Children at the Kurdish-run Al Hol detention camp in northern Syria in March. Some 70,000 people have been living in increasingly dire conditions there. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
Children at the Kurdish-run Al Hol detention camp in northern Syria in March. Some 70,000 people have been living in increasingly dire conditions there. Photo / Ivor Prickett, The New York Times
As the Turkish invasion leads to deteriorating security in northern Syria, the custody of about 11,000 captive Isis fighters — and many thousands more detained Isis women and children — is in doubt.
The escalating chaos in northern Syria as Turkey presses forward with its attack on the United States'erstwhile Kurdish allies is raising fears about the fate of thousands of detainees from the Islamic State group, also known as Isis, that the Kurds have been holding in makeshift wartime prisons.
When announcing that he had cleared the way for the Turkish military operation in northern Syria, President Donald Trump insisted that Turkey must assume responsibility for the captured Islamic State fighters and their families — then said the United States was taking custody of the most dangerous ones. But with the Pentagon preparing to withdraw U.S. forces from northern Syria, it is far from clear that either aspiration will happen.
What is going on in northern Syria?
The situation is deeply complicated. Turkey has launched an invasion against Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who were the primary US ally in Syria against Islamic State and who control northern Syria. Turkey has been fighting separatist Kurds inside its borders and considers the Syrian Kurds terrorists.
The presence of US troops alongside the Kurds had helped to maintain a fragile peace. But since Trump told Turkey that it could begin an operation into Syria and that the United States would pull its forces back from a zone along the border, Turkey and an Arab Syrian militia have killed many Kurds — and may have deliberately fired near US forces, too. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced that Trump had ordered US forces out of northern Syria.
Meanwhile, President Bashar Assad of Syria, backed by Russia, controls the southern part of the country and wants to retake it all. On Sunday, the Kurds apparently struck a deal with the Syrian government, but its details — and what it would mean for detainees — were not yet clear.
Who are the Isis detainees?
The Syrian Democratic Forces has operated an archipelago of about half a dozen ad hoc wartime detention sites for captive Islamic State fighters, ranging from former schoolhouses in towns like Ain Issa and Kobani to a former Syrian government prison at Hasaka.
The prisons hold about 11,000 men, of whom about 9,000 are locals — Syrians or Iraqis — and about 2,000 come from 50 other nations whose home governments have been reluctant to repatriate them. Scores of those men are Europeans, from countries like Belgium, Britain, France and Germany, but far more come from other nations that are part of the Muslim world, like Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen.
The Kurds also operate more than a dozen camps for families displaced by the conflict that hold tens of thousands of people, many of them non-Syrian wives and children of Islamic State fighters. These include the giant Al Hol camp about 40km southeast of Hasaka, where some 70,000 people have been living in increasingly dire conditions, and a camp in Ain Issa.
Will Isis members go free in the chaos?
One fear was that the Kurds are redeploying guards out of the prisons and camps to help fight the Turks, making it easier for Islamic State members to break out. On Sunday, hundreds of Isis women and children apparently were permitted to leave a section of the displaced-persons camp in Ain Issa where they had been detained, amid Turkish airstrikes that threatened their safety. It is not clear whether any male fighters have yet escaped the prisons.
Residents of Akcakale gather near the border to watch plumes of smoke during a Turkish military offensive into the Syrian border town of Tel Abyad. Photo / Mauricio Lima, The New York Times
The "worst-case scenario" is that the Kurds are so frustrated and angered by the United States' action that "they decide to release wholesale some of the detainees," said Christopher P. Costa, a former senior director for counterterrorism on Trump's National Security Council who now heads the International Spy Museum.
Might Turkey or the Assad government take custody of Isis prisoners?
The White House said Turkey would "now be responsible for all Isis fighters in the area captured over the past two years." But Turkey has given no public sign that it has agreed to take over that headache.
"It's hard to imagine Turkey has the capacity to handle securely and appropriately the detainees long held by the Syrian Kurds — and that's if Turkey even genuinely intends to try," said Joshua A. Geltzer, a former senior director for counterterrorism at the National Security Council in the Obama administration.
It is also possible that the Syrian government could end up taking over some of the prisons as a result of a deal between the Kurds and the Assad regime. But it was not clear whether there was any plan for a controlled transfer of authority and responsibility amid the fast-moving events.
Didn't Trump say the United States had already gotten the very worst Isis detainees out of Syria?
On Wednesday, as the chaos was intensifying in northern Syria, Trump made reassuring remarks to reporters, disclosing that the United States was taking custody of the worst Islamic State detainees to ensure that they would not escape.
"We are taking some of the most dangerous Isis fighters out," Trump said. "We've taken them out and we're putting them in different locations where it's secure. In addition, the Kurds are watching. And if the Kurds don't watch, then Turkey is going to watch because they don't want those people out any more than we do."
A 1960s-era government prison in Hasaka, Syria, that the Syrian Democratic Forces has used to detain members of Isis. Photo / Charlie Savage, The New York Times
He added: "But we have taken a certain number of Isis fighters that are particularly bad. And we've wanted to make sure that nothing happened with them, with respect to getting out. And I think we're doing a great job."
But even though Trump spoke in the past tense, as if that operation had been carried out, it was instead largely aspirational — and now appears increasingly unlikely.
What really happened?
The United States got only two high-value detainees out — far short of its goal.
The military had been making contingency plans to get a list of about five dozen of the highest-priority detainees from that group out of northern Syria since December, when Trump first announced that he would withdraw troops from the country before his administration slowed down that plan, one official said.
Smoke billows from fires on targets in Ras al-Ayn, Syria, caused by bombardment by Turkish forces. Photo / AP
After Trump's abrupt green light to Turkey, the military tried to carry out that aspiration. And special operations forces Wednesday managed to take custody of two British men believed to be half of an Isis cell that tortured and killed Western hostages and who are now being held at a US base in Iraq.
But after the Kurds acquiesced to those two transfers, they stopped cooperating with the United States in anger at what they saw as Trump's betrayal, according to US officials. The Pentagon's decision Sunday to pull US forces out of northern Syria means the opportunity to take custody of additional Islamic State prisoners — even if the Kurds were to decide to start cooperating again — is rapidly evaporating, the officials said.
Who are the two Britons the United States did manage to take custody of?
They are El Shafee Elsheikh and Alexanda Kotey — two of the so-called Beatles, a four-member cell of British ISIS members who abused Western hostages, including James Foley, the US journalist beheaded in August 2014 for an Isis propaganda video. Another cell member, who was later killed in a drone strike, is believed to have killed Foley.
The Justice Department intends to eventually bring the two to the Eastern District of Virginia for trial, but a court fight in Britain has delayed that transfer. The lawsuit is over whether the British government may share evidence with the United States without an assurance that US prosecutors will not seek the death penalty.
Written by: Charlie Savage
Photographs by: Ivor Prickett, Charlie Savage and Mauricio Lima
