Umm Tariq, 48, thought the day she would walk free from Al Hol, the sprawling camp for families with alleged ISIS ties in Syria's north-east desert, would never come.
But on Tuesday, after seven years trapped inside its crumbling confines alongside tens of thousands of other civilians, including foreigners, she finally tasted freedom.
Freedom “is worth more than all the millions in this world”, said Umm Tariq, draped in a long black robe, as she moved her gloved hands with confidence.
Her family is among hundreds who have been transferred to the new Akhtarin camp, in northern Aleppo, as Syrian authorities move to close Al Hol camp, the country’s most notorious detention centre for those with alleged ISIS ties, in days.
The new camp can cater for about 1,500 families. Its accommodations, which have private bathrooms and kitchens, stand in stark contrast to Al Hol’s dilapidated, overcrowded tents, where residents said life was akin to imprisonment.
Al Hol housed about 24,000 people, mainly women and children, before mass escapes largely emptied the camp in recent weeks in the wake of a chaotic handover from Kurdish-led authorities to the central government.
Control of the camp changed hands when government forces under President Ahmad Al Shara seized vast areas of the north-east from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The turmoil surrounding the transition has raised security concerns and left major challenges for accountability and the families’ reintegration.
The UN and human rights groups have long called for the dismantling of the camp.
They have denounced the sprawling site as a place of “arbitrary detention,” where thousands of families were left to languish in the desert without trial or charges, in dire conditions.
But it is not the evacuation itself that has raised alarm. Rather the way it unfolded, with families leaving amid chaos and without prior security assessments, sparked criticism.
Janine Morna of Amnesty International said while the camps held people who “should have faced prosecution for very serious crimes”, there were also many Iraqis and Syrians who were simply displaced by the ISIS war.
“Others were simply caught up there, including children and trafficking victims,” Ms Morna told The National.
“It always required a nuanced approach – understanding who people were and what rights and needs they had.”
But proper screening never happened – and may never will.
“And because of recent events, justice for many will never truly be served,” Ms Morna added.
Violence flared during the hours-long security vacuum in January, with riots, looting and breakout attempts.
Escapes continued, after Syrian troops took over the camp from the SDF, reportedly enabled by smugglers, fund-raising networks and leniency from security forces at checkpoints.
Hundreds of families stayed behind and are now being transferred to new camps by Syrian authorities.
Trapped lives
In Akhtarin, the new arrivals said they only wanted to live normal lives.
Ahmad, who declined to give his last name, arrived a few days ago. He also spent seven years at Al Hol, after being captured at an SDF checkpoint while fleeing violence towards the east.
His six children, who grew up inside the camp, stared in disbelief at buildings and cars, “as if it were something unreal,” Ahamd said.
He hopes he can finally offer them a better future.
Behind him, dozens of small children in mismatched, colourful clothes gathered with their parents, outside rows of caravans.
It was also very likely the first time they saw anything beyond the detention centre’s fences.
Ahmad said the government promised to evacuate them quickly when it took over the camp. “About a month ago they said everyone would eventually leave,” he said.
Other residents voiced similar expectations when The National visited the camp a day after the handover, on January 21.
Unlike the SDF, Syria's new government has framed the camp primarily as a humanitarian crisis rather than a security threat.
Still, officials never formally announced a plan to dismantle the camp and have blamed the SDF’s messy departure, and the subsequent security vacuum created, as the main reasons the camp emptied.
The camp still held thousands of people when The National visited, only hours after Damascus's troops took over.
Inside, residents were seen dancing to loud, celebratory music, practices that are strictly banned under hard-line Islamist ideology.
The National also saw dozens of local tribesmen, some armed, demanding the release of their loved ones, indicating pressure from Sunni tribal communities.
They expected the new leadership, which has its support base mainly in the Sunni community, to be more sympathetic to their grievances.
