A woman uses her crutch to knock on the door of a medical centre, but no one answers. Two education centres are shuttered. Residents wonder aloud whether they will continue receiving bread and water. Camp management worries about the residents rioting or even escaping.
This is Al Hol camp in northeast Syria. It is home to about 40,000 people, many of them suspected of affiliation to the Islamic State terror group. They are largely women and children, and are not allowed to leave.
Tents stretch out along the dry ground, surrounded by high fences. Medical charity Médecins Sans Frontières has described Al Hol – which is run by the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) – as a “massive outdoor prison”. Among the residents are people of 43 nationalities, including 6,300 foreigners not from Iraq or Syria, says Jihan Hanan, the camp’s co-head.
While the camp initially housed other refugees displaced from conflicts in Iraq and Syria, tens of thousands of people who left Baghouz – the last big Islamic State stronghold in the region – were herded into there in March 2019, vastly increasing Al Hol’s population. They included the families of Islamic State fighters alongside supporters and sympathisers.
This created a conundrum for the authorities, who worry about the incubation of extremism among those living there and say the children in the camp could become the “next generation” of Islamic State, also known as Isis. They readily admit that it is problematic to keep people detained without a legal process, but argue there is too much of a threat to let them all out.
Like other Kurdish officials who spoke to The Irish Times, Hanan asks why other countries have not repatriated their citizens, leaving them as the responsibility of authorities in this Kurdish-led, de-facto autonomous war-torn part of Syria.
While this is a long-standing issue, a new challenge has emerged from US president Donald Trump’s shutdown of global American aid. “During the night they tell you they’ve stopped the bread and the water and these other things,” Hanan says, recalling the three days in late January when assistance came almost to a halt. “I have been working in the camp’s management for five years and this is the my first time they did such a rushed decision.”
She believes the impact of the aid cuts have not “been researched or studied well from all aspects”, and that the camp’s management should have received advance warning.
Asked if she feels betrayed, Hanan smiles. “We’ve become used to being betrayed,” she says, adding that the US is “betraying its own forces who are here on the ground”.
The United States Agency for International Development (USAid) aid freeze has caused global chaos, with staff laid off en masse, programmes halted and organisations that receive US funding struggling to figure out how to proceed.
While the freeze was initially announced for a period of 90 days, as evaluations take place, billionaire Elon Musk, whom Trump has appointed as head of the Department of Government Efficiency, says he wants USAid to “die”, calling it a “criminal organisation”. Almost all USAid staff have been put on leave globally, with the Trump administration saying it will eliminate 2,000 US-based positions.
USAid was running programmes in about 120 countries, with American aid making up about 40 per cent of global aid money. In Syria, the US provides one quarter of all foreign funding, says Imrul Islam, the policy and advocacy manager for the Syria INGO Regional Forum, which represents more than 70 international NGOs.
“Things are stopping. It’s really hard to track because there are lay-offs everywhere. Some partners have had to lay off 600-700 people already ... Humanitarian pipelines, water and food to camps, health and medicine, are on the verge of collapse. This decision has unleashed unnecessary suffering for people who have already endured over a decade of brutal conflict,” he says.
The timing of the aid freeze could not be worse, given the fall of the Assad regime in December, Islam says. “Now is the moment to scale up support to Syrians. Instead, the rug has been pulled out from under us, and we have been left fighting for scraps. The brunt of this betrayal will be borne by Syrians themselves, and it will have spiralling consequences.”
Analysts have warned about the security implications of the aid freeze. In northeast Syria, local authorities say they are worried about a resurgence of Islamic State, which controlled swathes of territory in this area between 2014 and 2019.
Al Hol is roughly a 40km drive, across flat and empty stretches of land, from the city of Hasaka. Even some of its security guards get payments from USAid money, Hanan says. “Honestly, regarding the people on the ground ... Americans were also frustrated by this decision.” She praised them for staying late to produce reports that resulted in some exceptions being made, though she is not sure for how long they will hold.
I’m worried about the situation. If there’s a total cut people would be crazy and we’d start rioting and doing chaos
— Resident Fahad Mahmoud
Blumont, the US international development organisation that manages the camp and provides “all basic needs”, withdrew hundreds of staff, Hanan says, as well as the security guarding their centres. Blumont did not respond to a request for comment.
Other NGOs have also been visibly affected: a refuse burning centre was closed and a medical laboratory and clinic stopped, she says. “Regarding health and education it will be a big problem.” Even NGOs not hit by funding cuts reduced work, she says, because they are worried about staff security.
“The daily life conditions will impact the security, if there’s no support,” Hanan says. “The issue regarding Al Hol camp is that it’s closed, we don’t allow [residents] out, so we have to provide whatever they need ... The first day people said, ‘If you cannot provide the bread open the door, so we can go out and manage ourselves’.”
A walk around the camp later establishes that the aid cuts are clearly on people’s minds. Firas Rad (36), from Iraq, has five children and says he is worried about getting care for them. The paediatrician he goes to in the camp normally treats 30 children a day, he says, but “after this decision [the Trump administration order to halt aid] they shrunk it to 15″.
“When Blumont stopped the funding for the camp it was huge chaos and the life in the camp has been paralysed,” says Fahad Mahmoud (30), also from Iraq. “Of course people are getting ready for a total cut. They’re stockpiling. I’m worried about the situation. If there’s a total cut people would be crazy and we’d start rioting and doing chaos.”
Each of them gets two pieces of bread a day, Mahmoud says. “It’s not enough, but we can manage it.” Residents are allocated about 20 litres of water a day – the United Nations minimum standard – and get a food basket every two months with goods including oil, rice, sugar, lentils, bulgar, butter and cleaning material.
“Of course” they feel like they’re in prison, she adds. “It’s sort of like a big prison, there’s no access to outside. The big issue is for the people who get sick. Sometimes people die. I don’t know how to explain the situation. Isis, it was a dirty game, and the ones who paid the price were the poor people like us.”
The camp has a busy stretch of market, where some residents operate shops with abundant supplies and others have stalls with a meagre few products. One woman, who gives her name as Um Omar, stands behind a stall with toiletries, including “green tea whitening invisible foundation” and wet wipes.
She is from Anbar governorate in Iraq, and says she has heard nothing from her husband – a fighter – since they left Baghouz. “Regarding the conditions in the camp, it’s hard, we have to do some business otherwise we couldn’t live,” she says. She cares for her seven-year-old child.
The US has shouldered too much of this burden for too long. The camps cannot remain a direct US financial responsibility
— Dorothy Shea. acting US ambassador to the UN
All of the women are fully covered, with just their eyes showing. Huda Omar (34), says she has five children and wants to return with them to Damascus as soon as possible. Her husband was killed seven years ago, in an air strike in Raqqa, once the capital of Islamic State’s so-called caliphate. “My husband was not a fighter,” she says, then reconsiders. “Actually, he was, but he left [Islamic State] and then was a civilian. The children are innocent; they have the right to go home ”
On February 12th, acting US ambassador to the UN, Dorothy Shea, told the Security Council that US assistance for managing and securing camps in northeastern Syria “cannot last forever”.
“The United States has shouldered too much of this burden for too long. Ultimately, the camps cannot remain a direct US financial responsibility,” she said, referencing Al Hol camp and a smaller camp, Roj, where many foreign women and their children accused of links to Islamic State are held.
In response, Hanan says: “This is an international responsibility. This is the remnants of Daesh [Islamic State] ... The creation of this camp was something we didn’t want, it was de facto.”
She suggests Donald Trump should visit. “He has to,” she says, because the camp “really got hurt” by this decision.
Jiwan Mirzo contributed to this report
