HASAKAH, Syria (North Press) – With every murder taking place in Hawl Camp in east of Hasakah, northeast Syria, the voice of the Iraqi refugees is getting louder for speeding up their return to their country before getting killed by the Islamic State Organization (ISIS) sleeper cells.
The Iraqi refugees criticize their government’s slow response over the repatriation process despite claims it has made several times about its will and commitment to return all of them.
Ali Abbas, the spokesperson for the Iraqi Ministry of Immigration, told North Press that the issue of Hawl Camp is very important, and that the ministry and government have paid great attention to it, as it contains approximately 31,000 Iraqis.
“Those who are affiliated with ISIS will be taken care of by security and judicial institutions. As for those who have not been proven to have any security risks or link to ISIS, they will be returned to their areas based on a certain mechanism,” Abbas said in a statement to North Press.
The Hawl Camp, about 40 kilometers east of Hasakah, is a house for 56.775 individuals, most of them are Iraqis. It also contains thousands of internally displaced Syrians.
The number of the wives and children of foreign ISIS fighters and detainees is estimated at thousands, and they live in special sectors inside the camp
Since the beginning of 2022, the camp has witnessed 18 murder cases, 8 Iraqis and 10 Syrians, including a paramedic who worked for the Kurdish Red Crescent, and most of them were killed with firearms, according to a security source in the camp.
During 2021, the camp recorded 93 murders, the majority of which were Iraqi refugees, making it the highest number recorded in one year since the camp was established.
On March 7, an Iraqi delegation visited northeast Syria with the aim of returning more Iraqi refugees who reside in the camp.
“I asked them to expedite our return to our homeland, where there is safety, unlike the camp,” an Iraqi refugee, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told North Press.
“Our conditions here are very bad in all respects,” he added, while covering his face with a scarf fearing to be recognized by ISIS sleeper cells that target anyone who gives statements to the media.
We want to go back
In his exclusive statement to North Press, Abbas said that 500 families could be transferred from the camp to Iraq.
But up until now, no mechanism has been reached for the implementation of this process.
This is because during that period in March the Interior Minister of Iraq, Othman al-Ghanimi, was assigned the tasks of the Ministry of Migration and Displacement, after the former minister, Evan Gabro, became a member of the Iraqi parliament.
Though Abbas stressed his country’s commitment to return all its citizens from the camp, the vice-president of the Department of Foreign Relations in the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) Fanar al-Gait told North Press that the “bureaucratic” procedures and some of Iraq’s interior issues have delayed the repatriation process.
Speaking of killings in the camp, on May 30, the Internal Security Forces of North and East Syria (Asayish) found a decapitated body of a woman dumped in a valley between the second and third sectors of the camp.
During the years of 2019 and 2020, the Iraqi government stopped receiving its nationals amid pressure from Iraqi tribal leaders who accused these returnees of being ISIS members, according to refugees in the camp.
However, after pressure from the US-led Global Coalition and coordination between the AANES and the Iraqi government, the return-trips resumed during 2021.
Since mid-2021, three return-trips took place. The trips included 335 families, numbering 1.375 individuals, according to the IDPs and refugees office of the AANES.
Slow response
An Iraqi refugee from al-Adhamiyah neighborhood in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, begged her country’s government “to have mercy on us and return us to our country.”
“When night comes, we ask Allah to forgive us as it could be our last night in the tent. It’s a paralyzing horror, seriously. We ask them [the Iraqi government] to have mercy on us and take us back.”
The woman arrived in the camp after the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in cooperation with the US-led Global Coalition, took control of the last ISIS enclave in the town of Bagouz in east of Deir ez-Zor in March 2019.
The refugee lives with her grandson in a tent after his father was killed and his mother left him.
They live in the third sector of the camp, which is designated for Iraqis, making her fears of getting killed even worse, as Iraqis are repeatedly targeted there.
Sheikhmous Ahmad, co-chair of IDPs and Refugees Affairs of the AANES, said that there was a plan to take back about five thousand Iraqis from Hawl Camp. However, “The Iraqi government’s response was very slow, and only few hundreds of Iraqis were taken back.”
The official attributed the reason for this slowdown to “internal Iraqi disputes over the issue, and the refusal of the Iraqi armed forces and some tribal leaders to return the camp-based Iraqis to their country.”
“We can’t live in this camp; you see nothing but fear, horror, hunger, fatigue and anguish,” said another Iraqi refugee who also lives in the third sector, describing her miserable condition in the camp.
“We want our government to get us out of this situation. At night, I watch over my family while they’re asleep,” she added.