Relatives told The National they believed their family members had been wrongfully detained. One tribal member said his sister was arrested solely because a relative had been linked to ISIS. “Her husband fought with opposition factions, not ISIS,” he said.
“Yet her entire family was detained, including her children, aged 5 and 8. The longer they remain there, the more exposed they are to radicalisation.”
Another man said “only about 5 per cent of the camp’s residents are ISIS”.
High-risk residents
But there are signs that, for some Al Hol inmates, the allegiance to ISIS remained intact over the years.
The camp has long been marked by vigilante killings carried out by suspected hard-core ISIS female members in retaliation for perceived transgressions against the group’s extreme doctrine.
Over the years, the SDF said it discovered weapons, tunnels and trenches used by sleeper cells inside the sprawling camp.
Last year, in the camp’s market crowded with women in niqabs and small children running around, The National asked several residents about their views on the extremist group. Most declined to respond.
The Annexe, which housed mainly the wives and children of ISIS fighters from the North Caucasus and Central Asia, is now almost completely empty, with families reportedly relocating to Idlib, according to social media posts seen by The National.
This section for high-risk foreigners, separated from the rest of the camp, was known for holding the most radical families and became notorious for being the recurrent scene of children throwing stones at reporters.
The UN has called on the Syrian government to identify foreign nationals who fled Al Hol so that repatriation procedures can be initiated, a step many countries of origin have historically resisted.
Authorities have not commented on the issue, and it remains unclear what measures they will take to mitigate security risks.
Nothing to return to
For those willing to reintegrate, the path ahead is long. “I have no official documents. I need legal papers and support. I have no house, nothing,” Ahmad said.
“We hope they will provide work opportunities for those of us leaving the camp, so we can earn a living,” he added.
The situation has become so dire that some families who left the camp before the official evacuation began have since asked for shelter at the Akhtarin camp because they have nowhere else to go, said Monzer Al Salal of the Stabilisation Support Unit, a Syrian NGO.
He has been running a programme for Al Hol returnees in co-operation with authorities, which began in small batches after the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024.
The initiative is now expected to extend to all families currently in the Akhtarin camp, he said, including assistance with legalising their status and facilitating their return to their hometowns.
Vocational training and catch-up education for children who missed years of schooling will also be offered to all Al Hol returnees.
“We will also follow families through case-management programmes to ensure they are integrating into society and living normally,” he added.
Financial assistance is under discussion with UN agencies but has not yet been approved, he said. “We are discussing with UNHCR to provide around $2,000 to about 50 families to help cover rent for one to three months, depending on the area,” he said.
He dismissed concerns that returnees might pose a danger as a “false stereotype promoted in the media”.
“I personally visited the camp, walked around and ate with families there. They were kind and welcoming,” Mr Al Salal said.
But integration may take longer as stigma lingers, especially now that ISIS operations are steadily rising, with two deadly attacks hitting a church and an Alawite mosque in recent months.
And radical ideas are hard to completely uproot. Last year, before Damascus took over Raqqa governorate in a blitz, The National met an Al Hol returnee who shared her nostalgia for life under the so-called Caliphate.
“We were happy,” the 40-year-old woman said. Her husband, a Saudi man and former theology teacher in Palmyra, joined ISIS but “not as fighter”, she insisted. “We had a nice life, we would go on walks in parks.”
She described her husband as a kind-hearted man who didn’t like violence, because, he didn't take part in the public flogging of a shepherd who refused to pray, she said.
Sheltered at home, she said she did not witness violence. And life was much more comfortable than now, spending her days in a crumbling building in war-torn Raqqa, with constant power black outs.
“During ISIS, we had free electricity, water and fuel,” she said.
She now sells home-made biscuits for a living, which she offered to The National’s reporters. She learnt vocational skills in a rehabilitation programme, whose manager, a Christian woman, has become a vital support for her.
Still, the woman hopes the new government’s ideology, led by President Ahmad Al Shara, a former leader of a group that broke away from Al Qaeda, would be close to that of ISIS.
