generalspeaking

Monday, August 19, 2019

Caliphate Redux

"The IDP [internally displaced persons] camp al-Hol is quickly becoming a mini-caliphate and a fertile recruiting ground for ISIL. The security footprint around the camp is increasingly weak, and the camp is being run by ISIL types under our very nose."
"The European response when it comes to ISIL fighters has been pathetic and dangerous."
"When it comes to al-Hol, the red lights are blinking. We ignore it at our own peril."
Senator Lindsey Graham, U.S. Senate

"The SDF's [Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces] inability to provide more than 'minimal security' at the camp has allowed the 'uncontested conditions to spread of ISIL ideology' there."
U.S. Defense Department Inspector General report

"If the president wants to be successful in countering ISIL, he's got to swallow the hard reality of what's necessary and commit a lot more. And his officials have to find the courage to raise this with him and with the public."
"The stakes now are so high, we can't continue to whisper about the realities of how bad things are."
Charles Lister, counterterrorism director, Middle East Institute, Washington

A detained French woman who fled the Islamic State walks with her child at al-Hol camp for displaced people in northeastern Syria on Feb. 17. BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images

The global community, terrified of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant stretching its influence into Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere which has become the infiltrated home of Islamist sympathizers to the cause of an ISIL caliphate and the eventual conquest it sought for the future of Islam, gave credit to the Kurdish fighters whose courage and determination was almost solely responsible for restraining the ongoing territorial grab of ISIL for its expanding caliphate.

The battles where the Kurdish military aided by U.S. air power, NATO-member training, and the provision of some level of weaponry squared off with the terrorists comprised of local Sunni extremists, bolstered by enthusiastic recruits from overseas deciding to leave their European and North American countries of civil, democratic haven for the excitement of bringing a brave new Islamist reality to fruition, were recognized by the international community for their enterprise and skill in defeating a global enemy.

Members of the SDF stand guard as women pass through a wire fence at al-Hol (AFP)

Yet with the fall of Raqqa, recognized as the capital of the caliphate after the conquered territory had begun to collapse, the world's recognition collapsed as suddenly as its willingness to be responsible for their own nationals held in custody as defeated ISIL terrorists by the Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces. Who had no wish whatever to remain custodians of the murderers of Yazidis, Christians, Shiites and Western reporters and NGO workers. The SDF assembled the ISIL fighters and their families in vast IDP camps with little aid trickling in to defray costs or help guard the terrorists.

The largest of the camps is now an acknowledged ideological fortress for the Islamic State; their new emergent caliphate-in-waiting at the al-Hol camp where over 2,000 Islamic State fighters are kept in makeshift prisons and women and children in their thousands live in squalid conditions, guarded by an understaffed, poorly resourced ally of the United States, left holding the bag. The Kurds, celebrated for their leading role in the defeat of Islamic State, are now saddled with the results.

It is not as though the Islamic State no longer exists. Extending vestiges of it are hard at work in Afghanistan and throughout North Africa, destabilizing, threatening, bombing, murdering, re-establishing the fear of their malignant presence as a psychopathic threat. In the al-Hol camp, a relative handful of SDF guards are stationed to control an entire hostile population. The women of Islamic State operate a morality police corps enforcing Shariah Law, and rumoured executions.

An internal security patrol member escorts women, reportedly wives of Islamic State fighters, in the al-Hol camp in al-Hasakeh governorate in northeastern Syria, on July 23, 2019. DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/Getty Images

From within the camp itself the Islamic State is actively recruiting, smuggling fighters back and forth, planning attacks in other parts of Syria. Of the 70,000 women and children in al-Hol about 11,000 are nationals of countries outside Iraq or Syria, most of the countries refusing to accept their nationals to place them on trial, imprison them after conviction of crimes against humanity. Preferring to leave them right where they are, at the al-Hol camp, the SDF's headache despite their pleas to remove them.

President Trump threatened at one point to "release" thousands of European Islamic State fighters back to where they came from. And though Europe has refused steadfastly to repatriate their nationals it appears that residents of al-Hol have absented themselves to return to places in Syria and Turkey where they will feel free to utilize whatever resources are available to them to reform and expand.

What al-Hol represents, according to the report from the Inspector General of the U.S. Defense Department is a security nightmare alongside a humanitarian crisis.

Should the U.S. commitment to the area develop further in the area that President Trump has indicated in his intention to recall U.S. troops to return to the U.S. and dust his hands of any further responsibility in the geography, it is clear that with the dissolution of the current operation the situation will continue to deteriorate with unwholesome consequences for all concerned.

The SDF cannot remain the sole responsible party to deal with the radicalized Islamists.

According to the United Nations there are 20000 children under the age of five living in the camp; 65 percent of al-Hol residents altogether are under age twelve. Clearly these children in their impressive numbers have already been impacted by the virus of violence and hatred that has infected their elders. And their future stretches before them, with the track they will take having been decided by their environment, familial exposure and their experiences.