Obscuring the Obvious about who Ultimately Controls al-Hawl

What's interesting about Vivian Yee's "Guns, Filth and ISIS: Syrian Camp Is ‘Disaster in the Making’," a description of the al-Hawl refugee camp (or "Al Hol detention camp," as The New York Times describes it), a place where the survivors of the caliphate have been concentrated, is that the United States is barely mentioned, and when it is, it is as a concerned third party.

Yee mentions the United States twice: once at the beginning and once at the end of her story:

The daily ordeals of overcrowded latrines and contaminated water, limited medical care, flaring tensions between residents and guards, and chronic security problems have left the residents embittered and vulnerable. A recent Pentagon report that cautioned that ISIS was regrouping across Iraq and Syria said Islamic State ideology has been able to spread “uncontested” at the camp.

[snip]

The Pentagon report said local forces did not have enough resources to provide more than “minimal security,” allowing extremist ideology to spread unchecked.

Al-Hawl is located in northeast Syria and is controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a  proxy army that would not exist if not for the United States.

The U.S. as guarantor of the SDF is therefore ultimately responsible for al-Hawl. This is pretty basic. The Times' obscuring of the obvious might be due to the Pentagon's need for an excuse to hold onto the large chunk of territory it illegally occupies in northeast Syria.