US aid cuts risk riots, breakouts at Islamic State-linked camps in Syria

Reuters

14-02-2025

Feb 14 (Reuters) - Moves by President Donald Trump's administration to cut U.S. foreign aid funding risk destabilising two camps in northeastern Syria holding tens of thousands of people accused of affiliation with the Islamic State, aid officials, local authorities and diplomats say.
The seven sources told Reuters Washington's funding freezes and staff changes had already disrupted some aid distribution and services in Al-Hol and Roj, which host people who fled cities where IS was making its last stand between 2017-2019.
They are "closed camps," meaning residents were not detained or charged as IS fighters but cannot independently leave the camps because of suspicions that they are affiliated with or support the ultra-conservative group.
Aid workers and camp officials - led by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led force that helps run a semi-autonomous zone in northeastern Syria - have long called for the repatriation of camp residents, among them thousands of foreigners including Westerners.
But the rapid changes to U.S. funding streams have prompted contingency plans for the spread of disease, riots or IS attempts to retrieve residents they see as unlawfully detained, two senior humanitarian sources and a Roj resident said, requesting anonymity.
The humanitarian workers were not authorised to speak to media and the Roj camp resident has an unauthorised phone, which was used to speak to Reuters.
"If there's no unfreezing then everything except the camp guards stop. We're expecting mass rioting, breakout attempts. IS will come for the people they've wanted to come for," one of the senior humanitarian sources said.
Kurdish authorities in the northeast told Reuters last month they expected breakout attempts at detention centres holding IS fighters, and have refused handing control of them to the new Islamist-run transitional government in Damascus.
The anticipated violence adds to the complex security challenges in Syria, where Islamist rebels installed the transitional government after toppling Bashar al-Assad and are holding talks with authorities in the northeast to bring all security forces under Damascus's control.
ISLAMIC STATE 'CAN BENEFIT'
Sheikhmous Ahmed, head of camps and displaced persons in the autonomous administration of northeast Syria, said U.S.-funded organisations had been crucial in "covering the existing gaps" in basic service provision in the camps.
But if funding halts altogether, IS affiliates "can benefit from these existing gaps and lack of support," he said.
At least one of the organisations operating in the two camps, aid contractor Blumont, has received waivers allowing it to keep operating, said a Blumont official who requested anonymity and al-Hol director Jihan Hanan.
The waiver would last throughout the 90 days the Trump administration said it would use to review expenditures by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which distributes billions of dollars of humanitarian aid around the world.
The organisation has had to shutter other USAID-funded humanitarian and management services at about 100 unofficial "collective centres" for other displaced people, the Blumont official said.
The official said Blumont was trying to keep up daily bread deliveries to 135,000 people in al-Hol, Roj and the other centres but that it was unclear how long they could continue.
The Roj resident said camp management had told residents to ration their food "because it will be our last in a while" and that other camp services had started being wound down because of a lack of funding from the U.S.
Asked whether that could prompt instability at the camps, the resident said it was likely they would see "more chaos" and frustration from the displaced living there.
U.S. TOP FUNDER
Other NGOs sought similar waivers but have not heard back from the State Department and are struggling to secure funds from other donor countries, one senior humanitarian official said.
"Realistically, no one can afford to do what the U.S. was doing. U.S. funding was 10 times the number two in line," the official said.
The U.S. spent $460 million on humanitarian aid in Syria in 2024, according to the U.S. government's foreign assistance dashboard. It did not say how much of it went to the northeast.
On Wednesday, acting U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Dorothy Shea told the U.N. Security Council that U.S. aid to al-Hol and Roj camps "cannot last forever."
She said the U.S. had shouldered too much of the financial burden for too long and urged countries to "repatriate their displaced and detained nationals who remain in the region."
Camp authorities began organising large-scale returns from the camps in January because of the change of government in Syria, said Hanan, al-Hol camp manager.
More than 2,300 Iraqis have been repatriated from al-Hol this year, she said.
The U.S. has about 900 troops deployed in Syria - most of them in the northeast - to help prevent an IS resurgence after conducting airstrikes and deploying U.S. special forces to help the SDF defeat IS.
In 2018, during his first presidential term, Trump announced he wanted to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria but the plan was softened within a year.
NBC News reported this month that the Pentagon was developing plans for a U.S. troop pull-out from Syria after Trump expressed interest in revisiting the idea.
The SDF said it was not aware of such plans. Aid officials said a pull-out would make all their operations unsustainable.