Syrian Kurds hand over 14 French, Dutch orphans from Islamic State families
Al-Hol camp in northeast Syria is home to tens of thousands of people who fled fighting against the Islamic State group and families of Islamic State fighters, June 2019. Photo: AFP
QAMISHLO, Syrian Kurdistan,— Syria’s Kurds have handed over 14 orphans born to jihadist families to government delegations from France and the Netherlands, in the latest repatriations of foreigners living in crowded camps.
Abdelkarim Omar, the top Kurdish foreign affairs official in Syrian Kurdistan (Rojava), said Monday that 12 French and two Dutch orphans were handed over on Sunday.
The transfer marks the latest small step in efforts to resolve the problem posed by the huge numbers of stranded foreign jihadists and their families in Syrian camps.
The children, the oldest of whom is aged 10, had been held together with tens of thousands of people who fled recent fighting against the Islamic State group.
Kurdish officials handed over “12 orphaned French children from IS families to a delegation from the French ministry of foreign affairs,” Abdulkarim Omar said in a statement.
He said the transfer took place in the town of Ain Issa on Sunday and added that two orphaned Dutch children were also handed over to a government delegation from the Netherlands.
There was no immediate comment from either France or the Netherlands.
France has one of the largest contingents of jihadists who were captured or turned themselves in, together with their families, in the final stages of the US-backed Kurdish assault on the last fragment of IS’s “caliphate”.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said last month that the number of French nationals currently living in Kurdish camps was between 400 and 450.
The jihadist proto-state eventually died in the village of Baghouz, on the banks of the Euphrates, in March this year, after a months-long US-backed Kurdish assault.
Slow trickle
Larger than expected numbers of families emerged from the ruins of the last IS enclave and the fate of tens of thousands of them remains unclear.
France had already repatriated five orphans in mid-March and a three-year-old girl later that month.
Paris, facing intense pressure from public opinion, has said it was studying the files of all of its citizens held in northeastern Syria on a case-by-case basis.
Last week, two American women and six children from suspected jihadist families were also repatriated.
The Kurdish administration in Syrian Kurdistan in north and northeastern Syria is not officially recognised and the legal framework for any repatriations and transfers is unclear at best.
The biggest returns so far were to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Kosovo, while countries such as Russia, Sudan and Norway have also started repatriating some of their nationals.
Returns have remained limited however and Al-Hol, the main camp in the Kurdish region, is still bursting with more than 70,000 people from at least 40 different countries.
The majority of people stranded in such camps are from neighbouring Iraq and from Syria itself.
A first batch of 800 Syrian women and children were sent home earlier this month, most of them to their hometowns of Raqqa and Tabqa.
The fate of suspected IS fighters held in Kurdish prisons is even less clear, with few European countries willing to bring them back and the Kurds unable to give them trials.
The Kurds are pushing foreign nations to take responsibility for the crisis and have warned that they could not guarantee how long they could keep such large numbers of dangerous jihadists locked up.
France has transferred some of its nationals to Iraq, where courts have churned out death sentences in lightning trials which rights groups say make a mockery of international justice standards.
The Islamic State “caliphate” was declared defeated by Syrian Kurdish-led forces on March 23, following a nearly five-year-long offensive against the group.
Thousands of foreign fighters are being held in Kurdish-run prisons.
Among the hordes of Syrians and Iraqis, some 12,000 foreigners are held in a fenced-off section of the Al-Hol camp, under the watch of Kurdish forces.
U.S. has for years supported the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria, as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition dominated by the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). But U.S. President Donald Trump abruptly announced the pullout from Syria.
The Kurdish PYD and its powerful military wing YPG/YPJ considered the most effective fighting force against IS. The YPG, which make up the backbone of the SDF forces, has seized swathes of Syria from Islamic State.
In 2013, the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party PYD — the political branch of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) — has established three autonomous Cantons of Jazeera, Kobani and Afrin and a Kurdish government across Syrian Kurdistan in 2013. On March 17, 2016, Kurdish and Arab authorities announced the creation of a “federal region” made up of those semi-autonomous regions in Syrian Kurdistan.
Copyright © 2019, respective author or news agency, Ekurd.net | AFP
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