In all latitudes, on all continents to varying degrees, Islamism is doing well. Where it was thought to be shot down, with the fall of the Islamic State (IS) organization – which had held large swaths of territory between 2014 and 2019, in Syria but also in Iraq – here it is again striking a blow in Syrian Kurdistan.
For a week, the IS group attacked one of the largest jihadist prisons controlled by Kurdish forces, Ghwayran prison, in Hassaké.
With hundreds of fighters, the Islamist organization was on the verge of winning and releasing the approximately 3,500 detainees who were there, when the intervention of American and British special forces prevented this outcome. in extremis.
The horrible balance sheet (drawn up by The world) of this bloody pitched battle gives an idea of the forces involved and the seriousness of the Islamist mobilization to liberate the “fighting brothers”: 495 dead, including 374 detainees and assailants, 77 prison employees and guards, 40 soldiers of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF, mainly Kurdish militias) and 4 civilians.
In the days immediately following the events in Hassaké, and in the same region (100 km further west), the United States went there with a raid against the “caliph” Abu Ibrahim al-Qurashi, the man who had presumably planned this attack in the previous weeks.
He committed suicide with explosives on February 3, taking part of his family, as US special forces were about to capture him.
This dramatic sequence reminds us that the supposed “peace” in Syria, on this northern front as on others, is fragile, unjust, unreal; that misery and latent war are still there.
The situation of the prisons which are overflowing with detainees from the Islamic State group and their families is deplorable. The Kurdish forces, by their own admission, are struggling to hold the 20 detention facilities where up to 15,000 people are believed to be, including dangerous terrorists ready to return to service.
Throughout the region they control, the Kurds thus detain thousands of members of the Islamic State group, sometimes with women and children: living “remains” of an unfinished war, a gigantic hot potato.
They call for help from their allies (or those they thought were their allies) in the West. Their semi-autonomous region is fragile, with enemies on all sides: the resurgent Islamic State group, the hostile Turkey of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, militarily present in Syria. Without forgetting the central power of Damascus, which would like to bring the region back under its control.
Although most of the detainees are Syrians and Iraqis, thousands are foreigners, from dozens of countries, including Europeans. These states are reluctant to repatriate, imprison and try their fellow citizens drawn into a not-so-distant jihad.
Instead of extraditing them, they are left for years in a military and legal no-man’s land, in squalid conditions, with Kurdish guards who would like to do something else.
These two episodes — the siege of the prison followed by the American raid against Al-Qurashi — are a stark reminder. First that the Islamic State group still exists, with an active guerrilla in this region where it was born, straddling Syria and Iraq.
(And we’re not talking here about the foreign branches — in Africa, in Asia, in other countries in the Middle East — which continue to claim the label “Islamic State”… al-Qaeda).
In Syria and Iraq, US intelligence speaks of around 10,000 fighters, including sleeper cells: in the vicinity of Mosul and Kirkuk in Iraq, but also in the Syrian desert, south and north of Rakka, they carry out commando actions.
We also discover that the Americans are still there. Donald Trump had however whistled the end of the mission in the fall of 2019. This repatriation then announced as complete had caused a scandal among the Kurds… once again betrayed and abandoned by their “allies”.
But Washington’s announcement was only half acted upon. We discover that there are still some 900 American civilians and soldiers in northern Syria: advisers and special forces who participated, for example, in this raid to take over the Ghwayran prison.
The Islamic State group says: we are still here, we still exist. And you haven’t finished hearing about us…
The Syrian Kurds say: we are still holding our positions, this part of the country is our country… But don’t forget us, please. And then there is this story that has been dragging on for years: what to do with all these prisoners, these jihadists and their families?
Finally, the Americans: yes, we started from Afghanistan and it was not very glorious… but beware: we can still hit the terrorists “wherever they are” (Biden), and we show it to you today today.
François Brousseau is an international affairs columnist at Ici Radio-Canada. [email protected]