Al-Hol camp, northeast Syria – Asma Mohammed, a 26-year-old mother of four from Mosul, Iraq, squinted as she braved the last throes of a sandstorm that had engulfed the marketplace in al-Hol camp.

Asma’s three-year-old daughter, who has lived all her life in the camp, leaned against her mother. She pulled at the straps of her black hoodie in a vain attempt to shield herself from the dust that settled in her thick, curly hair.

In the stormy haze, a tenacious merchant wrestled with a row of colourful dresses that hung from his makeshift stall as they threatened to blow away.

His neighbour, who had opted to close up shop during the storm and enjoy some tea under the shelter of his corrugated iron roof, looked on in amusement.

With a cheerful disposition at odds with the gloomy surroundings, a teenage boy tried to guide five women to his fruit stand with its neat piles of pomegranates and dried figs.

The women wore niqabs and had come armed with large sunglasses, leaving them impervious to the waves of dust and sand that lashed the merchant as he thrust a selection of fruit in front of them. They had learned how to navigate al-Hol.

The sprawling detention camp, 13km (8 miles) from Syria’s border with Iraq, was originally set up for Iraqi refugees fleeing the Gulf War and reopened after 2003 for refugees fleeing the US-led invasion of Iraq.

Camp detainees walk through the marketplace in al-Hol [Nils Adler/Al Jazeera]
Today, it holds about 40,000 people, mainly women and children displaced by ISIL (ISIS), as well as families of ISIL fighters.

ISIL had captured the area around al-Hol in 2014, eventually expanding to its peak in January 2015 when it controlled an area across Syria and Iraq roughly the size of the United Kingdom.

It lost al-Hol in late 2015 after a monthlong offensive launched by the US-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), which also led the effort to dislodge ISIL from all of its territory by 2019, after which the SDF took over most of the running of the camp.

With the region still reeling from years of war and economic sanctions, the authorities in northeastern Syria have done their best to keep the camp functioning, but the sheer number of detainees has meant it is constantly overcrowded and lacking services.