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Syria camp is at risk of falling under ISIS control, Kurdish general says
Source: Washington Post
Syria camp is at risk of falling under ISIS control, Kurdish general says
By Liz Sly
Oct. 4, 2019 at 4:14 p.m. EDT
BEIRUT — America’s Syrian Kurdish allies are at risk of losing control of the vast camp where the families of the Islamic State’s defeated fighters are being detained as militant women increasingly assert their dominance over the camp, according to the top Kurdish military commander.
Guards at the al-Hol camp in eastern Syria are failing to contain the increasingly violent behavior of some of the residents, and the flimsy perimeter is at risk of being breached unless the international community steps in with more assistance, said the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Kobane, who uses a nom de guerre and is known simply as Mazloum.
“There is a serious risk in al-Hol. Right now, our people are able to guard it. But because we lack resources, Daesh are regrouping and reorganizing in the camp,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “We can’t control them 100 percent, and the situation is grave.”
The al-Hol camp houses around 70,000 people, most of them women and children who were displaced by the war against the Islamic State. A majority of those are ordinary civilians caught up in the fighting who have no relationship to the militants, and more than half are children.
But as many as 30,000 are Islamic State loyalists, including the most die-hard radicals who chose to remain in the group’s self-declared caliphate until the final battle for the village of Baghouz this year, Mazloum said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in the Syrian province of Hasakah.
-snip-
By Liz Sly
Oct. 4, 2019 at 4:14 p.m. EDT
BEIRUT — America’s Syrian Kurdish allies are at risk of losing control of the vast camp where the families of the Islamic State’s defeated fighters are being detained as militant women increasingly assert their dominance over the camp, according to the top Kurdish military commander.
Guards at the al-Hol camp in eastern Syria are failing to contain the increasingly violent behavior of some of the residents, and the flimsy perimeter is at risk of being breached unless the international community steps in with more assistance, said the head of the Syrian Democratic Forces, Gen. Mazloum Kobane, who uses a nom de guerre and is known simply as Mazloum.
“There is a serious risk in al-Hol. Right now, our people are able to guard it. But because we lack resources, Daesh are regrouping and reorganizing in the camp,” he said, using the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State. “We can’t control them 100 percent, and the situation is grave.”
The al-Hol camp houses around 70,000 people, most of them women and children who were displaced by the war against the Islamic State. A majority of those are ordinary civilians caught up in the fighting who have no relationship to the militants, and more than half are children.
But as many as 30,000 are Islamic State loyalists, including the most die-hard radicals who chose to remain in the group’s self-declared caliphate until the final battle for the village of Baghouz this year, Mazloum said in a telephone interview from his headquarters in the Syrian province of Hasakah.
-snip-
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/militant-women-poised-to-take-control-of-isis-camp-syrian-kurdish-general-says/2019/10/04/72985c18-e5ff-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html