Roj Camp Reports: New Authority, Same Guards?
More than 2,300 women and children held in Roj camp in Syria's far northeast report regular night raids, extortion and violence by camp security, according to first-hand accounts published September 22, 2026.
Women detained in the camp told Al Jazeera they experienced night-time gunfire, stones thrown by guards and physical assaults during raids on tents. One account described a boy left with a serious head injury. The feature was based on direct interviews with detainees.
Eleven mothers detained in Roj said in an open letter that many of the same guards remain in place despite a change in formal authority. Control has changed. Personnel, the detainees say, has not. It is like changing the manager but keeping the same staff.
Roj had been controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, until the month before September 22, 2026. It is now the responsibility of the Syrian state. On August 25, the SDF announced it would dissolve as an independent military force under an agreement with the central government in Damascus. That followed a Syrian government offensive in January in which the SDF lost much of the territory under its control and agreed to merge with the national army. SDF commander Mazloum Abdi has been appointed a presidential adviser.
The United Nations Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria told the Human Rights Council on September 8 that conditions in Roj had worsened over the past year, citing regular night raids, extortion and violence by camp security. The Commission described Roj as the "world's largest site of mass arbitrary detention of women and children on security grounds." Arbitrary detention means detention without individual criminal charges or a fair trial process.
Many people held in Roj are detained on the basis of alleged family or other association with ISIL, rather than individual criminal charges. ISIL, also called Islamic State or ISIS, is the armed group that once held large parts of Syria and Iraq. United Nations experts and human rights groups describe open-ended detention in camps such as Roj as a breach of international law.
Roj is one of two camps in Syria, alongside al-Hol, holding thousands of people believed to be linked to Islamic State militants, according to Reuters. Syria has said it plans to permanently close two displacement camps in the northeast that hold civilians, including foreigners, linked to Islamic State. The plan has not been presented as completed.
The transfer of authority over the camps coincides with a separate U.S. operation to move Islamic State detainees out of Syria after the collapse of the Kurdish-led force that had held them, as reported by Reuters. U.S. forces transferred 150 detainees from Syria to Iraq at the start of that operation. Iraq has said it will prosecute Islamic State detainees transferred from Syria. On February 23, 2026, Human Rights Watch reported that the wellbeing of about 8,500 people held in camps housing families of men suspected of ISIS affiliation remained uncertain amid closure discussions. Thirty-four Australians were released in February from a Syrian camp holding Islamic State-affiliated families.
The current reports follow more than five years of documented detention. On February 8, 2021, UN human rights experts urged 57 states to repatriate women and children from camps in Syria, according to the UN Human Rights Office. Repatriation means home countries bringing their own citizens home. On March 23, 2021, Human Rights Watch reported that nearly 43,000 foreign men, women and children linked to ISIS remained detained in inhuman or degrading conditions by regional authorities in northeast Syria. On February 16, 2023, UN experts expressed grave concern over reports that at least 10 boys, some as young as 12, were taken from Camp Roj by de facto authorities.
The broader context here is a shift in custodial responsibility without a shift in the underlying legal and diplomatic stalemate. Damascus has inherited a population that foreign governments declined to repatriate, a security apparatus largely carried over from the prior administration, and facilities the government says it intends to close. For practitioners, the question is whether integration of SDF structures into state institutions produces unified command and accountability, or preserves existing camp-level practices under a new flag.
Looking at what this means for external actors, the Roj accounts tighten the constraints around three parallel tracks. Repatriation remains the remedy prescribed under international human rights law, yet few states have acted on it. Prosecution and transfer, as in the U.S.-Iraq channel, applies principally to adult male detainees, not the women and children in Roj. Closure, absent large-scale repatriation, resettlement or due-process review, risks involuntary relocation rather than release. The September findings leave Damascus as the duty-bearer, but the policy options available to it were narrowed long before it took control.
