BAGHDAD: Iraq is stepping up repatriation of its citizens from a camp in northeastern Syria housing tens of thousands of people, mostly wives and children of Daesh fighters but also supporters of the militant group.
It’s a move that Baghdad hopes will reduce cross-border militant threats and eventually lead to shutting down the facility.
After US-backed and Kurdish-led fighters defeated the Daesh group in Syria in March 2019 — ending its self-proclaimed “caliphate” that had ruled over a large swath of territory straddling Iraq and Syria — thousands of Daesh fighters and their families were taken to the camp known as Al-Hol.
Many of them were Iraqi nationals.
Today, Iraqi officials see the facility, close to the Iraq-Syria border, as a major threat to their country’s security, a hotbed of the militants’ radical ideology and a place where thousands of children have been growing up into future militants.
It’s “a time bomb that can explode at any moment,” warned Ali Jahangir, a spokesman for Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displaced. Since January, more than 5,000 Iraqis have been repatriated, from Al-Hol, with more expected in the coming weeks, he said.
It is mainly women and children who are sent home. Iraqi men who have committed crimes as Daesh members rarely ask to go back for fear of being put on trial. Those who express readiness to return, have camp authorities send their names to Baghdad, where the government does a security cross-check and grants final approval.
Once in Iraq, the detainees are usually taken to the Jadaa camp near the northern city of Mosul, where they undergo rehabilitation programs with the help of UN agencies before they are allowed back to their hometowns or villages.
The programs involve therapy sessions with psychologists and educational classes meant to help them shed a mindset adopted under Daesh.
Iraq has been urging other countries to repatriate their citizens from al Hol, describing the camp at a conference held in June in Baghdad as a “source for terrorism.”
At the gathering, Iraq’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ahmad Sahhaf said it was critical for all countries with citizens at Al-Hol “to repatriate them as soon as possible in order to eventually close the camp.”
The alternative, he warned, is a resurgence of the Daesh group.
The heavily-guarded facility, overseen by Syrian Kurdish-led forces allied with the United States, was once home to 73,000 people, the vast majority of them Syrians and Iraqis. Over the past few years, the population dropped to just over 48,000 and about 3,000 were released since May.
Those still at the camp include citizens of about 60 other countries who had joined Daesh, which is why closing Al-Hol will require efforts beyond Iraq and Syria, an Iraqi Defense ministry official said, speaking on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
The camp currently has 23,353 Iraqis, 17,456 Syrians and 7,438 other nationalities, according to Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official overseeing camps for displaced in northeastern Syria. And though the foreigners are a minority, they are seen by many as the most problematic at Al-Hol — persistently loyal to the core Daesh ideology.
So far this year, Ahmad said, two groups of Syrians have left the camp for their hometowns in Syria. Earlier in September, 92 families consisting of 355 people returned to the northern city of Raqqa, once the capital of the Daesh caliphate. In May, 219 people returned to the northern town of Manbij.
Syrian nationals are released when Kurdish authorities overseeing the camp determine they are no longer a threat to society. The release of other nationalities is more complicated, since their countries of origin must agree to take them back.
Those of non-Syrian or Iraqi nationalities live in a part of the camp known as the Annex, considered the home of the most die-hard Daesh supporters. Many of them had traveled thousands of miles to join the extremist group after Daesh swept across the region in 2014.
In late August, 31 women and 64 children from the camp were returned to the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan on a special flight, the Kyrgyz Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced and thanked the US government for providing “assistance and logistical support” for the repatriation.
But other countries — particularly in the West — have largely balked at taking back their nationals who were part of Daesh.
Despite the extremist group’s defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019, Daesh sleeper cells still carry out deadly attacks. Reports of grisly crimes inside Al-Hol itself have shocked rights groups, which describe the camp’s conditions as inhumane, particularly for children.
Human Rights Watch has cited inadequate food, water and medical care, as well as the physical and sexual abuse of inmates by guards and fellow detainees. Ageed Ibrahim of Rights Defense Initiative, a human rights group in northeastern Syria, has appealed for humanitarian assistance to improve living conditions for people still in the camp.
The US military says reducing the camp’s population is a necessary step in the ongoing fight against Daesh and an important part of its long-term defeat.
The United States has some 900 troops stationed in eastern Syria alongside an unknown number of contractors. The troops, who first arrived eight years ago, work alongside the Syrian Democratic Forces, an umbrella dominated by Kurdish fighters.
The camp “is certainly a security concern over time,” said US Maj. Gen. Matthew McFarlane, the commanding general of the anti-Daesh coalition. He cited the reduction of killings inside the camp as an indication that reducing the population there helps improve security.
“Our State Department, working with other ministries of foreign affairs, are focused on decreasing the numbers there to improve the conditions in that camp,” he said.
The US military posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, recently that successful repatriations from Al-Hol ensure that “safety, security, and stability are maintained in the region.”
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Iraq steps up repatriations from Daesh camp in Syria, hoping to reduce militant threats
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Iraq steps up repatriations from Daesh camp in Syria, hoping to reduce militant threats
- It’s a move Baghdad hopes will eventually lead to shutting down the facility
- The facility, close to the Iraq-Syria border, a place where children have been growing up into future militants.
