A counter-terrorism expert from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Ido Levy, told Rudaw’s Roj Eli Zalla that those affiliated to the militant group are still perceived as a security threat.
“Even if they don’t want to continue doing terrorist activities, they still have the ideology and radicalize everyone around them”, he said.
“That’s why counties like France, Germany and UK are reluctant to take their citizens back”, Levy added, referring to the failure of Western countries to repatriate their citizens still detained in northeast Syria (Rojava).
“Most people of al-Hol are from Iraq and there are tens of thousands of them, to repatriate all of them at once obviously would be impossible,” Levy said. Iraqis have made up more than half of the population of al-Hol camp in Rojava’s Hasaka province for years. The camp houses over 50,000 residents, most of which are wives and children of ISIS fighters.
“A lot of times they come back, they are sent to camps and processed and sent back. It’s a very complicated process.”
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) arrested thousands of ISIS fighters and their wives and children when they took control of the group's last stronghold in Syria in March 2019.
Al-Hol camp has been branded a breeding ground for ISIS and described as a "ticking time bomb" by Kurdish and Iraqi authorities.
The US has backed the SDF and has reiterated its commitment to fighting ISIS in both Iraq and Syria. Levy noted that the US is still determined to continue in the fight but is faced with other pressing matters such as the war in Ukraine and the rise of China as a global power.
“We also see that this administration wants to cut back its involvement in foreign conflicts, the withdrawal of Afghanistan is the clearest indication of this”, said Levy.
