The battle against ISIS still smolders — and could erupt

AL-HOL, SYRIA » The Islamic State, which seemed to be extinguished three years ago when its caliphate was crushed, is still smoldering red hot at a refugee camp here and a prison nearby. And the Syrian Kurdish militia that’s guarding the facilities says it badly needs help before there’s a new eruption.

The battle against ISIS, as the Islamic State is also known, is yesterday’s war, and it gets little public attention. But the danger of a resurgence was evident Wednesday when Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the new commander of the U.S. Central Command, toured the two facilities in northeast Syria.

Kurilla traveled to Syria as the final stop on his first trip to the Middle East since becoming commander of U.S. military forces in the region on April 1, and he invited me to come along. He wanted to assess the risks here to U.S. interests, and he came away with a vivid firsthand picture of the continuing problem of containing what’s left of ISIS.

Kani Ahmed, the local commander of the Syrian Democratic Forces militia that’s securing the al-Hol refugee camp, described to Kurilla a March 28 uprising by Islamic State supporters inside the fences. Fighters attacked with rocket-propelled grenades, AK-47s and pistols that had been smuggled into the facility.

“This camp is like a time bomb,” Ahmed told the visiting Americans. “We don’t know when it’s going to explode.”

If you wanted to design a breeding ground for future Islamist militants, it would be alHol. Nearly 8,000 of the residents came from countries other than Syria or Iraq, but those nations have mostly ignored repatriation requests. “The countries don’t want them back, and they’re not doing anything to help,” said the SDF official who oversees the foreigners, who identified herself only as Amara.

“The world needs to know what’s going on here,” Kurilla told me after we left the camp. He said the U.S. military is already working to improve security at the camp. He also wants to help the State Department organize an international response that would return families of Islamic State foreign fighters to their home countries — and take some of the burden from the SDF militia.

Kurilla next flew by helicopter to the Hasakah prison, about 40 miles away, where he heard a chilling account of a violent escape there four months ago by several thousand captives, assisted by fighters outside, that left hundreds dead. The eyewitness description was provided by local SDF commanders and U.S. Special Operations advisers who fought in the bloody battle.

American troops rushed to help the SDF stop the fleeing detainees. The battle raged for 10 days, as the United States called in Bradley armored vehicles, fighter jets and Apache helicopters to contain the escape. About 3,000 prisoners finally surrendered on Jan. 30, but 421 Islamic State supporters were killed, along with 125 SDF troops, 25 of whom were beheaded, according to one of the American military advisers. About 100 Islamic State fighters got away, whereabouts unknown.

Kurilla saw another threat to U.S. forces in Syria during a separate visit Monday to a joint American-SDF base called Green Village, near Deir El-Zoor. The base was hit the night of April 7 by two explosions, and four U.S. soldiers were wounded. The U.S. military initially described the strike as a rocket attack, and analysts suspected it came from an Iranian-backed militia, posing a question for Biden administration officials back in Washington of whether and how to retaliate.

But U.S. commanders at Green Village told Kurilla on Monday that after examining video recordings, they now believed that the blasts were caused by explosive devices planted by someone — affiliation so far unknown — who entered the base.

Iran and its proxies remain a threat. So does the Islamic State. As much as we would like to imagine otherwise, wars in the Middle East aren’t over even when they’re over.