Days after the Kurds reached a deal with the new Syrian government in Damascus to evacuate the inmates of the Islamic State camps, the authorities have clarified to THE WEEK that the camps “will not be shut down or closed.”
The visit of the Syrian government delegation last month had set speculations on the closure of the refugee camps at Al Hol and Al Roj. The official Facebook page of the Kurdish-led Democratic Autonomous Administration in North and East Syria (DAANES), on May 24 cited Sheikhmous Ahmed, who oversees all internally displaced persons (IDP) and refugee camps in Rojava, as saying that an agreement was reached between the Syrian administration and Rojava to “establish a joint mechanism for evacuating Syrian families from al-Hol camp and returning them to their original areas.”
While it was believed that the camps, which are home to more than 40,000 families, will be shut down and the inmates will be repatriated to their own countries, the authorities have now clarified to The Week that only the Syrian and the Iraqi nationals will be sent back home.
The Al Hol camp houses more than 50,000 ISIS widows and their children. While the foreign Annexure has other nationalities, the families from Syria and Iraq are housed in another section of the camp. According to the camp authorities the camp administration has been fighting hard to fund for the amenities and manage the day to day requirements. “The financial support or in kind we were getting with the help of USAID has come to a grinding halt in the recent past. This has affected a lot of the services inside the camp, even the basic services like health , education and water. We managed a portion of these services by getting support from other sources. We are trying to find alternative European solutions and support. However the suspension of USAID had caused a lot of struggle and has also led to security issues in the camp,” says Jeehan Hanan, head of the civilian administration of Al Hol camp.
Jeehan further clarified that the Syrian government delegation's visit to the camp was only to discuss funding mechanisms to administer the camps and to send the Syrians back home from the camps. “The discussion was purely on sending the Syrians back home. The files and documents with regard to the foreigners in the camp are with the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). We didn't discuss anything with regard to this,” he replied to the questions from THE WEEK.
Jeehan is also of the opinion that the closure of the camps might lead to the resurgence of ISIS in the region. “They are very radical. And without a proper rehabilitation plan, we may not be able to release them.”
On the other side, the Al Roj camp, far away from the Hol camp is also struggling to make ends meet, in terms of health and sanitation for the inmates. The Roj camp houses VIP widows like Shamima Begum from the UK and Hoda Muthana from the US. The conditions in these camps have long been criticised for poor sanitation and hygiene by the human rights groups.
