'Filthy, overcrowded and heaving with people no-one wants': Islamic State families stuck in 'no man's land'

The Al-Hol camp is a desperate place: filthy, overcrowded and heaving with the people no-one in the world wants. This camp in eastern Syria is now home to so-called Islamic State families - fresh from the caliphate.

It’s beyond capacity and struggling to function with thousands of arrivals and no departures.

If governments think they have a problem trying to decide what to do with these people, it’s nothing compared to the crisis facing those who are forced to take responsibility for them.

It’s costing a million of dollars a day just in food and no substantive help is coming from outside.

One desperate Kurdish official told me the place was like a “United Nations of Foreigners” but not a single government was adequately helping with the burden.

There is little food, warmth or healthcare here but there is a lot of anger, fervour and some desperation.

Maintaining security is an increasing challenge with at least one murder and many fights.

In this no-man’s land of despair, some are maintaining the structure of the caliphate in front of those who sought to dismantle it.

For the Kurds it is becoming the nightmare scenario.

As I was told this week, “it’s all very well the British government stripping citizenship and cleaning up their country, but they are leaving us with their terrorists and we don’t want them.”