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Al-Hol Administrator to Asharq Al-Awsat: Dismantling the Most Dangerous Camp in the World Needs Years

Asharq Al-Awsat Tours Al-Baghouz, the Final ISIS Stronghold Before Its Fall in Eastern Syria

Jinan Hanan, Co-Chair of the Al-Hol Camp administration (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jinan Hanan, Co-Chair of the Al-Hol Camp administration (Asharq Al-Awsat)
    Al-Hol Camp (Northern Syria) - Kamal Sheikho
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Al-Hol Administrator to Asharq Al-Awsat: Dismantling the Most Dangerous Camp in the World Needs Years

Jinan Hanan, Co-Chair of the Al-Hol Camp administration (Asharq Al-Awsat)
Jinan Hanan, Co-Chair of the Al-Hol Camp administration (Asharq Al-Awsat)

Located near the Syrian-Iraqi border and east of Syria’s Al-Hasakah governorate, Al-Hol is the largest camp for displaced people who fled after Kurdish-led forces backed by a US-led coalition dislodged ISIS fighters from their last scrap of territory in Syria in 2019.

Al-Hol is overpopulated with thousands of residents, including relatives of suspected terrorists currently held in prisons run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), displaced Syrians, and Iraqi refugees.

This camp, which also hosts foreigners from 54 Arab and Western nationals, has turned into a hotbed for crime.

Al-Hol has witnessed hundreds of slayings and has become notorious for high levels of violence and the spread of extremism among its residents.

“Taking the camp apart needs years,” Jinan Hanan, Co-Chair of Al-Hol’s administration, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

According to Hanan, around 51,500 residents are currently living at Al-Hol. They include approximately 26,000 Iraqi refugees and 18,000 displaced Syrians.

Hanan also revealed that over 7,700 residents currently occupy the section for foreign females at Al-Hol.

Confirming that Al-Hol has become the “most dangerous camp in the world,” Hanan said that over 150 killings had occurred there over four years.

“Last year alone, 36 murders took place, apart from torture, assault, escape, and constant threats.”

Hanan added that maintaining security at Al-Hol is a thorny and complex issue due to the camp’s extensive size spanning over three square kilometers.

“The role of security forces is limited to protecting and monitoring the entrances and exits of the camp and its main gates,” said Hanan, adding that they also “conduct mobile patrols inside Al-Hol.”

The administrator, however, noted that the camp does not have fixed security centers.

Hanan also said that Al-Hol’s administration is working to secure the camp’s residents with humble means.

“We do not have advanced modern equipment, and we do not have the capabilities to increase the number of security personnel,” she said.

“Despite the security campaigns, the camp continues to witness security incidents and frequent breaches,” she added.

Hanan revealed that there is high-level coordination between the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES) and the Iraqi government to send back refugees in Syrian camps under the supervision of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

She also shed light on many Western and Arab governments not yet taking the initiative to inquire about the fate of their nationals and citizens at Al-Hol.

“There are European and Western countries that are dodging the return of all their citizens residing in the camp,” said Hanan.

Hanan emphasized that getting rid of Al-Hol requires years, strict international decisions, and vigorous efforts to convince the governments of countries with nationals living in the camp of needing to take them back.

“In my opinion, we need five or six years to dismantle the Al-Hol camp completely,” she said.

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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
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Winter Is Hitting Gaza and Many Palestinians Have Little Protection from the Cold

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)
Reda Abu Zarada, 50, displaced from Jabaliya in northern Gaza, warms up by a fire with her grandchildren at a camp in Khan Younis, Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2024. (AP)

Winter is hitting the Gaza Strip and many of the nearly 2 million Palestinians displaced by the devastating 14-month war with Israel are struggling to protect themselves from the wind, cold and rain.

There is a shortage of blankets and warm clothing, little wood for fires, and the tents and patched-together tarps families are living in have grown increasingly threadbare after months of heavy use, according to aid workers and residents.

Shadia Aiyada, who was displaced from the southern city of Rafah to the coastal area of Muwasi, has only one blanket and a hot water bottle to keep her eight children from shivering inside their fragile tent.

“We get scared every time we learn from the weather forecast that rainy and windy days are coming up because our tents are lifted with the wind. We fear that strong windy weather would knock out our tents one day while we’re inside,” she said.

With nighttime temperatures that can drop into the 40s (the mid-to-high single digits Celsius), Aiyada fears that her kids will get sick without warm clothing.

When they fled their home, her children only had their summer clothes, she said. They have been forced to borrow some from relatives and friends to keep warm.

The United Nations warns of people living in precarious makeshift shelters that might not survive the winter. At least 945,000 people need winterization supplies, which have become prohibitively expensive in Gaza, the UN said in an update Tuesday. The UN also fears infectious disease, which spiked last winter, will climb again amid rising malnutrition.

The UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees, known as UNRWA, has been planning all year for winter in Gaza, but the aid it was able to get into the territory is “not even close to being enough for people,” said Louise Wateridge, an agency spokeswoman.

UNRWA distributed 6,000 tents over the past four weeks in northern Gaza but was unable to get them to other parts of the Strip, including areas where there has been fighting. About 22,000 tents have been stuck in Jordan and 600,000 blankets and 33 truckloads of mattresses have been sitting in Egypt since the summer because the agency doesn’t have Israeli approval or a safe route to bring them into Gaza and because it had to prioritize desperately needed food aid, Wateridge said.

Many of the mattresses and blankets have since been looted or destroyed by the weather and rodents, she said.

The International Rescue Committee is struggling to bring in children’s winter clothing because there “are a lot of approvals to get from relevant authorities,” said Dionne Wong, the organization’s deputy director of programs for the occupied Palestinian territories.

“The ability for Palestinians to prepare for winter is essentially very limited,” Wong said.

The Israeli government agency responsible for coordinating aid shipments into Gaza said in a statement that Israel has worked for months with international organizations to prepare Gaza for the winter, including facilitating the shipment of heaters, warm clothing, tents and blankets into the territory.

More than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. The ministry's count doesn't distinguish between civilians and combatants, but it has said more than half of the fatalities are women and children. The Israeli military says it has killed more than 17,000 militants, without providing evidence.

The war was sparked by Hamas’ October 2023 attack on southern Israel, where the armed group killed 1,200 people and took 250 hostages in Gaza.

Negotiators say Israel and Hamas are inching toward a ceasefire deal, which would include a surge in aid into the territory.

For now, the winter clothing for sale in Gaza's markets is far too expensive for most people to afford, residents and aid workers said.

Reda Abu Zarada, 50, who was displaced from northern Gaza with her family, said the adults sleep with the children in their arms to keep them warm inside their tent.

“Rats walk on us at night because we don’t have doors and tents are torn. The blankets don’t keep us warm. We feel frost coming out from the ground. We wake up freezing in the morning,” she said. “I’m scared of waking up one day to find one of the children frozen to death.”

On Thursday night, she fought through knee pain exacerbated by cold weather to fry zucchini over a fire made of paper and cardboard scraps outside their tent. She hoped the small meal would warm the children before bed.

Omar Shabet, who is displaced from Gaza City and staying with his three children, feared that lighting a fire outside his tent would make his family a target for Israeli warplanes.

“We go inside our tents after sunset and don’t go out because it is very cold and it gets colder by midnight,” he said. “My 7-year-old daughter almost cries at night because of how cold she is.”