The Russian Center for Reconciliation in Syria confirmed that the situation in the Rukban refugee camp continues to deteriorate, while U.S. leadership in the Al-Tanf area is obstructing a resolution to this problem.
Vice Director of the Russian Center, Rear Admiral Vyacheslav Sitnik, stated in a statement on Friday that "the humanitarian situation in the Rukban camp is rapidly worsening. The U.S. leadership in the Al-Tanf area continues to hinder a solution to this problem by taking additional measures to forcibly detain refugees there." He added that "the Syrian authorities are ready to receive all citizens present in the Rukban camp and ensure their safety and provide them with decent living conditions."
He pointed out that "the United States' unwillingness to ensure the exit of illegal armed formations and displaced people from the Al-Tanf area confirms that it is interested in maintaining the machinery for training extremists to sustain hotspots of tension in Syria."
It is noteworthy that the Rukban camp is one of the Syrian refugee camps established during the Syrian crisis, located on the Syrian-Jordanian border in the Rukban area, which is a remote and completely desolate region. This border point has become populated by asylum seekers to Jordan, as the authorities there prevented their entry after the number of Syrian refugees in Jordan reached 1.4 million by 2016. The Jordanian government has expressed security concerns regarding the residents of the camp after information about the presence of sleeper cells linked to the Islamic State (ISIS). The Syrian government began in 2018 to open humanitarian corridors to evacuate the residents of the camp and return them to their areas, and by November 2019, approximately 22,000 people remained in the camp after 18,000 had returned to inside Syria.
