Newsweek - USA (2019-11-08)

NEWSWEEK.COM 9

IN FOCUS

caliphate and are now kept in a sprawling detention camp under

Kurdish guard. After the offensive began, Pedersen said she was

the first journalist to visit the heavily-restricted and notorious

detention camp at Al-Hol, in the northeastern Al-Hasakah prov-

ince. The town was one of the first taken from ISIS by the Syrian

Democratic Forces, a mostly Kurdish militia who provided cru-

cial help in the U.S. fight against the militant group. With fewer

guards available to provide security, the atmosphere at the camp,

Pedersen said, was “tense.”

Elsewhere, Turkish forces were accused of using white phos-

phorus and the UN is investigating. Pedersen photographed peo-

ple who appeared to have been victims. “We need experts to verify

DISPLACED PERSONS Some 0,000 people live in a detention camp in Al-Hol, where nearly one in three are under the age of ɿve. 1 An aid convoy

travels between cities in northeastern Syria. 2 There is fear that radical and angry camp residents could fuel an ISIS revival, particularly after reports

of attempted escapes. 3 The camp has a special “annex” for foreign women, some of whom are desperate to return home and others who “continue

religious teaching of Mihad...and punish other detainees” say camp management. 4 Security for the camp’s 13,000 tents has shrunk by two-thirds

since Turkey’s offensive began. 5 Women still sell fruit and small candies on the dusty ground of a market area where a boy and his father enter.

this, but it’s abnormal,” a doctor treating what appeared to be

burn injuries told Pedersen.

The latest round of agreements leave Turkey and Russia with

power over what was Kurdish-held territory. Ankara will also get

its long-desired 20-mile-deep buffer zone along the border and

the lifting of U.S. sanctions.

“Let someone else fight over this long-bloodstained sand,”

Trump said in announcing the ceasefire, adding that a deal could

not have been made without the “short-term outburst.”

“Countless lives are now being saved as a result of our negoti-

ation with Turkey—an outcome reached without spilling one

drop of American blood.”

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