Some women who travelled across the world to join the Islamic State group’s “caliphate” are pleading to return home, expressing regret and saying they were deceived by the militants’ propaganda.

Their pleas point to the thorny issues of what to do with the tens of thousands of former IS members left after the fall of the militants. Governments have been reluctant to allow their nationals back.

Interviewed four foreign women who joined the caliphate and are now among tens of thousands of IS family members, mostly women and children, crammed into squalid camps in northern Syria overseen by the U.S.-backed Kurdish-led forces who spearheaded the fight against the extremist group.

The women insisted they had not been active IS members and had no role in its atrocities.