Basic services resume at Syrian camp housing IS families as government takes control

AL-HOL, Syria (AP) — Basic services at a camp in northeast Syria holding thousands of women and children linked to the Islamic State group are returning to normal after government forces captured the facility from Kurdish fighters, a United Nations official said on Thursday.

Forces of Syria’s central government captured al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the Kurdish-led and U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, that had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.

Celine Schmitt, a spokesperson for the U.N. refugees agency told The Associated Press that the interruption of services occurred for two days during the fighting around the camp.

She said a UNHCR team visited the recaptured came to establish “very quickly the delivery of basic services, humanitarian services,” including access to health centers. Schmitt said that as of Jan. 23, they were able to deliver bread and water inside the camp.

Schmitt, speaking in Damascus, said the situation at al-Hol camp has been calm and some humanitarian actors have also been distributing food parcels. She said that government has named a new administrator for the camp.

At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at al-Hol. Since then the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.

The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.

The current population is about 24,000, including 14,500 Syrians and nearly 3,000 Iraqis. About 6,500 from other nationalities are held in a highly secured section of the camp, many of whom are IS supporters who came from around the world to join the extremist group.

The U.S. last month began transfering some of the 9,000 IS members from jails in northeast Syria to Iraq. Baghdad said it will prosecute the transfered detainees. But so far, no solution has been announced for al-Hol camp and the similar Roj camp.

Amal al-Hussein of the Syria Alyamama Foundation, a humanitarian group, told the AP that all the clinics in the camp’s medical facility are working 24 hours a day, adding that up to 150 children and 100 women are treated daily.

She added that over the past 10 days there have been five natural births in the camp while cesarean cases were referred to hospitals in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour or al-Hol town.

She said that there are shortages of baby formula, diapers and adult diapers in the camp.

Safiya Suleiman, who is originally from the Syrian eastern town of Mayadeen and has been living in the camp with her six children for eight years, said there are some food shortages and the worst thing is that her children did not get proper education.

“We want clothes for the children, as well as canned food, vegetables and fruits,” she said, speaking inside her tent surrounded by three of her young daughters. “Since one month we haven’t had anything yet,” she said, referring to vegetables and fruits, which are too expensive for most of the camp’s residents.

Mariam al-Issa, from the northern Syrian town of Safira, said she wants to leave the camp along with her children so that thy can have proper education and eat good food.

“Because of the financial conditions we cannot live well,” she said. “The food basket includes lentils but the children don’t like to eat it any more.”

“The children crave everything,” al-Issa said, adding that food at the camp should be improved from mostly bread and water. “It has been a month since we didn’t have a decent meal,” she said.

Thousands of Syrians and Iraqis have returned to their homes in recent years, but many only return to find destroyed homes and no jobs as most Syrians remain living in poverty as a result of the conflict that started in March 2011.

Schmitt said investment is needed to help people who return home to feel safe. “They need to get support in order to have a house, to be able to rebuild a house in order to have an income,” she said.

“Investments to respond and to overcome the huge material challenges people face when they return home,” she added.

_____

Shaheen reported from Damascus.