Iraq News Now

With the so-called “Islamic State” now controlling an area roughly the size of a few football fields in the village of Baghouz, eastern Syria, the dilemma of how to deal with its remaining partisans now comes to the fore. 

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) is increasingly overwhelmed by the number of civilians and captured fighters falling into its hands.  

SDF-established camps designed to house people fleeing the Islamic State now groan under the pressure of yet more new arrivals. Al Hol camp alone is estimated to hold some 40,000 displaced men, women, and children. A further 2,500 displaced people arrived at Al Hol last Thursday. 

Some 2,000 ISIS diehards remain in Baghouz, making a last stand against their inevitable defeat. According to Reuters, SDF officials are currently holding some 800 ISIS fighters prisoner and roughly 2,000 of their family members. 

The problem of what to do with ISIS suspects holding Iraqi citizenship seems easy enough to resolve: these are handed over to the Iraqi military, where large numbers then head for swift trials and execution. 

For Syrian and foreign ISIS members and supporters, however, the dilemma appears more troublesome. The Kurdish-led cantons in northern Syria have neither the Iraqi government’s resources nor its penchant for swift trials and large-scale executions. To this columnist’s knowledge, the option of handing people over to authorities in Damascus – where their fate will probably be even grimmer and swifter than in Iraq – is not really being pursued.

At the same time, Western and other governments do not appear very keen on repatriating their own nationals who went to Syria and Iraq to join the Islamic State.  London last week revoked the citizenship of British-born 19 year-old Shamima Begum, for example, and it remains unclear if Bangladesh will recognize her as one of its own based on her parents’ origins there. 

American-born Hoda Muthana, 24, seems unlikely to have much more luck with officials in Washington, where President Trump apparently instructed his Secretary of State not to allow her to return. The US State Department, on somewhat dubious grounds, likewise claims she was never even a US citizen.  

The same seems to be the case for many foreign ISIS fighters as their home governments try to prevent their return, fearing they will place a burden on their prison systems, a risk to their societies, and an impossible challenge for their judicial systems (which will lack sufficient evidence from Syria and Iraq to properly try them).  

What then, should be done with these people? Foreign governments refusing to take back their nationals simply leaves already overstretched SDF forces and authorities to manage the problem. While some of those recently displaced from the caliphate’s last holdouts are no doubt fighters or supporters deserving of harsh punishment, others are also no doubt innocent of any wrongdoing, in many cases swept up into the caliphate with little or no choice. 

Although it is mostly Iraqi and Syrian nationals who fall into this category, the children of foreign ISIS volunteers should not be made to pay for the sins of their fathers and mothers either. The sheer number of people trapped in limbo likewise makes any solution more difficult. More than 50,000 people cannot be imprisoned or left in camps in the Syrian desert indefinitely. The Kurdish-led cantons in northern Syria already have enough trouble providing for their regular population and should not be left to deal with others’ problems as well. 

In all likelihood, the solution will have to involve aid from the international community in the short-term, to help the communities of northern Syria deal with these people. Wherever possible, trials and appropriate punishments for proven ISIS fighters – in Iraq, in northern Syria, and perhaps in areas of Syria controlled by Damascus – should continue.  

For the large majority of people in the camps, however, some kind of amnesty, benefit of the doubt, resettlement, and truth and reconciliation will have to occur. This would include, in most cases, the families of foreign ISIS fighters. If their own states will not take them back, then let home nations provide authorities in northern Syria with the financial means to resettle and rehabilitate them.

David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.