ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iraq's migration and displacement ministry announced they would repatriate over 200 Islamic State-linked (ISIS) families from Syria's al-Hol camp on Thursday evening, as part of Baghdad's ongoing efforts to empty the notorious facility which Iraq views as a threat to its national security.
“Around 800 Iraqi national individuals will return home from al-Hol camp of Syria this evening,” Ali Abbas, spokesperson for Iraq's Ministry of Migration and Displacement, told Rudaw.
Abbas added they do not know "the exact number until after they arrive because the lists we have are old and numbers could change."
Thursday's repatriation marks the 29th batch of its kind since the Iraqi government started the campaign in 2021, two years after the territorial defeat of ISIS in the neighboring country.
Located in eastern Syria's Hasakah province, al-Hol camp is infamous for its squalid conditions and has been branded a breeding ground for terrorism. Iraqis and Syrians make up the majority of the nearly 40,000 ISIS-linked people who have been held at the camp since the defeat of the group in 2019. There are also people in the camp from around the world who had traveled to join the so-called ISIS caliphate.
Kurdish lawmaker and member of the migration committee in the Iraqi parliament Sherwan Dubardani told Rudaw that those who will be returned Thursday come from Anbar, Nineveh, Salahaddin, and Babil provinces.
The families will be temporarily placed at al-Jadaa camp in Nineveh province, where they will be rehabilitated before being allowed to return to their home communities.
Iraq has repeatedly expressed its serious concerns that al-Hol is a threat to its national security. The camp acts as a “ticking bomb,” to Iraqi national security, Chargé d'Affaires at the Embassy of Iraq in Damascus, Yassin Sharif al-Hujaimi, told Rudaw on Wednesday.
Iraq has recently sent out invitations to all countries that have nationals at the al-Hol camp to attend an international conference in New York next September in a bid to discuss mechanisms to empty and subsequently dismantle the notorious facility.
Iraq has been repatriating its citizens from the camps in groups and providing rehabilitation. Baghdad's aim is to encourage more countries to follow suit.
Other countries, however, remain reluctant to take back their nationals over fears of extremist ideology spreading at home.
Baghdad has set a goal of repatriating all Iraqi citizens from camps in Rojava by 2027.
