Senior Iraqi officials are pressing to establish a special detention camp to isolate as many as 30,000 Iraqis who lived in the Islamic State’s final stronghold in Syria, captured last month by U.S.-backed forces.
But as Iraq prepares to repatriate citizens now held in Syria, humanitarian groups have been resisting efforts to move them to a single detention facility, fearing this could create prison camp conditions that prevent them from reintegrating into society and, in some cases, further radicalize them.
Objections from humanitarian groups have already scuttled a proposal to set up a new camp near Tal Afar in northern Nineveh province. Senior Iraqi officials, however, remain opposed to the idea of scattering the Islamic State returnees, mostly women and children, among existing displacement camps around the area, according to high-ranking figures in the displacement ministry and parliament.
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