Humanitarian

Iraq repatriates over 1,300 families so far from Syria’s al-Hol, says national security advisor

More than 800 families have been “rehabilitated and integrated” across seven governorates in the country, al Araji said.

Kurdistan 24 2023/06/20 11:58

A Syrian woman and child sit by their belongings awaiting departure from the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp on March 18, 2021. (Photo: Delil Souleiman/AFP)

Iraq Iraq Syria al-Hol Al Jadda ISIS IDPs

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The government has so far repatriated more than 1,300 Iraqi families from Syria’s northeast al-Hol camp, where thousands of people alleged to have ties with the defeated Islamic State are held up, according to the country’s top security official.

National Security Advisor Qassim al-Araji’s remarks came during a panel, dubbed Voices of Youth and Civil Society, at the 3rd United Nations High-Level Conference on Counter-Terrorism in New York on Monday.

Out of the more than 60,000 inhabitants of the camp, Iraq has so far repatriated 1,393 families, comprising 5,569 people, the Iraqi official said.

More than 800 families have been “rehabilitated and integrated” across seven Iraqi governorates, al-Araji said.

Home to more than 10,000 foreigners, including family members of former ISIS fighters, the camp has been described by the United Nations as a “ticking time bomb”, as the overpopulated facilities are home to a significant number of children and teenagers that are at risk of radicalization by the terror group’s sleeper cells.

Al-Araji echoed similar concerns, saying the camp, which is only 13 kilometers away from Iraqi borders, “poses a direct threat to Iraq and the region”.

Following the collapse of the terror group’s self-styled caliphate in 2019 in Syria, thousands of women and children, who were previously under the ISIS-controlled territories, have been accommodated in the camp and other facilities in northeastern Syria.

According to the Iraqi government, the returned families are “rehabilitated” at Jadaa camps in northern Mosul province.

The Iraqi and Kurdistan Region Peshmerga forces territorially defeated the terror group with the support of the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS in 2017.

The three-year fight against the group triggered the displacement of six million Iraqis, per figures from the International Organization for Migration. Still, 1.8 million Iraqi IDPs have not yet returned back to their places of origin.