The sandstorm raged so suddenly, the air became opaque and tents began to move. Children struggled to take cover while their mothers braced for the worst. This is midsummer in north-East Syria.
Camp Roj and its sister camp, Al-Hol, are home to 42,000 people, primarily the wives, other adult female relatives and children of male Isis suspects. Guarded by Kurdish-led forces, no-one can leave.
Itâs hard to see how this blasted, forgotten patch of Syria could be relevant to nine million people in the UK but a damning report released by Reprieve and Runnymede Trust on Thursday explains exactly why.
In Roj, there are between 15 and 20 women and 30 to 40 children, most under ten years-old, who are linked in some way to the UK.
The United Nations says the conditions are inhuman, dangerous and degrading, raising serious concerns under international law.
The Kurdish-led authorities who staff the camps tell me they lack the resources to do this indefinitely especially after the punishing USAID cuts.
But in Roj, many of those linked to the UK will remain due to policies taken by the British government that make it an outlier in the West.
Even Russia and the US have taken responsibility for their citizens and brought them home, one British MP said at a meeting in parliament on Wednesday. The UK, by contrast, ranks the highest in the G20 for stripping our citizens of their citizenship en masse.
The British government is stripping Britons of their citizenship in a âracist two-tier systemâ that leaves millions at risk, the report says.
Since 2010 alone, the UK has stripped more than 200 people of citizenship on âpublic goodâ grounds, a number only surpassed by Bahrain and Nicaragua, the report added.
The stripping, Runnymede and Reprieve says, is done through a âsecretiveâ system that allows for the removing of citizenship from Britons with dual nationality, or any naturalised Briton, with little to no access to the evidence and no requirement for the government to inform them.
And so the report warns that this âvagueâ legislation in total leaves at least 9 million people, or 13 per cent of the population, vulnerable to having their citizenship removed. It also found a shocking racial disparity, with people of colour 12 times more at risk than their white peers.
Many of those stripping cases are Britons – or now ex Britons – currently trapped here in Syria. The most high profile case is Shamima Begum, who in 2015, at just 15 years-old was groomed and likely trafficked by Isis to the so-called caliphate in Syria. Her citizenship has been stripped, leaving her stateless.
This is because the UK ruled the year before she left, that they can even strip citizenship from people who donât have another passport âif there are reasonable grounds for believing that the person is able to become a national of another country or territoryâ. Her parents are of Bangladeshi origin.
She is not the only ex- British citizen stuck here. I spoke to several women that day I was in Roj, although they could not come on the record.
Some had only found out they were no longer British when they tried to be repatriated home, and were informed the UK doesnât repatriate foreigners. I learned of one case where a baby as born stateless, as a pregnant woman had been unknowingly stripped and gave birth.
The Home Office dismissed the reportâs findings as âscaremongering and wrongâ in a statement that added âonly a small number of people have had their citizenship revoked in 15 yearsâ.
A spokesperson said the system was only used âto protect the British public from some of the most dangerous people, including terrorists and serious organised criminalsâ.
But in the end people like Shamima, and even the men in ISIS prisons in Syria, have not been formally accused of any crime, faced trial or any legal proceedings whatsoever. Children are caught up in this as well.
The Kurdish-led authorities who hold them have repeatedly told me over the years that they have no recognised legal system to even begin investigations into the foreigners. They have no capacity to keep managing this problem for ever.
The practice of stripping citizenship is actually a modern development. It fell almost completely into disuse across Europe in the aftermath of the Second World War, in disgust at the Nazisâ mass removal of the status of Jewish citizens.
From 1973 to 2002 in the UK, there were no deprivations of citizenship other than for fraud, the report says.
But that has changed in recent years, with the escalation of legislation and a surge in its use, particularly against citizens accused of travelling to Syria to join Isis.
And so Reprieve says in the last decade there has been more than 4,000 per cent increase in deprivations.
Families caught up in this describe a frightening system in which, âyouâre kind of trying to fight back with both your hands tied behind your backâ. Speaking in testimonies shared anonymously with the release of the report they said no information is given.
Faisal, whose brotherâs citizenship was stripped, warned it is a dangerous system that impacts us all.
âEverybodyâs sleepwalking right now. They donât realise. Over time, our rights are being eroded. Most people donât know.â
