Security at the al-Hol camp, which housed thousands of radicalized ISIS family members, collapsed after the Damascus government attacked last month, according to ISNA . U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that 15,000 to 20,000 people, including ISIS affiliates, are now fleeing Syria after leaving the camp that housed the families of the extremists, U.S. officials familiar with the matter told the Wall Street Journal .
Security experts have long warned that the wives of ISIS fighters are effectively nurturing the next generation of militants at the sprawling al-Hol facility. Security at the camp has crumbled in recent weeks after the Syrian government defeated the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, which had protected al-Hol for years, raising concerns about the release of people who may have been radicalized during years of detention behind barbed wire .
The camp, the size of a small city, in the eastern Syrian desert, once housed more than 70,000 people after U.S.-backed forces destroyed the remnants of ISIS’s self-proclaimed caliphate in Syria in 2019. More than 23,000 were there by the end of 2025, according to a report this week by the Pentagon’s inspector general .
The vast majority have left since the Syrian government took control of the camp last month. Western diplomats in Damascus estimated that more than 20,000 people had fled the camp in the past few days amid riots and increased escape attempts .
A diplomat familiar with the situation said that only 300 to 400 families remained at the beginning of the week . The U.S. assessment attributed the escapes to Syrian government mismanagement and a failure to closely monitor the camp’s vast security perimeter, U.S. officials said . The Syrian government, led by a former militiaman, Ahmed al-Sharaa, has acknowledged that many people have left the camp for other parts of the country and says it plans to monitor any extremism and reintegrate them into society. The government blames the chaos on the Syrian Democratic Forces, which it says abandoned the camp during the January offensive, leaving the facility unguarded for hours, making it difficult to re-establish security .
The Damascus government announced this week that it would move the last remaining families from the camp in Syria’s remote border region with Iraq to another refugee camp in northwest Syria, where the government has a stronger infrastructure . The chaotic dismantling of al-Hol has raised new questions from U.S. government officials, lawmakers and security analysts about the Trump administration’s decision to quickly hand over counterterrorism efforts in Syria to the country’s new leaders as the United States withdraws its forces from the country .
The events taking place in and around Syria are a clear sign of widespread insecurity. American forces are seeking to withdraw from the region so that the security vacuum created can pave the way for the presence of US-backed terrorists and avoid the risk of conflict with American forces. This is while America used to support Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria in the past, but now that Mohammad Golani is at the head of the Syrian interim government, America’s interests are being secured more than ever, and for this reason, America’s betrayal of the Kurds, which had occurred in previous years, has been repeated again. On the other hand, the Zionist regime has clearly stated that it is seeking to occupy this region and that the attacks on Lebanon are a prelude to implementing this project. All these plans require the presence of an American proxy terrorist force, which ISIS will assume this task
