Inside al-Hawl Camp And What Remains Of The Islamic State

Despite the guards’ AK-47s, they are outnumbered and have been attacked. Photograph: Achilleas Zavallis/Guardian/The Guardian

The Guardian: Inside al-Hawl camp, the incubator for Islamic State's resurgence

Camp for Iraqis and Syrians fleeing caliphate flooded by families of Isis fighters, brewing deeper problems

The vast scale of al-Hawl can be seen from miles away, on the road that leads to the camp from the west. The white tents housing the displaced women and children of Islamic State stretch out over the dusty landscape far beyond the adjacent town’s outskirts, the furthest away encroaching upon the foot of a hill.

The women of al-Hawl now call it Jabal Baghuz, or Baghuz Mountain, named for the oasis town on the Euphrates River where their husbands were finally defeated in March. Deep inside the section reserved for foreigners and beyond the control of the camp’s overwhelmed guards, Jabal Baghuz is now the only place where the militant group’s so-called caliphate lives on. It is from here that the seeds of the Isis resurgence are being sown.

“It’s a timebomb waiting to go off. There is no easy solution,” said General Mazloum Kobani of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the western-backed, mainly Kurdish group now responsible for administering much of Islamic State’s former territory. “Even if the foreigners are sent home, the majority are Syrian and Iraqi detainees and if they are not deradicalised that will be a problem for many years to come.”

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WNU Editor: These people are not going to get any help. The Islamic State brought harm to millions and laid waste to a good part of Syria and Iraq. There is, to put it bluntly, no sympathy for them. And while there are fears that the Islamic State may rise again, I also get the feeling that many in the region are hoping that they would try something like that, so that they would then have the excuse to kill what remains of this group.