The ISIS Prisoner Dilemma – OpEd

The first week of 2026 witnessed a significant turnaround in US policy in the Middle East.  

A key factor was the visit of Syria’s interim president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, to US President Donald Trump in the White House on November 10, 2025. Speaking in the Oval Office, Trump said of Sharaa: “We aspire to see Syria evolve into a prosperous nation, and I believe this leader has the potential to achieve it…”

By December 2025, the US was publicly expressing satisfaction with “steps being taken by the Syrian interim government.”

For more than a decade, the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) had maintained effective governance in Rojava, the extensive region in north and north-east Syria where Kurds form the largest community alongside other minority populations.

But on January 6, Sharaa launched an intensive campaign across the SDF held areas in the north-east aimed at absorbing the SDF into the Syrian army. Washington pressed the SDF to accept integration and focused on mediating ceasefires and withdrawals.

On January 18, a US mediated ceasefire was announced, setting out terms for SDF integration into the Syrian army. In reports of a lateJanuary phone call between Trump and Sharaa, Trump is quoted as supporting “the aspirations of the Syrian people to build a unified and strong state” and welcoming “the understandings related to the integration of military forces, including the SDF, into official state institutions.”

So what began as Trump’s full military and political backing for the SDF as the central antiISIS instrument has evolved into a policy where the SDF is treated as a problem to be solved through subordination to Sharaa’s forces. His support has moved from arming and shielding the SDF to endorsing a unified Syrian state under alSharaa and accepting, even facilitating, a Syrian military campaign that directly targets SDF forces.

The SDF ran 29 prisons and detention facilities containing some 10,000 men and about 40,000 women and children captured during the anti-ISIS campaigns. The largest prison was Hasakah; other prisons included alShaddadi and alAqtan. In addition, the alHol family camp held around 24,000 women and children; the smaller alRoj camp held around 16,000.

“Two tumultuous weeks,” as ABC News put it in a report on January 21: “saw the fall from power in Syria of the Kurdish-led force that was once the main US partner there, as Washington shifts its backing to the country’s nascent government.”

Having toppled the Assad regime in December 2024, Sharaa was appointed interim president, committed to unifying the nation while recognizing the basic rights of its minorities. In pursuit of his policy to reestablish a sovereign Syria, he and SDF leader Mazloum Abdi agreed in March 2025 that the tens of thousands of SDF fighters would be integrated into Syria’s national army. The government would take over key institutions in north-east Syria, such as border crossings and oil fields, but also include the prison facilities and camps.

The deal failed to stick. US-brokered negotiations aimed at finalizing the agreement petered out. If the SDF believed that after so long an alliance, the US would support them in holding out for the autonomy they had won in Rojava, they miscalculated.

When attacked by Sharaa’s Syrian Armed Forces (SAF) on January 6, the Kurdish-led force lost most of its territory in north-east Syria, and Washington did not intervene. It focused on mediating a ceasefire.

By January 21, the ceasefire was holding, and the SDF had signed a deal that would effectively dissolve it as a separate fighting force, merging it instead into Syria’s national army.

The agreement also triggered a rapid reshuffling of control over prisons and camps. Custody shifted from the SDF to a mix of Syrian state control and Iraqi-run facilities backed by US logistical and financial support.

The ceasefire allowed US forces to begin transferring up to some 7,000 ISIS detainees from SDFrun prisons in Syria to facilities in Iraq, a process that US Central Command (CENTCOM) and Iraqi officials say will continue in phases.

A few ISIS and ISIS linked detainees, formerly held by the SDF, escaped during the conflict.  According to Syria’s Interior Ministry, about 120 ISIS detainees got out of al Shaddadi prison, of whom 81 were recaptured in subsequent sweep operations. Some 39 are still believed to be at large.

Under the 14 point ceasefire deal with the SDF, the Syrian government formally assumed full responsibility for the “ISIS file,” including running ISIS prisons and camps. On 23 January, Syrian authorities took control of alAqtan prison in Raqqa, and Syrian forces have also moved into the so-called “family camp” at alHol, replacing the former SDF guards. Syria now formally runs al-Hol with its thousands of women and children, and faces major humanitarian and security challenges.

The prisoner issue, with which the SDF grappled and which now falls into the lap of Syria and the US, is a hot potato. Between 2012 and 2020, a fair number of foreigners traveled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS and live under the so-called caliphate.

Following the defeat of ISIS in 2019, very large numbers of ISIS militants and supporters were captured and imprisoned. The SDF soon came to realize that it held a large, diverse foreign population without the legal authority, resources, or diplomatic recognition to resolve their status.

Roughly 8,500 of the 40,000 women and children held in alHol and Roj were third country nationals from about 60 states. Some 38 countries took back a few nationals, but many refused to do so, thus effectively exporting the legal, humanitarian, and security burdens to north-east Syria for the indefinite future.

The UK repatriated a small number of children without their mothers, and a handful of orphans, while in the classic case of Shamima Begum, she was stripped of her British citizenship.

It is estimated that only a couple of thousand of these foreign women and children been repatriated so far. Thousands more remained confined.

The SDF/Rojava administration lacked recognized statehood and formal diplomatic relations, so it could not negotiate repatriations through normal consular channels. With the change of responsibility to Sharaa’s Syria, formal diplomacy might succeed in alleviating the problem.