In the desert in Syria’s northeastern al-Hasakah province lies al-Hawl, an isolated village that until recently, hosted a de facto detention camp filled with tens of thousands of people, mostly women and children, all with alleged ties to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). Many had no direct connection to ISIS but had lived in areas under its control—grounds used to justify their detention. After years of stigmatization and the confinement of its inhabitants, the camp is now formally closed, with its former inhabitants facing a humanitarian crisis.
The collapse of the al-Hawl camp was not a sudden event, but rather a direct consequence of political decisions made years ago by the United States and several European countries which confined a mix of displaced civilians who were living in formerly ISIS-controlled areas and the family members of former combatants into this vast open-air prison, while the combatants were imprisoned in a different detention center. After the defeat of ISIS in 2019, the camp was generally administered by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and received aid from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). At least 64,000 people displaced by the war against ISIS in Syria and Iraq were moved to al-Hawl despite never being formally charged with any crimes.
Living conditions in the camp, where 95 percent of inhabitants were women and children, were already dire, but cuts to humanitarian aid by the United States made things significantly worse, reducing access to healthcare, education, and clean drinking water. European countries followed the same policy of abandonment, reducing humanitarian aid and denying the repatriation of women and children in the camp, forcing them to live in conditions where their fundamental rights were not guaranteed. This left thousands of people stateless and trapped indefinitely in a legal limbo. As a result, al-Hawl went from being a temporary camp to the equivalent of a detention center without trials, rights, or the prospect of release.
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Women and children gather against the fence of the foreign detainees’ section, January 21, 2026. Some asked for help, while others shouted insults at Syrian Army soldiers.
At the beginning of this year, al-Hawl held 24,000 people, including about 6,000 third-country nationals who had traveled since 2013 to Syria and Iraq to support ISIS. In January, fighting across northeastern Syria between the Syrian Army—composed of the Islamist militant groups that defeated Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024—and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) caused the camp to reach a structural and social breaking point. The inhabitants, who had long awaited their release, saw their captors preparing to withdraw and some began planning their escapes.
The new Syrian Army of Ahmed al-Sharaa, the former leader of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham who helped overthrow Bashar al-Assad in December 2024, assumed “security responsibilities" over al-Hawl in January with the support of the U.S. government. One month later, the camp was empty; many of its inhabitants had either fled or been evacuated by the Syrian government or ISIS militants.
When I visited the camp in January, the day after the Syrian Army took control, it was still inhabited by thousands of people, but it was gradually emptying. The road leading to al-Hawl from the south was lined with destroyed military vehicles, riddled with tank tracks, and controlled with checkpoints staffed by soldiers. Convoys heading north filled the highway, their pickup trucks packed with Syrian Army soldiers and Arab tribal militia members ready to fight the SDF.
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A combat vehicle lies in the middle of the road between al-Hawl and al-Shadadi villages, January 21, 2026.
Al-Hawl was established by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in 1991 for Iraqi refugees during the Gulf War, and then later reopened following the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 in order to house 15,000 people. The camp was administered by the United Nations, in cooperation with Bashar al-Assad’s government, until around 2015, when the SDF started gaining control of the region. The camp’s population substantially increased in 2019 after the territorial defeat of ISIS during the Syrian civil war, when the SDF repurposed the camp to house people suspected of having ties to ISIS. When the United States drastically reduced its military presence in Syria beginning in 2019, SDF forces were left to manage the camp without sufficient resources, political backing, or a long-term strategy. The camp survived largely due to the assistance of international humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations.
The plan for the al-Hawl’s inhabitants was for repatriation and social reintegration. But these initiatives failed, mainly because no country accepted citizens who had participated in the caliphate. The SDF also created rehabilitation programs for members of ISIS and their families that were intended as a means of deradicalizing the population.
Life in the camp was unbearable. For many, it became an endless wait to return home. The Trump Administration’s cuts to funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) in 2025 blocked international initiatives aimed at repatriating foreign nationals detained in al-Hawl and left the camp vulnerable to a gradual economic decline due to its reliance on aid.
