What to do with captured IS members
WASHINGTON — What to do with hundreds of foreign Islamic State extremists captured in Syria has become a critical and growing problem for the United States government as President Donald Trump prepares to pull troops out of the country.
A senior US official said on Tuesday that resolving the fate of these prisoners is a top priority as the government lays the groundwork with allies to comply with Trump’s Dec 19 order to withdraw the 2,000 US troops from Syria, where they have been working alongside the US-backed Syrian Defense Forces (also known as SDF) to fight the IS group since 2015.
But there are no easy answers. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said releasing the fighters would be “unacceptable” since they could simply rejoin the remnants of IS fighters in Syria or elsewhere.
“This matters because SDF holds hundreds of IS fighters, including many European citizens, and they might go free if no solution is found,” said Bobby Chesney, a national security law expert at the University of Texas.
European nations have been reluctant to take back citizens with ties to the IS group, not wanting the legal challenge of prosecuting them or the potential security risk if they are released.
And moving former fighters to the US poses some of the same challenges the US has faced with men detained at the military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, including whether it’s feasible to prosecute militants captured on the battlefields of northern Syria, according to experts.
Meanwhile, the prisoner problem is only growing worse.
On Sunday, the SDF announced the capture of five fighters, including two US citizens, one of whom has been identified as a former school teacher from Houston.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo just began a tour of eight Middle Eastern nations to discuss the withdrawal of the US troops.
“The president’s decision to withdraw our folks from Syria in no way impacts our capacity to deliver on that,” Pompeo said on Tuesday.
“You will see in the coming days and weeks that we are doubling not only our diplomatic but our commercial efforts to put real pressure on Iran to achieve what it is we set out for them back in May,” he added.
There are fears that the US withdrawal will leave a door open for Turkey to assault the US-allied SDF fighters. Turkey views them as part of a terrorist group linked to an insurgency within its own borders. SDF commanders have warned that they will be unable to hold the 700 prisoners if Turkish forces invade Syria following a US withdrawal.