Baghouz, the last bastion of the Islamic State (IS) organization in south-eastern Syria, had not yet fallen under the assault of Kurdish forces and the international coalition, in March 2019, that, already, a new reduced caliphate was reconstituted elsewhere.
300 kilometers to the north, in the Al-Hol displaced persons camp, cattle trucks poured out ghostly figures by the thousands: emaciated old men, women covered in long black niqabs stained with mud, dragging swarms of ragged children with their features. drawn by hunger and lack of sleep, with a gaze haunted by death. In the crowd, French jihadists, separated from their husbands and relatives killed in combat or imprisoned, then swore: “From here the caliphate will live and perpetuate itself!” “
Their prediction did not fail. This closed camp in northeastern Syria, where nearly 65,000 people are still crammed behind high barbed wire – 53% of whom are children under the age of 12, according to the United Nations – has turned into fertile ground for radicalization.
In a landlocked region, located between the border strip under Turkish occupation and areas controlled by the Syrian regime, where international aid is trickling through the Iraqi border, the Kurdish autonomous administration must manage alone. those whom no one wants: 30,000 Iraqis, 24,000 Syrians and more than 10,000 others of 57 different nationalities, including Europeans that their country refuses to welcome, in Al-Hol; a few thousand other women and children in the Roj camp; and 11,000 IS fighters, including 1,700 foreigners, held in dying prisons.
Beheadings and escapes
When it is not the fires caused by the stoves which come to mow down an entire family in a tent, it is the settling of scores, beheadings, guard attacks and escapes that punctuate life in Al-Hol. Since January, at least 31 killings by sharp object or firearm have been recorded, according to Jaber Cheikh Moustafa, a Kurdish official in the camp. “We believe that Daesh cells are behind these murders (…), which occur mainly in the section reserved for Iraqis and Syrians ”, he told Agence France-Presse (AFP). At the end of February, the organization Médecins sans frontières (MSF) announced the suspension of its activities after the murder of one of its local employees and his family, and of a fire which injured three others and killed the child. of one of them.
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