ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Michael “Erik” Kurilla visited Iraq and the Kurdistan Region on Wednesday and urged Iraqi authorities to repatriate their nationals from Kurdish-held camps and prisons housing Islamic State (ISIS) suspects in northeast Syria (Rojava). Kurilla discussed with Iraqi commanders “the importance of returning the Iraqi ISIS detainees from Syrian Democratic Forces guarded detention facilities in Syria and the repatriation, rehabilitation, and reintegration of the thousands of Iraqi citizens at Al Hol Internally Displaced Persons camp,” CENTCOM said in a statement on Thursday. Last week, Iraq’s migration ministry announced that over 700 nationals were repatriated from al-Hol camp in northeast Syria, which houses individuals linked to ISIS. The camp, located in Rojava’s Hasaka province, is notorious for its poor conditions and has been described as a breeding ground for terrorism. “156 Iraqi ISIS detainees were transferred and 3,203 Iraqi citizens were repatriated from Syria to Iraqi soil in 2024,” CENTCOM added. Iraqis and Syrians make up the majority of the 40,000 ISIS-linked individuals held at the camp since the group’s defeat in 2019. During his visit, Kurilla met with senior Iraqi military officials, including Iraqi Army Chief of Staff General Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah and General Kevin Leahy, commander of the US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria. “The leaders discussed the status of the current Defeat-ISIS campaign in Iraq as well as the evolving situation in Syria,” the statement added. ISIS cells exploited the recent chaos in Syria, triggered by a blistering offensive led by Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) against the Bashar al-Assad regime, to launch hit-and-run attacks on the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the Syrian desert, gaining territory. The repatriation of ISIS-linked citizens has sparked opposition in Iraq, with tribes unwilling to accept and welcome people associated with the group that committed heinous human rights abuses and war crimes from 2014 to 2017, when they controlled vast swathes of the country.
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