Syrian Kurds repatriate nearly 150 IS-linked Tajiki women, children – Times of India

QAMISHLI, SYRIA: Syria’s semi-autonomous Kurdish administration handed over 146 women and children belonging to Tajikistan Islamic State The group jihadists, a Kurdish official said on Monday, in the first such repatriation to the former Soviet state.
Thousands of foreign extremists joined IS as fighters, often bringing their wives and children to live in the “caliphate” declared by the group in areas of Iraq and Syria in 2014.
The jihadists were driven out of the last scrap of their territory in Syria in 2019 by Kurdish-led forces backed by a US-led coalition, and Kurdish officials have repeatedly asked countries to repatriate their citizens from overcrowded displaced camps. is invoked.
But nations have received them only sporadically, for fear of domestic political backlash.
The Kurds “handed over 104 children, including 42 women and orphans who were placed in al-holi and Rose Camp” to Tajikistan’s ambassador to Kuwait in northeast Syria, Zabidullah zabidovKurdish foreign affairs official Fanar al-Keit said.
Zabidov is handling the repatriation process for Tajikistan.
The former Soviet state has been in contact with Syrian Kurds for “months” to repatriate its citizens, keto said during a press conference in the northeastern city of Kamishli.
The women “committed no crime or terrorist act in northeastern Syria,” he said.
The al-Hol and Roz camps are home to thousands of relatives of IS militants from Syria and abroad, including 10,000 foreigners in the east.
AFP correspondents in Kamishli told that Kurdish-led forces took women, some in colorful clothes, others in long black robes, and children as they were evacuated from Kamishli airport.
Some women tried to hide their faces.
Young children timidly peeped through the windows of the bus behind the thick curtains that hid the other passengers.
Rights groups have long condemned the dire living conditions and rampant crime in camps in northern Syria holding jihadists’ relatives.
According to HRWMore than 41,000 foreign nationals – most of whom are under the age of 12 – are being held in camps and prisons in northeastern Syria over alleged IS links.