As well as being home to 25,000 displaced Syrians and dozens of aid workers, the squalid Atmeh refugee camp - where Briton David Haines was captured by militants in March last year - is located just one mile from an ISIS stronghold full of swaggering UK jihadists who lived in a hilltop villa.
Temporary canvas tents line the so-called Olive Tree camp's tracks, but the residents dared not dream of going back to their home towns - and certainly wouldn't risk visiting nearby Atmeh village.
Their lives and those of the aid workers such as Haines were in stark contrast to the self-described 'goodly' existence of ISIS militants are living in Atmeh - who posed for boastful photographs with expensive vehicles, swimming in luxury pools and relaxing in a huge mansion overlooking the camp.
While the swaggering militants enjoy 'five star jihad' living like medieval lords in their hilltop fort, the terrified refugees below were forced to suffer regular raids on their rundown camp.
It appears to have been on one of these missions that Haines was kidnapped along with three other men while working for an aid company MailOnline can now reveal to be the French Charity ACTED
ISIS dominate the village of Atmeh, with militants regularly taking photographs of themselves at the villa
The internet cafe in Atmeh village is dominated by Islamist flags, highlighting the danger so close to the camp
ISIS militants are known to have started massing in Atmeh late last year - around the time Al Qaeda condemned the group's barbarism, and a few months after Haines was kidnapped from the camp.
Before this other Islamist militant groups were active in the area - among them the feared Nusra Front, who are believed to have originally kidnapped slain U.S. journalist James Foley before militants defecting to ISIS eventually took him with them.
As if so-often the case with tech-savvy, Western-raised militants, many of the young ISIS fighters opted to document every aspect of life in their new stronghold is a series of social media posts.
In stark contradiction to the hardships of the refugee camp below, a group of militants appear to have lived in a large hilltop mansion in Atmeh - posting images of themselves posing with expensive cars, swimming in luxury pools and keeping fit at an outdoor gym.
The hub of their operations in Atmeh, however, seems to have been the village's internet cafe, where the men photographed themselves browsing on the internet while wielding guns in a room decorated with black and white jihadist flags.
Danger: British hostage David Haines was captured by militants in the Atmeh camp in March last yea
Grim: Canvas and plastic tents line the camp's squalid tracks but the residents dare not dream of leaving to visit the nearby ISIS-occupied Atmeh village
As Haines was kidnapped by Islamist militants in Atmeh refugee camp early in 2013, there is nothing to suggest this particular band of ISIS loyalists active in Atmeh later in the year had anything to do with his disappearance, and exact details of who carried out the kidnapping remain sketchy.
It is also unclear whether the group are still active in Atmeh, which falls outside official estimates of territory under ISIS control - although these maps tend to ignore isolated pockets the group operates within, particularly in western Syria where villages are regularly taken and lost.Despite the dangers posed by jihadists of all persuasion on its doorstep in 2013, the Olive Tree camp attracted a number Westerners eager to raise awareness of the refugees' desperate situation.
Among them was Steven Sotloff - the American journalist brutally beheaded by an ISIS militant earlier this week in a sickening video that made public the fact the group also held Haines.
In January 2013 - just two months' before Haines' capture - Sotloff wrote a harrowing dispatch from Atmeh, in which he detailed the despair of families with so little to eat that they willingly sold blankets protecting them from the harsh Syrian winter in order to buy bread for their malnourished children.
The extremist group now presides over a mass of land equivalent to the size of the UK, from Aleppo to central Iraq, and controls at least four million people. Atmeh is close to the border with Turkey
Jihadist snacks: As if so-often the case with tech-savvy, Western-raised militants, many of the young ISIS fighters opted to document every aspect of life in their new stronghold is a series of social media posts
Known as the Olive Tree Camp, Atmeh was set up in 2011 by Texas-based Maram Foundation after a group of its employees stumbled across dozens of locals sitting among the olive tress that hug Syria's barbed-wire border fence with Turkey.
The refugees had fled their homes as the Syrian conflict intensified, but their hope of being allowed to seek refuge in Turkey was in vain and so they were left with nowhere to go and very little to eat.
Over the next two years, the number of people living in the camp grew steadily as Maram Foundation were joined by groups such as Aid For All and Caravan of Mercy in providing food and medical aid.
The growth of ISIS in the area isolated the locals still further - and among the images uploaded to social media by the militants were photographs of them practicing shooting in the very olive groves that gave the camp its name.
Vast numbers of British jihadists have arrived in Syria via Turkey's popular Antalya airport, where they pose as tourists before slipping off along countryside roads leading to the war-torn country.
In one unverified image uploaded by an Atmeh-based militant last year, the border between Turkey and the camp in Syria is shown as little more than a seemingly unguarded barbed-wired fence.
He captioned the image: 'Now how easy does that look?'
Swaggering: Jihadists based in Atmeh - just one mile from the Olive Tree refugee camp - have boasted of living 'the goodly life' at their huge hilltop villa
Among the images uploaded to social media by the militants were photographs of them practicing shooting in the very olive groves that gave the camp its name
Even the trees inside Atmeh are not safe from ISIS. Last November a 150-year-old tree (right) was cut down by a masked militant wielding a chainsaw (left) after militants said locals praised the tree more than God
For many would-be militants the first stop along the way is the village of Atmeh, which is believed to have become an ISIS stronghold due to the sheer number of Western fighters arriving via Turkey.The town's police station was painted in the distinctive black and white of ISIS' flag - a symbolic reminder that for them, law and order is a religious concept, not a man-made one.
The ISIS militants and the various faction that came before them also carry out regular raids in the Atmeh camp.
Officially at least it is protected by rebels from the Free Syrian Army, but as the population swelled the defence force has often proved incapable of stopping unwanted elements getting in - including jihadists, forces loyal to Syrian president Bashar Assad, and opportunist militia factions sent by local tribal leaders.
When Sotloff wrote his dispatch for Foreign Policy during the bitter Levantine winter last January, the full terrifying force of ISIS had yet to properly arrive in Atmeh.
Within just a few months, even the trees inside the camp were not safe from militants.
Last November a 150-year-old tree was cut down by a masked militant wielding a chainsaw after it was deemed the residents of Atmeh spent more time venerating it than they did praising God.
A Syrian girl, who fled her home with her family in Idlib, collects water from a makeshift well inside Atmeh
A child is seen standing amid the squalor of the refugee camp. It is home to about 25,000 people
Syrian children live under difficult conditions and lack of water in Atmeh camp, close to the Turkish border
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