“We’ll see what happens with the new government. In any case, it will always be better than them [the Kurds],” declared a young French woman in her twenties, stepping out of a tent after her mother, both dressed in niqabs. She remained cautious, casting a furtive glance toward a member of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) intelligence services watching the scene from a short distance away. The two French women, after some hesitation, agreed to a brief conversation, either out of curiosity or simply to pass the time. Both refused to give their names.
Since January 13, news of the advance by Syrian government forces into the Kurdish autonomous region has spread through the lanes of the Roj camp: a sea of tents, lost in the desert countryside of northeastern Syria, surrounded by walls topped with barbed wire. Some of the foreign women who joined the Islamic State group (IS) live here. Under the January 30 agreement, which provides for the gradual integration of the region’s institutions into the Syrian state, the new authorities are set to retake control of the region’s camps and prisons. At Roj, many detainees welcome this prospect. According to SDF security forces, tensions are growing day by day.
In the camp, 742 foreign families are detained – 2,201 women and children of 40 to 50 nationalities (authorities have yet to confirm all identities), families of jihadists from various countries who enlisted in IS ranks during the 2010s, before being captured as the jihadi proto-state collapsed. Among them are 40 French families: about 50 women and 100 children.
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