Morocco aims to boost legal cannabis farming and tap a global boom
BAB BERRED: Since he started growing cannabis at 14, Mohamed Makhlouf has lived in the shadows, losing sleep while bracing for a knock on his door from authorities that could mean prison or his entire harvest confiscated.
But after decades of operating in secret, Makhlouf finally has gained peace of mind as Morocco expands legal cultivation and works to integrate veteran growers like him into the formal economy.
On his farmland deep in the Rif Mountains, stalks of a government-approved cannabis strain rise from the earth in dense clusters. He notices when police pass on a nearby road. But where the crop’s aroma once meant danger, today there is no cause for concern. They know he sells to a local cooperative.
“Legalization is freedom,” Makhlouf said. “If you want your work to be clean, you work with the companies and within the law.”
The 70-year-old Makhlouf’s story mirrors the experience of a small but growing number of farmers who started in Morocco’s vast black market but now sell legally to cooperatives producing cannabis for medicinal and industrial use.
New market begins to sprout
Morocco is the world’s biggest producer of cannabis and top supplier of the resin used to make hashish. For years, authorities have oscillated between looking the other way and cracking down, even as the economy directly or indirectly supports hundreds of thousands of people in the Rif Mountains, according to United Nations reports and government data.
Abdelsalam Amraji, another cannabis farmer who joined the legal industry, said the crop is crucial to keeping the community afloat.
“Local farmers have tried cultivating wheat, nuts, apples, and other crops, but none have yielded viable results,” he said.
The region is known as an epicenter of anti-government sentiment and growers have lived for years with arrest warrants hanging over them. They avoided cities and towns. Many saw their fields burned in government campaigns targeting cultivation.
Though cannabis can fetch higher prices on the black market, the decreased risk is worth it, Amraji said.
“Making money in the illegal field brings fear and problems,” he said. “When everything is legal, none of that happens.”
Market remains under tight regulation
The change began in 2021 when Morocco became the first major illegal cannabis producer, and the first Muslim-majority country, to pass a law legalizing certain forms of cultivation.
Officials heralded the move as a way to lift small-scale farmers like Makhlouf and Amraji out of poverty and integrate cannabis-growing regions into the economy after decades of marginalization.
In 2024, King Mohammed VI pardoned more than 4,800 farmers serving prison sentences to allow longtime growers “to integrate into the new strategy,” the justice ministry said at the time.
Since legalization was enacted in 2022, Morocco has tightly regulated every step of production and sale from seeds and pesticides to farming licenses and distribution. Though certain cultivation is authorized, officials have shown no sign of moving toward legalization or reforms targeting recreational consumers.
“We have two contradictory missions that are really to allow the same project to succeed in the same environment,” said Mohammed El Guerrouj, director-general of Morocco’s cannabis regulatory agency. “Our mission as policemen is to enforce regulations. But our mission is also to support farmers and operators so they succeed in their projects.”
Licensing and cooperatives are part of new ecosystem
The agency issued licenses last year to more than 3,371 growers across the Rif and recorded nearly 4,200 tons of legal cannabis produced.
Near the town of Bab Berred, the Biocannat cooperative buys cannabis from roughly 200 small farmers during harvest season. The raw plant is transformed into neat vials of CBD oil, jars of lotion and chocolates that have spread across Morocco’s pharmacy shelves.
Some batches are milled into industrial hemp for textiles. For medicinal use and export, some of the product is refined into products with less than 1 percent THC, the psychoactive compound that gives cannabis its high.
Aziz Makhlouf, the cooperative’s director, said legalization created a whole ecosystem that employed more than just farmers.
“There are those who handle packaging, those who handle transport, those who handle irrigation — all of it made possible through legalization,” said Makhlouf, a Bab Berred native whose family has long been involved in cannabis farming.
Legalization has brought licenses, formal cooperatives and the hope of steady income without fear of arrest. But the shift also has exposed the limits of reform. The legal market remains too small to absorb the hundreds of thousands who depend on the illicit trade and the new rules have introduced more pressures, farmers and experts say.
Protests erupted in parts of nearby Taounate in August after cooperatives there failed to pay growers for their crop. Farmers waved banners reading “No legalization without rights” and “Enough procrastination,” furious that payments they were promised for working legally at the government’s urging never came, local media reported.
Illegal cultivation persists
The government insists the transformation is only beginning and challenges can be overcome.
But black market demand remains high. Today, cannabis is grown legally on 14,300 acres (5,800 hectares) in the Rif, while more than 67,000 acres (27,100 hectares) are used for illegal growing, according to government data. The number of farmers entering the legal system remains tiny compared with the number thought to be tied to the illicit market.
An April report from the Global Institute Against Transnational Organized Crime characterized the industry as “more one of coexistence of both markets than a decisive transition from one to the other.”
“A substantial proportion of the population continue to rely on illicit cannabis networks for income generation, perpetuating the dynamics that the state is trying to reform,” the report said.
For now, Morocco’s two cannabis economies exist side by side — one regulated and one outlawed — as the country tries to coax a centuries-old trade out of the shadows without leaving its farmers behind.
