'Someone's listening': Fear and longing in al-Hol

7 hours ago 35

Al-Hol camp, northeast Syria - Asma Mohammed, a 26-year-old mother of four from Mosul, Iraq, squinted as she braved the last throes of a sandstorm that had engulfed the marketplace in al-Hol camp.

Asma's three-year-old daughter, who has lived all her life in the camp, leaned against her mother. She pulled at the straps of her black hoodie in a vain attempt to shield herself from the dust that settled in her thick, curly hair.

In the stormy haze, a tenacious merchant wrestled with a row of colourful dresses that hung from his makeshift stall as they threatened to blow away.

His neighbour, who had opted to close up shop during the storm and enjoy some tea under the shelter of his corrugated iron roof, looked on in amusement.

With a cheerful disposition at odds with the gloomy surroundings, a teenage boy tried to guide five women to his fruit stand with its neat piles of pomegranates and dried figs.

The women wore niqabs and had come armed with large sunglasses, leaving them impervious to the waves of dust and sand that lashed the merchant as he thrust a selection of fruit in front of them. They had learned how to navigate al-Hol.

The sprawling detention camp, 13km (8 miles) from Syria's border with Iraq, was originally set up for Iraqi refugees fleeing the Gulf War and reopened after 2003 for refugees fleeing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Today, it holds about 40,000 people, mainly women and children displaced by ISIL (ISIS), as well as families of ISIL fighters.

ISIL had captured the area around al-Hol in 2014, eventually expanding to its peak in January 2015 when it controlled an area across Syria and Iraq roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

It lost al-Hol in late 2015 after a monthlong offensive launched by the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which also led the effort to dislodge ISIL from all of its territory by 2019, after which the SDF took over most of the running of the camp.

With the region still reeling from years of war and economic sanctions, the authorities in northeastern Syria have done their best to keep the camp functioning, but the sheer number of detainees has meant it is constantly overcrowded and lacking services.

Many of the camp’s detainees had opted to stay home that dusty day, but Asma decided to brave the elements and take advantage of a less crowded marketplace.

With her four children close by her side, she scanned the underwhelming selection of vegetables on display at a small stall, weighing up what dishes she could muster with the limited options on sale.

Asma’s oldest child, a precocious nine-year-old girl with a red-ribboned headband and a pink tracksuit cradled the youngest child, a cherubic one-year-old girl swaddled in a padded jacket.

She adjusted the hood of her sister's jacket, which had slipped down, causing the toddler to squirm as the dust swirled around her face.

She pulled her little sister towards her chest protectively, drawing a warm nod of approval from her mother.

Asma spends most of her days with her children because she doesn’t feel the education facilities in the camp meet their needs.

As she spoke, her two sons erupted into a spontaneous playfight.

Her expression betrayed a deep melancholy. “It’s difficult to raise children here,” she admitted, her gaze lowered.

The monotony of daily life in the camp, she explained, can often lead to the children fighting and she can find it difficult to control her boys.

On top of that, in her seven years in the camp, Asma has seen prices rise to the point that it is now difficult to buy enough food to feed her growing children.

NGOs distribute daily food rations in al-Hol, but many detainees supplement these ready-made meals and basic ingredients with fresh produce from the market, using money sent by relatives or earned from jobs at the camp’s medical and education facilities operated by NGOs.

Asma's family has lived through the camp's most turbulent period, which saw more than 100 homicides from 2020 to 2022 and left a deep psychological impact on the camp's children, who make up more than half of its population.

In 2021, according to Save the Children, two residents were killed every week, making the camp, per capita, one of the most dangerous places in the world to be a child.

It's a period that Abed, an Iraqi Turkmen welder from Mosul who preferred to give only one name, kept his four children inside their tent at all times.

When Al Jazeera met 39-year-old Abed, he was working under the shelter of the family repair shop on a side street off the market. The shop, cobbled together from pieces of wood and plastic sheeting, services any machinery that camp detainees need fixed.

