The Guardian view on British children in Syria: bring them back

The cancellation of a plan to rescue more than 60 British children, including at least three orphans, from north-east Syria at the end of last month is a stain both on the UK and on the reputations of the ministers involved. The hard line taken by the home secretary, Priti Patel, may have been consistent with that of her predecessor, Sajid Javid. But she, Mr Javid and the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, should each be ashamed. In arguing, jointly, for an operation that should have gone ahead during a ceasefire to be abandoned, they have set their faces against humanitarian values. Each must be called upon to justify their decision to regard the toddlers and primary-school-aged children now trapped in the al-Hawl and al-Roj camps not as unwitting victims of a foreign war, but as a threat to the security of the UK.

The situation in the area where the children, who are mostly with their mothers, are stuck is chaotic and dangerous following the recent US withdrawal and Turkish invasion. There have been claims that burning white phosphorus was used against children by Turkish troops. The outcome of negotiations between the Syrian government and Kurdish forces is uncertain save in one respect: Syria will soon be in charge.

There is little doubt that the outlook for the estimated 80,000 women and 9,000 children who fled from former Islamic State territory, and are now trapped in the camps and the wider border area, is dire. There have been horrifying reports of violence, including attacks on guards and killings of inmates, at al-Hawl. There is little or no medical care, and 255 children are reported to have died there this year within six months. Conditions in the annexe for foreign families are said by Save the Children to be even worse. Around half of the children are thought to be under five. Little wonder that the governments of several EU countries, as well as Uzbekistan and Russia, have pledged to repatriate any of their citizens who are among them. But while the UK foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, rejected the weekend’s leaked reports of the meeting at which the British rescue effort was said to have been put off, he has yet to give any details of how the unaccompanied British children still in Syria are to be extracted. Nor did he explain the government’s position with regard to the rest of the children, who are with their mothers.

To do nothing for these people is plainly wrong. Yet rather than shoulder international responsibilities that are moral as well as legal, some UK ministers appear to have cast them off. As in the case of Shamima Begum, whose citizenship was stripped from her by Mr Javid earlier this year – a decision now being challenged in court – it appears that when Isis is involved, some ministers believe that norms regarding the treatment of minors should be discarded.

Those who joined Isis, women as well as men, should be punished. Their children should not. It shames the UK that Isis’s downfall, the closure of a vicious chapter which should have heralded progress, appears instead to have hardened attitudes in such a way as to place civilised values in doubt. It is one of the UK government’s first duties to protect blameless British children from harm. Those trapped in Syria must be repatriated without delay.