Trapped in the desert

Part of Al Hol detention camp, where family members of Islamic State fighters are held, in Kurdish controlled northern Syria, in March last year. For years, the Islamic State group ruled large parts of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, brutally enforcing its strict interpretation of Islamic law. As Kurdish-led Syrian forces backed by the United States battled to reclaim that land, they detained thousands of fighters, and tens of thousands of their relatives. — Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times

THE arid steppes of northeastern Syria stretch almost uninterrupted to the Iraqi border, broken only by the occasional oil derrick, until the road reaches a sprawling prison camp.

A chain-link fence topped with barbed wire surrounds Al Hol detention camp, where supply trucks queue for a kilometre outside the gates.