Al-Hawl Refugee Camp

The al-Hawl refugee camp (also al-Hol refugee 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 the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.

As of February 2021, the camp's population was more than 60,000 having grown from 10,000 at the beginning of 2019 after the SDF took the last of the Islamic State's territory in Syria in the Battle of Baghuz Fawqani. The refugees are women and children from many countries, primarily Syria and Iraq.

Background

The camp was originally established for Iraqi refugees in early 1991, during the Gulf war, and was later reopened after the 2003 invasion of Iraq as one of three camps at the Iraqi–Syrian border.

Demographics

While at the beginning of 2019 the camp held about 10,000 people its size increased dramatically with the collapse of ISIS. By February 2021, the camp's population was estimated at more than 60,000. An estimate in September 2019 indicated that the camp held about 20,000 women and 50,000 children from the former Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) 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 (your body and face) 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
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