The al-Hawlrefugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from Islamic State group-occupied territory. It is controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. As of April 2019, the camp's population was 74,000 having grown from 10,000 at the beginning of the year. The refugees are women and children of many countries primarily from Syria and Iraq.
While at the beginning of 2019 the camp held about 10,000 people its size increased dramatically with the collapse of ISIS. By April 2019, the camp's population was estimated at 74,000. An estimate in September 2019 indicated that the camp held about 20,000 women and 50,000 children from the former ISIL caliphate guarded by 400 SDF militia fighters.
Administration and conditions in the camp
In the context of the Syrian Civil War and the takeover of al-Hawl by the SDF, the camp, alongside the Ayn Issa refugee camp has become a center for refugees from the fighting between the SDF and ISIL during the SDF campaign in Deir ez-Zor and the camp held approximately 10,000 refugees in early December 2018. In April 2018, a typhoid outbreak killed 24 people in the camp. During the Battle of Baghuz Fawqani in December 2018, the camp saw a massive influx of refugees in a series of massive civilian evacuations, with people fleeing the fierce fighting between the SDF and ISIL. Conditions along the road to the camp, including in screening centers for ISIL operatives, have been described as "extremely harsh" with limited food, water, shelter and no health services. As of 4 February 2019, at least 35 children and newborns had also reportedly died either en route or shortly after arriving in the camp, mostly due to hypothermia. Aid organizations feared dysentery and other diseases could break out from the overflowing camp. The UN stated that 84 people, mostly children, died on the way to al-Hawl since December 2018. Families of Daesh fighters are kept at a separate guarded section of the camp after repeated violent incidents between them and other members of the camp. In February 2019, Zehra Duman, an Australian who married an Australian jihadi fighter shortly after her arrival, told her mother she and her two young children were living in the camp. She told her mother that there was a terrible shortage of food, and she feared her six-month-old daughter would starve to death. In early 2019, pregnant British citizen and former ISIL member Shamima Begum was found in the al-Hawl camp. Her newborn son died within weeks of birth. In March 2019, the former American citizen and former ISIL member Hoda Muthana and her 18-month-old son were also reported to be living in the camp. At least 100 people have died during the trip, or shortly after arriving at the camp since December 2018. In April 2019, women and girls at the camp told a female journalist, "Convert, convert!" urging her to recite the shahada. They told her, "If you became Muslim and cover like us and became a member of our religion, you would not be killed". Many of them prayed for the caliphate of ISIL to return. The women justified the genocide of Yazidis by ISIL and ISIL's taking of Yazidi sex slaves. An Iraqi woman said, "If they don't convert to Islam and they don't become Muslim like us and worship Allah, then they deserve it." In a report published in April 2019, BBC journalist Quentin Sommerville described the camp as "an overflowing vessel of anger and unanswered questions," where some women "cling to their hate-fuelled ideology, others beg for a way out - a way home." Quentin quoted a Moroccan-Belgian woman, a former nurse who grabbed her niqab saying: "This is my choice. In Belgium I couldn't wear my niqab - this is my choice. Every religion did something wrong, show us the good." The woman saw there was no need to apologise for the IS attack in Brussels in 2016 and blamed the West and its air-strikes on Baghouz for their dire conditions. A report in the Washington Post from September 2019 describes the increased radicalization within the camp where conditions are dismal, security lax, and people who do not follow ISIS ideology live in fear. Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations the US Deputy Defense SecretaryMichael Mulroy stated that many of the children in the camp are learning the ways and beliefs of ISIL and that he believes that they have only one view and one philosophy at the camp. He also claimed that if the international community doesn't come up with a way to rehabilitate them and reintegrate them into society, that he believes it would be the next generation of ISIL. "We need to pick one. We need to fund it. And we need to do something," he said. "If we don't do it as an international community, not just the United States, it's a problem that our kids will be dealing with." On 28 November 2019, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent announced that over 36,000 of the camp's inhabitants had received aid from the organization at clinics established in the camp and via a mobile medical team there.
Repatriation
Repatriation is difficult as many camp residents have become radicalized and pose a potential threat to their home country. Sommerville indicated that "western governments prevaricate" or may not have plans to take people back.