He guided his adult son, who is in his early 20s, methodically through a complex welding process, the two smiling at each other as they shared a private joke and the howling wind carried their words out of earshot.

Abed picked up a welding torch as his son held a piece of metal in place with a pair of tongs.

He has taught his children his trade, but that, he said, is just so they can “survive day-to-day”, adding that it will not give them the tools to enjoy a full and fulfilling life.

“My children’s future is gone,” Abed said with a hint of bitterness in his voice. “They’ve missed too much school.”

Several aid organisations run education facilities, but suspected ISIL agents have been known to attack them, so Abed feels it is safer to keep his children away until they can go home.

“We had a good life in Mosul. My children went to school, and everything was fine, but now,” he took a deep breath, “too much time has passed.”

“That’s hard to swallow as a parent because school is everything".

On al-Hol’s fringes set away from the camp is the Annex, the most heavily guarded sector holding women and children who are neither Syrian nor Iraqi.

The camp administration feels the families held here are more committed to ISIL ideology and, therefore, are more dangerous.

Too dangerous for foreign journalists to move about in, so Al Jazeera joined an Asayish - Kurdish internal security forces - patrol in an armoured vehicle along the Annex's perimeter.

Enclosed in several layers of fencing littered with waste and plastic bags trapped in the wire mesh and secured with copious amounts of barbed wire, the Annex’s tents sat in clusters surrounded with more plastic and cloth that obscured any movement between the homes in the cluster.

A group of children were playing an improvised game just inside the fence. One child had to try to clamber out of a wheelie bin while the others ran it along barren ground.

They paused when they saw the armoured vehicle go by, half-heartedly throwing rocks at it.

The din of loose sheets on the tents smacking against each other as they flapped in the wind drowned out a discussion between the Asayish and SDF soldiers who operate the camp checkpoints and had motioned for the armoured vehicle to stop.

The Asayish had not radioed ahead to say they would drive around the Annex, so the SDF officer in charge ordered them to halt the patrol. There was simply no way it would be allowed to pass the imposing watchtower that kept an eye on the Annex and the barren expanse beyond.

Back at the camp administration office near an intimidating military barracks, Diana*, who heads security at the Annex, said there are currently about 1,250 families living there.

She underlined that these families could be hostile to outsiders because of their stronger ideological commitment to ISIL than in the rest of the camp.

Some of the women in the Annex, she explained, have tried to hold on to the rules of ISIL’s caliphate, forming a religious police called the Hisbah, which decides, among other things, what women should wear in the camp.

The Hisbah have been known to burn down tents and execute people they deemed to have broken their rules.

It is hard to find some of the Hisbah members, who hide in the network of tents when camp officials visit, and security teams only venture in when they are on a raid.

This can make it easier for the Hisbah to implement their “law and order” without intervention from camp authorities.

One Scandinavian mother of two was particularly infamous for ordering harsh punishments.

She and her children have not been seen for months, which means that she could be hiding from the authorities, but it has also led to fears that she may have either been killed or escaped.

The Asayish started running “security campaigns” throughout al-Hol in 2019, painstakingly searching through the weather-beaten tents to weed out violent actors.

Asma and Abed both said the campaigns made the camp significantly safer. However, the camp administration fears this progress may be upended because of a US freeze on foreign aid.

Camp Director Jihan Hanan is calm as she handles calls and politely issues orders to camp workers and military personnel who burst through the door to the portable cabin she uses as an office.

This demeanour falters as she recalled the sudden announcement by President Donald Trump's administration on January 24 that the US had cut almost all foreign assistance.

"I found out at 1am on January 25,” Hanan said. “Nobody was prepared. Four hundred workers had their employment halted. Deliveries of bread and fuel stopped. Warehouses were left with no guards."

She said several NGOs had to scramble to gather enough supplies and guards to cover the sudden cut in funding.

Contractors like the US organisation Blumont - which provides essentials such as water, bread and kerosene to the camp - were forced to freeze operations for several chaotic days.

The US issued temporary waivers a few days after the suspension, allowing some of the organisations to resume operations.

