Iraqi refugees' unknown future, their government evades their return

The Al-Hol camp opened on 9 March 2016 near the political border drawn between Syria and Iraq, by the Office for displaced Persons of the Social Affairs Commission of Al-Jazeera region.

The opening of the camp came after the wave of emigration and asylum from the Iraqi city of Mosul following Daesh's attacks, and the closure borders by the Kurdistan region authorities. The number of emigrants increased after the Iraqi forces and Kurdish forces declared the campaign of liberating the city from Daesh's mercenaries. As a result of arbitrary practices and massacres of the mercenaries of ISIS, they saw in Al-Hasakah as a safe haven.

The Al-Hol camp, 45 kilometers east of Al-Hasakah, 1 km south of the town of al-Hol, currently houses more than 68,000 displaced persons and refugees from various Syrian cities and the families of Daesh's mercenaries, as well as Iraqis.

The number of Iraqi refugees amounts to more than 31.000, most of them came to the Syrian regions after Daesh mercenaries invaded the Iraqi cities in 2014.

Demands of Iraqi refugees to return increased especially after the Iraqi government declared on 9 December 2017 its military victory over the Daesh mercenaries and its restoration of all Iraqi territory.

The Autonomous Administration of the North and East of Syria have always sought through i its contacts with the concerned authorities in the Iraqi Ministry of Human Rights and Refugee Affairs to return the Iraqi refugees and secured a number of return trips.

The camp administration and the AANES efforts were successful and over 4,000 refugees were repatriated, in coordination with the Ministry of Immigration and Iraqi Migrations from and around Mosul.

But after these trips, the Iraqi government stopped the return flights without clarifying the reasons especially as those who want to return are those who escaped from Daesh's mercenaries and have nothing to do with what happened in Iraq.

Iraqi refugees ask the concerned authorities to contact the Iraqi government for their return, after freeing their areas from Daesh's mercenaries.

The refugees' fear rose after the families of Daesh mercenaries entered the camp, where some of them descend from Iraq, fearing that this may affect their fate, and cause them to stay inside the camp without the Iraqi government demands their return.

The Al-Hol camp administration said it still sends official books to the Iraqi government to start new return trips, yet, they did not receive any response from the Iraqi side either to refuse or to accept their return.

A

ANHA