 years old, and her two sisters, Zara, aged 28 and Samila, 32, upped and left their homes in London, where they had previously had university educations, and set off to live in the caliphate at the height of the extremists' power and influence.

At that time, the extremists were taking over swathes of land in Iraq and Syria.

By 2014, they had control of more than 34,000 square miles, an area bigger than Ireland or Austria.

Many of those I've spoken to - men and women - seemed to have been lured to join the caliphate, believing it was their Islamic duty; hoping to lend support and help to persecuted civilians who were being bombed by Syrian President Bashar al Assad and being killed and injured daily.

But the extremists went on to kill Yazidi men and enslave thousands of Yazidi women, buying and selling them at markets.

They instilled an extreme form of Islam over their controlling population, and executions and amputations were commonplace.

Image: Women and children have been fleeing IS territory in Baghuz and heading to refugee camps

But Reema Iqbal does not want to talk about this. She is polite, friendly and smiles frequently, but she is adamant she is not going to talk to anyone right now.

"I don't trust anyone. I'm sorry. I've been burned before," she said.

She admits life is hard for her in the camp.

Despite her smiles, she's obviously desperate to leave and there's a flash of anger and bitterness when I suggest maybe she has been forgotten by the outside world.

"I have NOT been forgotten", she insists.

"I am not forgotten."

Image: A woman at the al Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria. File pic

The camp organisers tell me she has changed her name to Saqina, although no explanation is provided and she certainly is not saying.

Previous reports suggest she was once married to an IS fighter called Celso Da Costa, who died fighting with IS.

Every reference to the women and girls who went to Syria is accompanied by the description "jihadi bride" which I suspect may be one reason she's not inclined to talk to a journalist right now.

She knows the SDF is attempting to exert pressure on governments to repatriate their nationals. The French authorities have yielded.

Every man or woman captured by the coalition is viewed as potentially dangerous.

Image: London schoolgirls Kadiza Sultana (l), Shamima Begum (c) and Amira Abase fled to Syria in 2015

The men are separated and kept in prisons. The women and children are spread around a handful of detention centres and placed in tents which are surrounded by fencing and guards with weapons.

In this camp alone there are about five British women and their children.

Reema Iqbal's sister Zara, whose husband was also killed in the battles, has been separated from her and is in another camp, we are told.

The third sister, Samila, is thought to have been married to a doctor called Shajul Islam, who was accused of being involved in the kidnapping of the British journalist John Cantlie in 2012.

Nothing is known about either Samila, her husband or Mr Cantlie's whereabouts, although there are persistent but unconfirmed indications that they are all still alive.

Image: Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) near Baghuz, Islamic State's last enclave

According to the camp guards, there are about a thousand people here - roughly about 400 families and among them there are French, German, Swedish, Belgium, Russian, Turkish, Tunisian, Algerian and American women as well as the British.

A few tents away from Reema Iqbal is Naseema Begum, who has four children she is looking after alone in the tent.

She too is from London and complains about being coerced into interviews organised by her SDF captors for Kurdish television.

She also appears nervous about being interviewed for fear it might make their position even worse.

Both women appear resigned to the fact it's going to take some time to get out of this camp. They've been here a year already and there's no sign anyone is rushing to help them or bring them back home.