QAMISHLI, Syria —
Syria’s semi-autonomous
Kurdish administration handed Tajikistan 146 women and children related to
Daesh extremists, a Kurdish official said Monday, in the first such
repatriation to the ex-Soviet state.
اضافة اعلان
Thousands of foreign extremists joined Daesh as
fighters, often bringing their wives and children to live in the “caliphate”
declared by the group across swathes of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The extremists were dislodged in 2019 from their
last scrap of territory in Syria by Kurdish-led forces backed by a
US-led coalition, and Kurdish authorities have repeatedly called on countries to
repatriate their citizens from crowded displaced camps.
But nations have mostly received them only
sporadically, fearing a domestic political backlash.
The Kurds handed over “42 women and 104 children,
including orphans, who were held in the Al-Hol and Roj camps” in northeast
Syria to Tajikistan’s ambassador to Kuwait Zabidullah Zabidov, Kurdish foreign
affairs official Fanar Al-Kaeet said.
Zabidov is handling the repatriation process for
Tajikistan.
The ex-Soviet state has been in contact with Syria’s
Kurds “for months” to repatriate their citizens, Kaeet said during a press
conference in the northeastern city of Qamishli.
The women “did not commit any crimes or terrorist
acts in northeastern Syria,” he said.
Al-Hol and Roj camps are home to tens of thousands
of relatives of Daesh militants from Syria and abroad, with the former holding
10,000 foreigners.
Kurdish-led forces escorted the women, some in
colorful clothing, others in long black robes, and the children, as they were
bussed out to Qamishli airport, AFP correspondents in Qamishli reported.
Some women tried to hide their faces.
Young children timidly peeked through the bus
windows, from behind thick curtains that hid the other passengers.
Rights groups
have long decried grim living conditions and rampant criminality in the north
Syrian camps holding Islamist extremists’ relatives.
According to HRW, more than 41,000 foreign citizens — the
majority under 12 years old — are being held in camps and prisons in northeast
Syria over alleged Daesh links.
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