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Women and children gather against the fence of the foreign detainees’ section, January 21, 2026. Some asked for help, while others shouted insults at Syrian Army soldiers.
This deterioration—combined with years of stigmatization, social marginalization, and resentment over inhumane living conditions among refugees who used to live under ISIS control—created an environment conducive to the spread of radical ideology and ISIS recruitment. Although the organization was defeated, it was never completely dismantled and has continued to operate in cells hidden in northeastern Syria, where the war against ISIS took place.
But Ahmad, a humanitarian worker who asked to be identified by a pseudonym for personal safety reasons, explains that ISIS now “lacks social support” in the region. He adds: “ISIS’s ideology is far too extremist, and they never addressed the people’s problems: no services, no education, no jobs.”
Alexander McKeever, a Damascus-based researcher from the City University of New York, explains that “there is a risk that ISIS’s insurgent capabilities could grow in this context [of uncertainty and chaos] due to the Syrian government’s limited capacity,” referring to security gaps in northeastern Syria and throughout the country. However, he adds, “a resurgence like the organization’s 2014 peak, when it controlled large parts of Syria and Iraq, remains quite unlikely.”
On the other hand, McKeever says, ISIS poses a “real threat to [civilian] Syrians and Kurds of terrorist attacks targeting public places,” as well as “the possibility that [ISIS] may attempt to attack former SDF administrators and officials in retaliation,” for defeating the group and administering the camp.
In January, after nearly a year of failed negotiations, the Syrian Army swept across the northeastern part of the country, taking control of territory held by the SDF. As many Arab members of the SDF defected to join tribal armed groups and abandoned their guard posts at the gates of al-Hawl, questions mounted over the fate of the camp. On January 20, the SDF ultimately deserted the camp to prioritize other strategic military positions across the northeast, leaving a power void.
“Camp residents took advantage of the security vacuum to attack the civil administration center and humanitarian organization offices,” says Cihan Hanan, former civilian director under Kurdish administration of the camp. Along with the other camp’s Kurdish employees, she says, “We had to evacuate immediately.”
“During this window of chaos, many residents escaped or were evacuated by relatives who came with the [tribal] militias,” explains Mohammad, another humanitarian worker employed at the camp identified by a pseudonym for reasons of personal safety. Once the SDF left, “individuals started to flee by 300 to 400 hundred a day,” he adds.
Once the Syrian Army took control of al-Hawl camp and the surrounding areas in January, residents demanded to return to their homes, mainly in eastern Syria and western Iraq, after years of de facto detention and poor living conditions, including a lack of food, medicine, and basic health care.
The day after the Syrian Army reached al-Hawl, hundreds of people crowded against the camp’s fences. Children and teenagers tried to climb, while men and women argued with their new guards, demanding to be released. A man wearing a red keffiyeh pleaded desperately: “We want to leave, there’s no food, no water.” The camp’s security guard replied apologetically, “We can’t do anything. We have orders to wait and not let anyone out.” Beside him, a woman dressed in a black niqab addressed the same guard, and any other security guards approaching the fence, shouting from inside: “We will kill you as infidels when we get out of here.”
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People crowd at the Syrian and Iraqi entrance to al-Hawl camp, demanding to be released, January 21, 2026.
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Women and children gather against the fence of the foreign detainees’ section, January 21, 2026. Some asked for help, while others shouted insults at Syrian Army soldiers.
Syrian Army soldiers warned people not to jump the fence and deployed riot-control forces to contain the unrest. Columns of smoke of an unknown origin rose between tattered tents inside the camp. A group of young men climbed onto office rooftops to celebrate the SDF withdrawal.
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Syrian Army riot control units deployed to contain an internal protest at the Syrian and Iraqi entrance to al-Hawl camp, where detainees were demanding to be released, January 21, 2026.
A single pickup truck blocked the entrance gate to the camp, guarded by two armed soldiers. Inside the fence, girls in niqabs curiously observed their new guards. Families slowly began to exit through holes in the fence in areas of the camp away from the front entryway. Amid the chaos, some soldiers patrolled the area while others were preparing tea over makeshift fires, awaiting instructions. One military police officer explains: “We haven’t been able to enter the camp, but unrest broke out and people attacked administrative offices and humanitarian centers.”
