13 countries repatriate 515 ISIS nationals form NE Syria in 2022 – AANES
QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Department of Foreign Relations of Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) announced on Thursday handing over 515 children and women of Islamic State Organization (ISIS) member families to 13 different countries in 2022.
This came in a statement released in a press conference held in the department’s headquarter in the city of Qamishli, northeastern Syria.
Tajikistan was on the top of the list of the countries in the number of the repatriations with 146 repatriated nationals, followed by France with 109 ones, Russia with 68, Netherlands with 60 ones and Germany with 53 repatriated nationals.
Thousands of ISIS militants’ wives and children are held in both Hawl camp and Roj camp.
Hawl Camp, 45 km east of the city of Hasakah, is a house for 55.829 individuals, including 28.725 Iraqis, 18.850 Syrians and 8.254 of foreign nationalities, according to the latest statistics obtained by North Press.
Roj camp, northeast Syria, is a house for 806 families, including 2.800 individuals of Arabs and foreigners, mostly women and children of ISIS members who hail from 62 countries, according to previous report published by North Press.
The department’s activities in regional and international forums have increased “amid significant diplomatic opening politically, securely and humanitarianly,” the statement read.
The department carried out visits to different countries in Asia, Middle East and Europe during 2022, holding hundreds of meetings with civilian figures and institutions, governments and parties to introduce AANES project and expose Turkish attacks on its-held areas, according to the release.
Turkey keeps carrying out attacks and violations on AANES-held areas, as the last of which was attacking large swaths of the region and threatening to launch a ground military operation against it.
Since November 20, 2022, the Turkish air force has launched intense airstrikes on all AANES-held areas on the Syrian-Turkish border in addition to bombarding areas that are more than 40 km away from the border such as US-led Global Coalition military base and Hawl Camp and the village of Makman in the northern countryside of Deir ez-Zor.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan revealed on Nov. 21 that there were talks with parties to the conflict of Syria to carry out a ground operation on northern Syria.
In addition, the release pointed out that the AANES insists on supporting intra-Syrian dialogue.
Although some Russian-brokered meetings were held between the ANNES and Syrian government, they “have not yet to fruit,” the Department of Foreign Relations added.
Recently, the Turkish president has started mentioning a possible meeting with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is possible.
“There is no resentment in politics. Sooner or later, we can take steps,” Erdogan said.
However, silence was broken in the Syrian capital Damascus, as it has been emerged that al-Assad has rejected a Russian-brokered bid to reconcile al-Assad with Erdogan.