The US Literally Doesn’t Know How Many ISIS Fighters Have Escaped In Syria

10/16/19
For the better part of a year, Defense and State Department officials have been issuing dire warnings about the risk that thousands of captured ISIS fighters could escape from a network of makeshift prisons dotted across rebel-held territory in northern and eastern Syria. Now, as the United States carries out a sudden and unplanned withdrawal from the country, senior officials across government say that the U.S. has no real idea how many fighters have already escaped amid the fierce fighting between Turkey and Kurdish fighters that Washington previously backed in the fight against ISIS. “Nobody does,” said a senior government official. The fear is that large-scale breakouts will allow ISIS, which survives in sleeper cells hidden among the population in Iraq and Syria, will be able to reconstitute itself with the return of experienced fighters to the battlefield. Last month, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi ordered his followers to accelerate efforts to free fighters. Until this week, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces were guarding roughly 10,000 captured fighters in detention facilities, plus tens of thousands of their family members in policed tent camps. (Of those 10,000 fighters, around 2,000 of them are so-called “foreign fighters,” who traveled to the region from around 40 other countries to fight for ISIS. The remainder are from Iraq and Syria.)

But that fragile system fell apart when President Donald Trump ordered U.S. troops to get out of the way of a planned Turkish offensive against the SDF. The SDF began moving fighters across their territory to fight the Turks, leaving the already under-manned prisons with even fewer guards. And as the United States began the risky withdrawal of its 1,000 soldiers, it lost its ability to keep eyes on those prisons. Not all of the 10,000 fighters are held in the area currently under siege by Turkish troops and their partner Syrian Arab militia units. But even appropriately guarded, officials who have visited the prison say they are hardly max-security facilities. Dozens of fighters are crammed in a single cell, security cameras don’t work or aren’t available, and cheap cement walls are crumbling. Although Trump appears unworried by the chaotic situation, defense officials continue to express deep concerns about the potential escape of the prisoners. “It continues to be one of our major, major concerns and why we’ve been so strong that the Turks are responsible for the prisons in their areas of occupation,” said the senior defense official.

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Rogue Valley said:

The US Literally Doesn’t Know How Many ISIS Fighters Have Escaped In Syria

“We just have less eyes on the ground to know for sure what is happening,” said one senior defense official.

Like Erdogan gives a rats ass about ISIS prisoners. He allowed thousands of radical foreign jihadists to easily transit Turkey to join up with ISIS in Syria. Even now, moving in advance of Turkish military forces invading the Kurdish homeland in northern Syria are violent Islamist Sunni militia allied with Erdogan that have carte blanche to murder and execute Kurds. These horrific actions are intentional, to instill abject fear in the Kurdish population to flee their homeland of Rojava. Ethnic-cleansing. Then Erdogan can replace the Kurds with over 3 million Sunni Syrians in refugee camps in Turkey. They don't want to be resettled in northern Syria, but Sultan Erdogan wants them gone and he'll resort to murder and ethnic-cleansing to make that happen.

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Mycroft said:

Sounds like Syria, Russia and the Turks have a problem.

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Mycroft said:

Sounds like Syria, Russia and the Turks have a problem. I wish them luck in dealing with it.

Maybe if they asked the EU for some help?

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Mycroft said:

Sounds like Syria, Russia and the Turks have a problem. I wish them luck in dealing with it.

Maybe if they asked the EU for some help?

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Rogue Valley said:

Trump has a problem. They'll blackmail him into financing the reconstruction of Syria in order to protect the Kurds.

He's such a dumb asshole.

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