Fate of IS detainees uncertain as Damascus reins in Kurds

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces spearheaded the battle against IS in Syria, backed by a US-led coalition, after it declared a "caliphate" in swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq in 2014.

Almost seven years after they captured the last patch of that proto-state, the Kurds until this week held thousands of men in jails, and tens of thousands of women and children from their families in camps in northeast Syria.

These prisons and camps "are hotbeds of radicalism", said Laurence Bindner, a specialist of radicalisation online.

US general Michael Kurilla three years ago warned of an IS "army in detention" in Syria and Iraq that, if freed, could "pose a great threat".

The largest of the Syrian IS detention camps, Al-Hol, is home to more than 24,000 people -- around 15,000 Syrians, 3,500 Iraqis and 6,200 other foreigners, the camp's director told AFP in December.

Foreign women and children are held in a high-security section.

The army of Syria's Islamist-led government on Wednesday moved into the vast detention camp, after Kurdish forces withdrew a day earlier to defend their cities before a ceasefire was then announced.

The latest truce opens the way for further talks on a deal to integrate the Kurdish de facto autonomous administration and its forces into the Syrian state.
'Opportunity to exploit'
In Syria, the Kurds have repeatedly called on countries to repatriate their citizens from their detention facilities.

Baghdad has accelerated repatriations.

But Western governments have generally allowed home only a trickle, fearing security threats after a string of deadly IS attacks in Western cities, including shootings and suicide bombings in Paris that killed 130 people in 2015.

A Western security official said the situation in Syria was "evolving very quickly" and they were "assessing the impact on the camps".

"We can't rule out escapes," the source said, before the army took over Al-Hol.

On Monday, the Syrian army said the SDF released IS detainees from a prison in the northeastern town of Shadadi, while the Kurds said they lost control of the facility after an attack by Damascus.

Any mass escape -- with detainees either "exploiting security gaps" or being "deliberately allowed to leave" -- would be a worst-case scenario, said Thomas Renard, research director at the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT) based in The Hague.

"This solution -- of provisional detention facilities, without trial, without prospects -- was never going to be sustainable in a highly volatile region," he said.

If detainees escaped, "we can imagine that some would try to keep a low profile", Renard said.

But others "would no doubt return to IS or another jihadist group, and that would be bad for Syria, for the region, and for global security", he added.

A Western security source said in November that the jihadist group's agenda still included getting back IS fighters in jail.

Bindner said pro-IS social media channels were abuzz with questions about the fate of the IS detainees.

"For IS, it's clearly an opportunity to seek to exploit," she said.

"Even if just a few dozen or hundreds of prisoners get out and join the roughly 3,000 IS fighters in Syria, that gives them a boost in strength and morale," she added.

"It could bolster their insurgency," she said, even if no proto-state would likely be re-established.
Detainees 'sick, weak'
Around 2,000 of the alleged IS combatants in custody -- and an estimated 8,000 detained women and children -- in northeast Syria are foreigners, that is not Syrian or Iraqi, according to US figures from June.

Among them for example is Shamima Begum, who joined IS as a teenager and whom the United Kingdom stripped of her British nationality.

Lilla Schumicky-Logan, joint director of GCERF, a global fund that works to prevent violent extremism, said there had been no "overall assessment on how radicalised people are" in Syria's IS jails and camps.

Among the foreign women held in the camps, many have repented and asked to go home, she said.

As for the suspected IS fighters in prisons, "a lot of them have been there for six to seven years. They are now sick, weak, suffering from tuberculosis", she said.

"How capable are they to pick up a gun and go and fight? I think we really need to ask this question."