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A Syrian Army soldier guards the gate of the foreign detainees’ section of al-Hawl camp, January 21, 2026.
Women, teenagers, and children ran through the tents toward the fence of the muhajirat (female migrants) section, which housed third-country nationals, to talk with members of the press who were standing on the other side of the fence. Women from more than forty countries—including from Europe, Asia, and the United States—lived there with their children, many born in the camp, whose countries refused to repatriate them due to their alleged extremist links, leaving them in a legal limbo of statelessness.
“We want the government to release us; we want security, stability, and respect,” Fatima, a forty-two-year-old originally from the Syrian town of Baghouz bordering Iraq, tells me through the fence.
Another group of women approached me timidly. Among them was Umbara, a twenty-year-old who was a young child when she arrived at the camp in 2019. Her family was among the thousands who had traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the ISIS caliphate at the height of its power in 2013. “We want to return to Bosnia, but we also like Syria,” she said. “I have no dreams. I don’t feel anything.”
Next to her stood Omm Ali, a forty-three-year-old Moroccan woman whose son had been taken by the SDF when he was fifteen years old to a rehabilitation center aimed at rooting out ISIS ideology—a common procedure at the camp. “[Elsewhere a mother can be] happy watching her children grow. We feel sadness,” she said. “There’s no education here; children just pass the time until they’re arrested when they grow up.”
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A woman moves from one section of al-Hawl camp to another, January 21, 2026.
Less than a month after the Syrian Army reached the camp, the UNHCR announced it was suspending operations at al-Hawl after camp inhabitants pelted stones at UNHCR workers and its building. By then, only a handful of residents remained with deserted and destroyed tents all around. Several residents escaped with assistance from individuals wearing uniforms of government forces, according to eyewitnesses.
Within weeks, the camp was empty. Most inhabitants fled; about 1,500 Syrian families were evacuated by the Syrian government to the Akhtarin displacement camp north of Aleppo. According to Mohammad, Egyptian fighters allied with Syrian government forces reportedly transferred many foreigners from the camp to the Syrian city of Idlib or the nearby country of Turkey, leaving their whereabouts uncertain.
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Soldiers guard a gap in the fence around al-Hawl camp while several families exit through it without difficulty, January 21, 2026.
The SDF’s retreat was marked, in part, by bitterness over the fact that, as part of the international coalition against ISIS, the United States did little to prevent the situation in the camp from worsening.
Since returning to the presidency, Donald Trump has engaged with the transitional government led by al-Sharaa. The U.S. President initiated his outreach to the new government in Damascus by easing economic sanctions on Syria. Despite crises such as massacres of Alawites in the coastal region and the Druze in Suwayda, in November 2025 Trump received al-Sharaa at the White House and shook the former Al-Qaeda member’s hand.
At the same time, Washington has been pushing for the integration of the Kurdish-administered regions into the rest of Syria. In March 2025, Syria’s transitional government and the SDF signed the first agreement that placed northeast Syria under the Syrian government’s control. The subsequent collapse of those agreements led tensions to explode in January of this year, beginning with the Syrian Army’s first military operation against the SDF in Aleppo.
During the Syrian civil war, the international coalition against ISIS centered on the U.S.-SDF alliance in the northeast. After the territorial defeat of ISIS in 2019, the U.S. government justified maintaining bases and troops as necessary to contain the persistent threat of the group’s resurgence. But Assad’s fall shifted strategic priorities in Trump’s view, appearing to render the tactical alliance with the SDF obsolete. Al-Sharaa has now joined Trump’s international coalition to fight ISIS as part of a broader security strategy in the Middle East.
A lingering question remains: What will happen to the families released from al-Hawl? Many of whom view the Kurds as their sworn enemies and distrust the authorities in Damascus. While some countries have begun to slowly repatriate citizens, an uncertain future for these families is unfolding within Syria’s fragile, tense landscape.