Blumont notified camp management it will be able to continue its activities until September, but it has had to stop its supply of bread to the camp.

Hanan said the aid cuts have affected NGOs that provide tertiary and emergency medical care to the camp detainees.

She hoped that by the end of March, her team will have a “clearer picture” of what services will be permanently cut.

While camp management is working to find alternative sources of funding, she does not think enough will be found to cover the sheer “volume of services” the US has funded in the past.

Hanan warned that cuts in funding would not have only immediate humanitarian consequences but would also jeopardise security.

“If food and water are cut, there will be frustration among the camp's population,” which could lead to a return to some of the extreme violence that had blighted the camp before, she explained.

Shortages could also trigger the formation of ISIL cells, which are believed to exist both within the camp and throughout the surrounding area, Hanan said.

Aras* the gregarious head of an Asayish unit at the camp, told Al Jazeera he had lost four of his colleagues three months earlier during a routine night patrol. They were ambushed by ISIL agents in a village outside the camp.

His team, he continued as he manoeuvred a Humvee with three masked men operating a gun mounted on the back, has regularly found weapons, including guns and grenades, hidden across the camp during security checks.

Aras said ISIL still has ways to police what is said in the camp. Threats and violence have been reported against those who apply to be repatriated to their home countries, he said.

When Al Jazeera asked Abed if he feared ISIL was operating in the camp, he motioned to a gruff-looking man with an unkempt white beard and a thick leather jacket leaning into the repair shop’s entrance to hear what was being said.

"Someone’s listening ... I’d rather not say anything," he whispered.

Abed is one of the people in al-Hol who hope to be repatriated despite his fear that seven years without school has destroyed what chance his children have of a normal life back in Iraq.

“We’ve got used to it here [in al-Hol], but we need to feel the security of home,” Abed said firmly.

While most of the camp inmates are Syrian or Iraqi, there are more than 40 nationalities there, including Trinidadian and British. Most of the Annex’s residents are from Russia or Central Asia.

Uzbekistan has had a strong record on repatriating its citizens while many, including some European countries, have stifled repatriation efforts, leaving mothers and children to languish in the Annex.

Baghdad has led the most aggressive repatriation strategy with more than a dozen campaigns since ISIL was defeated in 2019.

Hundreds of Iraqis can be repatriated in one campaign and are usually sent to the Al-Jeddah Community Rehabilitation Centre, a camp near Iraq's northern city of Mosul, where they undergo a rehabilitation programme.

Since the suspension of aid to the camp, Baghdad has stepped up repatriations.

Hanan told Al Jazeera that local authorities have been working with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees on a programme that could allow for the voluntary return of some Syrian families but they are waiting for a response from Damascus that could help facilitate such a move.

Not everyone wants to return.

Abu Ali, a jovial shopkeeper from Mosul, told Al Jazeera that until there is a change in government in Baghdad, he has no plans on returning to Iraq with his family.

He will not go back to Iraq while a “Shia alliance” rules the country, he said firmly, as the dozen or so curious onlookers who had piled into his small shop listened.

Having said his piece, he opened the lid of a chest refrigerator, revealing stacks of canned soft drinks, plucked a beverage out and tried to force it into the hands of his interviewer.

"This is typical Iraqi hospitality!" an onlooker said.

Asma said she is hopeful that her family can return to Iraq soon, but fears that her husband could be arrested on his return have stopped them from applying to be repatriated.

She said people in the camp had heard rumours that many of the men are arrested when they arrive in Iraq, "We don't know where they were taken or what is happening to them," she said with a hint of anxiety in her voice.

Amnesty International reported in October that Iraqis had been subjected to torture, ill-treatment and disappearances after being arrested at the Al-Jeddah Community Rehabilitation Centre.

Asma said her family will likely apply in the coming weeks despite their reservations.

"If we go back, this will make us all very happy," she concluded before motioning to her children that it was time to continue their shopping.

* Names have been changed to protect the identity of the individual.