Although COVID-19 could push the camp to the brink, there is still time to get a head of the pandemic before it hits.
It was just over a year ago, in March of 2019, that the United States and coalition forces declared the territorial defeat of ISIS following the fall of its last stronghold in Baghouz, Syria. Male fighters over 15 were placed in Kurdish-run detention centers throughout northeast Syria, while tens of thousands of women and children who were living among the terrorist organization streamed into the al-Hol camp, giving rise to an unprecedented mix of humanitarian and security challenges. If left unaddressed, the camp could easily serve as the breeding ground for the next generation of ISIS, which is already beginning to reemerge in parts of Syria and Iraq.
Women who fled the Islamic State’s last areas of control in Syria at the Al Hol camp in northern Syria on March 28, 2019. Most of the home countries of the caliphate’s former residents do not want them back, so they are stuck a stateless, unstable swath of northern Syria.Credit (Ivor Prickett/The New York Times)
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