Kurdish officials fear Islamic State revival as US aid cuts loom

The Guardian

09-02-2025

Kurdish officials have warned of an Islamic State resurgence if US foreign aid cuts take effect on Monday, which would cripple essential services for tens of thousands of people detained in tented camps in north-east Syria, including suspected members of IS and their families.
Blumont, a Virginia-based humanitarian aid group responsible for the management of two of Syria's ISdetention camps, al-Hol and al-Roj, was given a stop-work order on 24 January by the US state department. The sudden cessation of services prompted panic in the camps after aid workers failed to turn up for work.
Three days later, Blumont was given a two-week waiver to the aid cuts, which unless extended, will expire on Monday. 'We have no idea what will happen tomorrow. It seems as if even the provision of bread will be halted,' Jihan Hanan, the director of al-Hol camp, said.
The camp holds the relatives of suspected IS fighters and is mostly populated by women and children. Rights groups have for years warned that detainees are held arbitrarily without charges in inhumane and substandard living conditions.
No charges have been raised against the camp's population. Despite this, they are unable to leave, with the exception of non-Syrian detainees whose countries agree to take them back.
Though IS no longer holds any territory after the group's last stand in March 2019, US and Kurdish officials say the group ideology prevails among former members and that camps and detention facilities are a hotbed of extremist ideology.
In the section of the camp where foreign women from at least 40 countries are kept, guards say they are in a constant struggle with women who seek to keep IS alive .
'Even if a normal person enters the camp, they eventually will be psychologically affected. The violent behaviour is really high among the kids and women,' Hanan said, describing incidents of violence against al-Hol's staff.
Women there have constructed cloth roofs above their tents and walkways to conceal themselves from guards' view. In once incident, a child as young as six years old waited at the edge of the fenced-off annex, hurling rocks at passing NGO vehicles with a makeshift sling.
It is unclear what will happen on Monday when the brief waiver given to Blumont – which provides the bulk of services in al-Hol, expires. Camp officials are hoping for an 11th-hour exemption from Donald Trump's 90-day global aid freeze, but have been given no assurances from the US administration.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, issued a blanket waiver for 'life-saving assistance', for which humanitarian organisations can apply while the administration reviews which US aid projects will continue. The review process has confused US aid officials, diplomats and humanitarian workers alike worldwide.
When aid was briefly cut off from al-Hol in late January, the camp administration was given no notice. Camp officials had to scramble to secure the most basic of services, as contractors such as Blumont, which normally provided bread and water to the camp, had shuttered their offices. US special forces visited the camp, assuring its director they would help safeguard the camp in case of any unrest or IS attacks.
'We were able to get bread to the camp by the afternoon. It was 5,000 bags of bread for one day, which was 4bn Syrian lira (£35,000) – the Autonomous Administration [the Kurdish authority of north-east Syria] cannot cover this cost,' Hanan said.
Humanitarian conditions in al-Hol are already abysmal. On Thursday, residents shopping at the camp's marketplace moved through mud and puddles as cold winter rain flooded the dirt alleyways of the sprawling complex. Young children, many of whom said they could not remember life outside of the camp, darted between the shops, their clothing worn and dirty.
'Everything is bad here. We get food aid every two months and we have to sell most of it. Everyone is tired,' said Taysir al-Husseiniya, a 39-year old Iraqi woman, sitting in a shop whose shelves were sparsely stocked with lightbulbs and other home goods.
Al-Husseiniya said that raising her four children, one of whom was injured by an airstrike during the international campaign against IS, 'was extremely difficult' in the camp's conditions. Her husband had been imprisoned by Kurdish authorities in 2019 for being a suspected IS fighter, leaving her to raise her children alone.
Human Rights Watch warned on Friday that the Trump aid cuts were 'exacerbating life-threatening conditions, risking further destabilisation of a precarious security situation' in the camps.
The future of the US military presence in north-east Syria has also been called into question as the Trump administration seeks to shrink the US military footprint abroad.
The US maintains military bases across north-east Syria and has trained, equipped and supported Kurdish forces in their fight against IS since the formation of the US-led international coalition to defeat IS was formed in 2014.
The director of the Panorama prison in al-Hasakeh, north-east Syria, which houses 5,000 suspected IS fighters, said that a US withdrawal would stretch Kurdish authorities and leave prisons vulnerable to jail breaks.
'If US forces pull out, it will be even worse than 2012. IS sleeper cells in the Syrian desert will emerge and could attack the prison,' the prison director said on Saturday, asking not to be named for fears of being targeted by IS.
In al-Hol, there fears that a security vacuum, along with the sudden withdrawal of much of the camp's resources, could provide fertile ground for the radical group's recruitment.
'We will descend into chaos. Maybe the lack of supplies will allow IS sleeper cells to take control of the camp. Maybe there will be attacks on the administration. I can't say what will happen,' Hanan said.