INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
By John Sparks, news correspondent, in northern Syria We found a great mass of humanity on a featureless plain in northern Syria and every
their so-called caliphate after years of war.Kurdish soldiers from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) sent cattle trucks to pick them up
near a village called Baghuz.IS controls a handful of streets and a field full of tents on this sliver of land near the Iraqi
border.Image:'It is war, always war,' one woman saidWe were greeted with vacant stares and dirty faces and a collective sense of fear.The
SDF uses this patch of ground to screen and document the evacuees
People who fought for IS are interned in prisons
The rest go to a massive displacement camp, nine hours to the north, in a town called al Hawl.Shamima Begum asks politicians for 'mercy'Al
Hawl is where Shamima Begum, a British teenager who travelled to Syria to become an IS bride, is currently - along with 1,555 other women
and children who travelled from abroad to join the extremist group."It is war, always war," said a woman from Germany, when I asked her what
the conditions were like in Baghuz.Image:Many of those in the camp required medical assistanceThere was so little food, she said, that
people were eating weeds and mouldy bread.Another woman, who called herself Layla, said she had been desperate to leave.She said: "It was
We were starving, there was bombing, it was cold
The kids were sick."I asked Layla, who is a teenage mother of three children, whether she regretted her time in IS."I feel so much regret,
they killed my husband because he wanted to leave
We wanted to leave for a long time," she replied.Image:Some of those in the camp threw insults However, there were many people on this
windswept stretch who are devoted to IS
It may have lost the vast majority of its territory, but its fanatical ideology has not weakened.As we filmed, we were scorned as intruders
and infidels."Your face is like a shoe," said one women, firing the worst insult she could think of at me.Another said I would never
understand."Thanks be to God, [Islamic State] has laws that are God's laws, they only have God's law and when they help people it's for free
It was the perfect life of dignity and grace."Image:Some of the evacuees are put on cattle trucks for a nine-hour ride to a refugee campFor
the SDF, thousands of evacuees pose a security threat and a major logistical challenge
They handled 5,000 on the day of our visit.Each adult is screened by intelligence officers and the majority are sent to al Hawl in lorries
designed to carry sheep.Some won't survive the journey.The International Rescue Group told Sky News that 62 people have died on the way to
this displacement camp - two-thirds of them were under the age of one.Image:Some won't survive the journeyWe did meet a former American
soldier called David Eubank, who is trying to do something about it
He heads a group of volunteer medics from an organisation called the Free Burma Rangers.We spoke just after he and his team had delivered a
baby."We helped with four deliveries last night, [my wife] did two of them
We have seen 40 people shot here
Some wounds were two days old - some wounds were one month old
No leg, bones sticking out, [they were put] in the back of the trucks with no care," he said.Women of IS: 'We want to get out'Tears welled
"It is always difficult, because that could be you
That could be your kids."Many of the people on this rocky patch were defiant and completely unapologetic.But after years of war and trauma
