Syrian camp for ISIS families faces uncertain fate after handover : NPR

Women and children, relatives of suspected Islamic State fighters, sit near a wall inside the al-Hol camp in the desert region of Syria’s northeastern province of Hasakeh on Wednesday.

Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images

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Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images

AMMAN, Jordan — Rising from the desert in territory recognized by almost no one, the immense al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria had for years posed an intractable problem: a destitute and increasingly dangerous place of detention where ISIS ideology lived.

Syrian Kurdish forces guarded and administered the camp and detained tens of thousands of women and children there. The detainees were part of the Islamic State’s self-proclaimed caliphate, which the militant group built after seizing large parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014, and which was defeated by U.S. and Kurdish forces in 2019.

On Tuesday, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) said in a statement that “due to the international community’s indifference to the ISIS issue and its inability to take responsibility for this serious issue, our forces were forced to withdraw from al-Hol camp and redeploy.”

An aerial view shows the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria on Wednesday.

Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images

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Omar Haj Kadour/AFP via Getty Images

The SDF said the camp guards were deployed to towns in northern Syria to face the threat of Syrian government troops seizing Kurdish-held territory. Syrian government forces intervened to secure the camp, saying the security vacuum had allowed some detainees to escape.

US Central Command announced Wednesday that it was beginning to transport thousands of detained IS fighters to an unnamed “safe location” in neighboring Iraq, but the fate of tens of thousands of IS family members in al-Hol remains unclear.

ISIS’s last stand took place in Syria

Pushed back from Iraq by U.S.-backed Iraqi forces, ISIS fought its last battle in Baghuz, Syria, about 200 miles south of al-Hol. While the United States provided intelligence, coordination and air cover, the forces on the ground in Syria were mostly Kurdish-led fighters who had controlled the country’s northeast since breaking away from President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule in 2012 in a bloody civil war. Syrian Kurds say they have lost more than 25,000 fighters fighting ISIS alongside the United States.

Syria’s civil war only ended when Assad fled the country in late 2024, overthrown by fighters loyal to Syria’s new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa. The new leader was once associated with al-Qaeda, but now insists he wants an inclusive and democratic Syria.

After ISIS’s defeat, the group’s surviving fighters were placed in more than a dozen prisons. Their wives and children – many of whom were sick and hungry – were detained at al-Hol.

While U.S. military commanders have long linked the camp’s lack of security to the resurgence of ISIS, the United States is increasingly disengaging, according to former officials and researchers.

“Taking back such a large camp would normally require a detailed and deliberate transfer,” says Myles Caggins III, a former spokesman for the U.S.-led anti-ISIS military coalition in Iraq and Syria and a nonresident fellow at the New Lines Institute.

Kurdish commanders said in a statement that they had tried to discuss a plan to transfer the camp with U.S. military officials.

The U.S. military did not respond to NPR’s request for comment. He refers NPR to comments made by the US special envoy for Syria, Tom Barrack. He said on social media this week that the SDF’s “original purpose as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired, as Damascus is now both willing and positioned to assume security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention centers and camps.”

Caggins noted that in December, President Trump signed a defense spending bill allocating approximately $200 million in funding for SDF operations with the United States.

“But now all that has rapidly changed. The United States and Washington, DC, manage their entire counterterrorism relationship through Damascus,” he said.

Losing hard-won territory

In recent days, the Kurds have seen their hard-won territory in Syria collapse.

The territory conquered by Kurds and allied Arab tribes in 2012 became the Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria – known in Kurdish as the “Democratic Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria”. Rojavawhich means “West” – a reference to the dreamed great Kurdistan.

Across the border in Syria, Iraqi Kurds, with the help of American air protection, broke away from Saddam Hussein’s regime in 1991. Iraqi Kurdish leaders courted Western oil companies and turned the territory into what was known as the most prosperous and stable part of Iraq.

But in the Kurdish region of Syria, two decades later, no country recognized its self-proclaimed autonomy and countries and organizations that dealt with the Syrian government were reluctant to get involved in the breakaway region. The main humanitarian organizations have not made their presence known on site.

The main crossing point from the Syrian Kurdish region to the outside world is, in certain seasons, a small pontoon bridge over a narrow river that connects it to Iraqi Kurdistan.

After expecting concessions from the Syrian federal government that could allow them to retain some autonomy, they instead faced a military attack.

Remnants of ISIS’s caliphate largely ignored

At its peak in 2019, al-Hol camp had more than 70,000 residents and faced an acute humanitarian crisis.

During a visit to al-Hol with producer Sangar Khaleel in 2019, the camp was particularly desolate. Women dressed in black coats, with their faces and hands covered, in accordance with their religious faith, waited in the rain for limited quantities of food to be distributed.

“We pray for the return of the caliphate,” one of the women told us, declining to give her name due to her religious beliefs.

“Convert, convert!” a group of women and girls chanted around me in Arabic, urging me to recite the Shahadathe profession of Muslim faith. Women and girls have cited the Quran – wrongly – to justify ISIS killings of those considered non-believers.

“If they don’t convert to Islam and become Muslims like us and worship God, then they deserve it,” said an Iraqi woman who also declined to give her name. Even though they referred to the Quran, many women and girls did not know how to read.

On another visit, armed Kurdish guards accompanied us to what is known as the Annex – a highly secure area of ​​al-Hol camp housing women and children who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi.

We were only allowed to enter areas deemed safe enough to visit and only for a few minutes. A long row of tents has been nicknamed “Australia Street” in tribute to the young Australian women who followed ISIS fighters into Syria or were unknowingly lured there. Most countries, citing security and logistical concerns, either refused to repatriate their citizens from al-Hol or took years to do so.

Fueled by neglect and hardship, ISIS ideology persists

For years, the region’s Syrian Kurdish leaders and the United States viewed the large numbers of radicalized women and children as an ongoing danger. Although some deradicalization programs have been funded by foreign governments, they are not enough and do not include children, according to Kurdish officials.

Camp officials told The New Humanitarian news site in November that the population of al-Hol was currently around 26,000 people, including around 6,000 foreigners from around 60 countries, excluding Iraq.

None of the residents have been charged with a crime, making their detention contrary to international law, according to the UN.

The camp is full of young children – born during the self-proclaimed caliphate or even in detention afterwards, as detained boys and girls reach puberty and marry.

Swedish researcher Malene Rembe visited al-Hol last September on the latest of several visits, but was unable to enter the foreigners’ section because some residents had just burned down a project run by a U.S.-based humanitarian organization.

Rembe, who is writing a book about the Yazidi religious minority’s survivors of the genocide perpetrated against them by ISIS, said relations between the more militant residents and Kurdish guards had deteriorated to the point that camp guards only entered the foreigners’ section in armored vehicles.

She said drastic cuts in U.S. foreign aid last year also affected the camp and further infuriated residents when she was there in September.

“The guards and staff at al-Hol didn’t know anything in advance, so they arrived at the camp in the morning and were told they had nothing to deliver. So they had no food, no water, nothing,” she explained.

She said the United States granted an exemption for al-Hol and aid arrived a few days later.

After years of indoctrination, hardship and neglect, many al-Hol residents continue to pray for the return of the caliphate and now face a future more uncertain than ever.