The Dilemma of Kurdish Prisons, ISIL Prisoners
"We are one hundred percent sure that if they have the opportunity to escape from the prison, it will be very dangerous for us.""I have a question. What is going to happen to us? Are the kids going to come out?" a boy from Suriname asked a reporter being escorted through Northeastern Syria's Kurdish-run prison system. Over 150 children, their ages mostly between 9 and 14 hailing from many countries whose parents brought them to Syria to become part of the ISIS caliphate are now orphans, their parents dead, some detained. It is where they have been held, jammed into crowded cells.
"Holding these people here is not only a danger for Syria, it is a danger for the whole world."
Can Polat, assistant warden, Kurdish-operated prison of 5,000
"The situation is pretty bad here, so if they could hurry up and decide. Months like this without knowing what is going to happen, people could start going crazy."
"They could say these guys were terrorists before with ISIS but they are still human."
16-year-old ISIS prisoner from Mauritius
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| Boys in a crowded cell at the prison The New York Times |
The prisons represents a humanitarian crisis that the outside world has little interest in. Sick and wounded men suffering from mental illness and malnutrition, their wounds given basic medical care, are crowded into large cells wearing the same kind of orange jumpsuits as those the Islamic State dressed their captives in before slaughtering them mercilessly with the most tortuously monstrous methods meant to shock the outside world through videos, into quaking terror.
When the Islamic State's caliphate collapsed in Syria, tens of thousands of men, women and children who had joined the self-proclaimed caliphate as citizens of a proposed brave new world of rancid terror streamed out of the fallen territory only to be gathered within squalid camps and crammed prisons the Kurdish-led militias were forced to operate as a strange kind of reward for their front-and-center action in defeating the jihadists.
With the Turkish military incursion threatening Kurdish forces, and forcing hundreds of thousands of Kurdish villagers to flee aerial bombing attacks and Syrian Sunni militias aligned with Turkey committing atrocities in their wake, Kurdish control over the prisons has lapsed and the fate of the huge detainee population in question, since most of their home countries have no interest in repatriating them, despite that the Kurdish forces lacked adequate resources to feed and house and guard them.
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There were 86 minors being held in one prison cell. They represented children from Syria, Iraq, Mauritius and elsewhere in the Arab and Western world whose parents had responded to the call to jihad from Islamic State. Prison conditions are crowded and squalid, increased even more so since hundreds of prisoners were moved from the battle zone. Kurdish fighters who acted as prison guards have departed to the front lines opposing Turkish entry to their towns and villages.
When ISIS lost its remaining Syrian territory in March, Kurdish fighters were suddenly in charge of close to 11,000 men and tens of thousands of women and children, forcing the Kurds to establish camps and a prison system. One quarter of the prisoners are Syrians, the rest from 29 other countries such as Iraq, Libya, Egypt, the Netherlands and the United States, languishing now in Mr. Polat's prison.
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In the medical ward men with braces meant to hold their broken bones in place spend agonizing hours on thin mattresses. When the call to prayers comes many of them are too weak and injured to respond. In interviews with their Kurdish jailers prisoners denied being ISIS fighters, anxious to be enabled to return to their home countries or to receive amnesty in recognition of having disingenuously renounced the Islamic State.
The Kurdish authorities interpreted observed indications that led to the opinion that many of the minors had undergone ideological training as future fighters. Complicating plans to move the youngest of the children to rehabilitation centers was the Turkish incursion, leading to a lack of support to finalize the intention.
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Labels: Islamic State, Kurdish Fighters, Kurdistan, Prisoners, Syria, Turkish Invasion
posted by Pieface @ Monday, November 04, 2019
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