“Cannabis is legal now, just like mint,” Amraji said. “I never imagined I’d one day be authorized to grow it. I’m shocked.”
But after decades of operating in secret, Makhlouf finally has gained peace of mind as Morocco expands legal cultivation and works to integrate veteran growers like him into the formal economy.
On his farmland deep in the Rif Mountains, stalks of a government-approved cannabis strain rise from the earth in dense clusters. He notices when police pass on a nearby road. But where the crop’s aroma once meant danger, today there is no cause for concern. They know he sells to a local cooperative.
“Legalization is freedom,” Makhlouf said. “If you want your work to be clean, you work with the companies and within the law.”
The 70-year-old Makhlouf’s story mirrors the experience of a small but growing number of farmers who started in Morocco’s vast black market but now sell legally to cooperatives producing cannabis for medicinal and industrial use.
New market begins to sprout
Morocco is the world’s biggest producer of cannabis and top supplier of the resin used to make hashish. For years, authorities have oscillated between looking the other way and cracking down, even as the economy directly or indirectly supports hundreds of thousands of people in the Rif Mountains, according to United Nations reports and government data.
Abdelsalam Amraji, another cannabis farmer who joined the legal industry, said the crop is crucial to keeping the community afloat.
“Local farmers have tried cultivating wheat, nuts, apples, and other crops, but none have yielded viable results,” he said.
The region is known as an epicenter of anti-government sentiment and growers have lived for years with arrest warrants hanging over them. They avoided cities and towns. Many saw their fields burned in government campaigns targeting cultivation.
Though cannabis can fetch higher prices on the black market, the decreased risk is worth it, Amraji said.
“Making money in the illegal field brings fear and problems,” he said. “When everything is legal, none of that happens.”
Market remains under tight regulation
The change began in 2021 when Morocco became the first major illegal cannabis producer, and the first Muslim-majority country, to pass a law legalizing certain forms of cultivation.
Officials heralded the move as a way to lift small-scale farmers like Makhlouf and Amraji out of poverty and integrate cannabis-growing regions into the economy after decades of marginalization.
In 2024, King Mohammed VI pardoned more than 4,800 farmers serving prison sentences to allow longtime growers “to integrate into the new strategy,” the justice ministry said at the time.
Since legalization was enacted in 2022, Morocco has tightly regulated every step of production and sale from seeds and pesticides to farming licenses and distribution. Though certain cultivation is authorized, officials have shown no sign of moving toward legalization or reforms targeting recreational consumers.
“We have two contradictory missions that are really to allow the same project to succeed in the same environment,” said Mohammed El Guerrouj, director-general of Morocco’s cannabis regulatory agency. “Our mission as policemen is to enforce regulations. But our mission is also to support farmers and operators so they succeed in their projects.”
Licensing and cooperatives are part of new ecosystem
The agency issued licenses last year to more than 3,371 growers across the Rif and recorded nearly 4,200 tons of legal cannabis produced.
Near the town of Bab Berred, the Biocannat cooperative buys cannabis from roughly 200 small farmers during harvest season. The raw plant is transformed into neat vials of CBD oil, jars of lotion and chocolates that have spread across Morocco’s pharmacy shelves.
Some batches are milled into industrial hemp for textiles. For medicinal use and export, some of the product is refined into products with less than 1 percent THC, the psychoactive compound that gives cannabis its high.
Aziz Makhlouf, the cooperative’s director, said legalization created a whole ecosystem that employed more than just farmers.
“There are those who handle packaging, those who handle transport, those who handle irrigation — all of it made possible through legalization,” said Makhlouf, a Bab Berred native whose family has long been involved in cannabis farming.
Legalization has brought licenses, formal cooperatives and the hope of steady income without fear of arrest. But the shift also has exposed the limits of reform. The legal market remains too small to absorb the hundreds of thousands who depend on the illicit trade and the new rules have introduced more pressures, farmers and experts say.
Protests erupted in parts of nearby Taounate in August after cooperatives there failed to pay growers for their crop. Farmers waved banners reading “No legalization without rights” and “Enough procrastination,” furious that payments they were promised for working legally at the government’s urging never came, local media reported.
Illegal cultivation persists
The government insists the transformation is only beginning and challenges can be overcome.
But black market demand remains high. Today, cannabis is grown legally on 14,300 acres (5,800 hectares) in the Rif, while more than 67,000 acres (27,100 hectares) are used for illegal growing, according to government data. The number of farmers entering the legal system remains tiny compared with the number thought to be tied to the illicit market.
An April report from the Global Institute Against Transnational Organized Crime characterized the industry as “more one of coexistence of both markets than a decisive transition from one to the other.”
“A substantial proportion of the population continue to rely on illicit cannabis networks for income generation, perpetuating the dynamics that the state is trying to reform,” the report said.
For now, Morocco’s two cannabis economies exist side by side — one regulated and one outlawed — as the country tries to coax a centuries-old trade out of the shadows without leaving its farmers behind.
“Cannabis is legal now, just like mint,” Amraji said. “I never imagined I’d one day be authorized to grow it. I’m shocked.”
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