Repatriation of International ISIS Followers
Eli Lang, Online Branch, Staff Writer
February 14th, 2023
Following the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’s (ISIS) declaration of a caliphate in 2014, the terrorist group began to lure thousands of foreign followers. The establishment of a state administered under ISIS’s interpretation of Islamic law, and led by a self-proclaimed successor to Mohammed, attracted international attention. However, ISIS lost 95% of its territory in Syria and Iraq by 2017 (Wilson Center, 2019). The foreign nationals who flocked to Syria to fight and live within ISIS’s short-lived state wound up on the losing side. Many foreign followers were indefinitely imprisoned in northern Syria. The potential responsibilities that states have to their imprisoned citizens has become a topic of fierce debate. As a measure of safety, states with functioning criminal justice systems should repatriate every ISIS follower of native origin that they can.
The justification for repatriating former ISIS followers held in Syria is twofold. Firstly, many of the prisoners simply deserve justice. There are thousands of foreign children being raised in prison camps because they were taken to Syria by their parents as infants. Secondly, truly dangerous and guilty terrorists from abroad should face prosecution in their country of origin. It is both unethical and unwise to disregard either the innocent or the guilty held in Northeastern Syria. The impulse for a country to disregard all ties with citizens who affiliate themselves with such an evil organization is strong, but the responsibility of repatriation is more complicated than it appears at first glance.
ISIS followers of foreign origin have crowded north Syrian prisons for up to five years now, most notoriously the Al-Hol prison camp which holds 68,000 prisoners from 60 countries (ICCT, 2022). Children make up 50% of Al-Hol’s incarcerated population. Al-Hol’s child prisoners have experienced torture and abuse, and ISIS remnants are targeting many for full recruitment during their formative years. In the past few weeks, Canada allowed 23 Canadian-born prisoners to return, including four men (Major, 2023), while France repatriated 15 women and 32 children. These decisions made by adequately equipped states to repatriate their former ISIS members are intelligent ones, and other countries should follow suit.
Although thousands of foreign-born children remain imprisoned in Syria, the issue of their repatriation is somewhat less controversial than those of adult prisoners. Children who experienced the surroundings that ISIS families were immersed in, and the atmospheres of violent prison camps do pose certain risks to the states that repatriate them. However, it is clear that these children’s home countries owe them justice. After all, some of these children arrived in Iraq and Syria before they could even talk, let alone form fanatical religious and political beliefs. As a result, mostly children, and some women, have made up the selection of prisoners repatriated to Western Europe (ICCT, 2022). Repatriating the children of foreign ISIS fighters is mostly a matter of logistics and commitment of resources, not an ethical dilemma. Furthermore, the most highly developed countries whose citizens joined ISIS should be repatriating their adult male members as well, not so much for the sake of justice, but in the interest of global security.
The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria, where most foreign ISIS followers are held, is politically unstable. The administration is battling Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, and it has been partially invaded and occupied by Turkey since the fall of ISIS. The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Autonomous Administration’s primary security force, does not have the resources to safely detain all of ISIS’s former followers (Turak, 2019). The SDF’s prisoners live surrounded by brutality, and their prison conditions give rise to concerns of further radicalization. The SDF has also repeatedly displayed an inability to properly defend their prisons.
Although ISIS’s caliphate has fallen, significant numbers of loyalists still remain hidden out in Syria. In 2019, Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, at the time these holdouts leader, called for them to spring ISIS followers out of ill-equipped prisons (Harley, 2019). ISIS prison breaks and attacks are frequent and often successful. Security forces in Syria simply do not have the infrastructure or security means to properly incarcerate the thousands of prisoners captured as ISIS fell. The thousands of prisoners of foreign origin putting extra strain on their system only make matters worse. By refusing to repatriate and prosecute their home-radicalized ISIS prisoners, foreign governments are only making the remnants of ISIS in Syria more dangerous and resilient.
Some states have already addressed their share of judicial responsibility for their nationals. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) serves as an example. BiH saw 241 adults and 80 children join ISIS in Iraq and Syria. BiH has accepted the return of 46 militants, almost all of whom were handed prison sentences for their crimes (Dronzina, 2021). Distribution of the burden of incarcerating prisoners of the most dominant international terrorist organization could give the SDF a greater fighting chance and protect the outside world from a stronger resurgence of ISIS.
Syrian and Iraqi prisons are hotbeds for human rights violations and violence. Although some argue that these prisons’ conditions suit ISIS’s crimes, they have repetitively shown to be counterproductive to the goal of eliminating extremism. The leadership and formation of ISIS itself can be traced back to Camp Bucca, a US administered incarceration center which held Al-Qaeda militants in Iraq (Callimachi, 2019). Moving forward, Iraq and Syria will have to prosecute their home-grown militants, but the division of international ISIS prisoners among dozens of more sophisticated justice and detainment systems could significantly reduce the number of future extremist recruits.
The Global North needs to abandon the mentality that Syria’s problems are Syria’s alone. While ISIS held its pseudo-state, it was able to launch exceedingly devastating terror attacks globally, and the current state of affairs in Northeast Syria is potentially more dangerous than those that produced their original momentum.
Bringing ISIS militants and followers back to their native country and out of inhumane conditions may not feel like a natural decision to some. ISIS’s crimes both in Syria and globally were unique in their brutality. Despite the downfall of the ISIS caliphate, the group still holds out, and certainly poses a threat. Given states’ responsibility to their innocent youth, and the dangers of leaving extremists concentrated in under-resourced and violent environments, former ISIS followers should be repatriated, either for their salvation or proper incarceration. Repatriation and the distribution of burden by capable governments could prevent the escape of guilty militants, and the radicalization of children who came to Iraq or Syria oblivious to the future in store for them. Allowing former ISIS followers to return to their countries of origin shouldn’t be viewed as a favor to them but understood as an act of support for Syria in its plight, and a defensive measure against a major reemergence of global terrorism.
Bibliography
Callimachi, R., & Hassan, F. (2019, October 27). Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, ISIS leader known for his brutality, is dead at 48. The New York Times. Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/27/world/middleeast/al-baghdadi-dead.html
DRONZINA, T. (2021). Repatriation of migrants to isis: The experience of four states from the western balkans. Balkan Social Science Review, 17, 239–264. https://doi.org/10.46763/bssr21170239d
Harley, N. (2021, July 5). ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi releases audio message. The National. Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/mena/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-releases-audio-message-1.911102
Major, D. (2023, January 20). Canada has agreed to repatriate 19 women and children held in Syria | CBC News. CBCnews. Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canada-repatriating-syria-1.6719544
Mehra, T., Wentworth, M., & Thorley, A. (2022, September 16). The European Court of Human Rights sitting on the fence?: Its ruling ... Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.icct.nl/publication/european-court-of-human-rights-ruling-impact-on-repatriating-european-children-from-northeast-syria/
Turak, N. (2019, October 14). Hundreds of Isis prisoners are escaping from camps in northern Syria amid Turkish offensive. CNBC. Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/14/isis-prisoners-are-escaping-from-camps-in-syria-amid-turkish-offensive.html
Wilson Center. (2019, October 28). Timeline: The rise, spread, and fall of the islamic state. Wilson Center. Retrieved February 11, 2023, from https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/timeline-the-rise-spread-and-fall-the-islamic-state#:~:text=By%20December%202017%2C%20the%20ISIS,Iraq%20on%20December%209%2C%202017.