ISIS appears to take control of a Syrian prison camp.

A woman picks clothing in al-Hol camp in Syria. National Post/AFP.

ISIS appears to take control of a Syrian prison camp holding thousands. National Post/Washington Post. 70,000 people are being held at the al-Hol camp in al-Hasakeh including 50,000 children, most of which are under the age of 12. The camp is run by American allied Syria Defense Forces but they do not seem to have the manpower to control the site and ISIS is infiltrating. 11,000 of the people held there are from other countries, many of which are refusing to repatriate or prosecute their citizens, and in some cases have already revoked their citizenship. ISIS is using the camp as a recruitment center and female ISIS members are enforcing Sharia law, up to including punishing people with death for violating their rules.  

My Comment:

A quick word on the source, this is an opinion piece and the major source is Senator Lindsey Graham. It is very obviously written in a "war hawk" neoconservative style, which is not something I usually use for a source. Unfortunately I didn't find much else so I would caution people to remember who you are reading. Their goal is very obviously an open-ended commitment to Syria that will likely never end. That's not realistic or desirable, and not something I agree with at all, but it is the viewpoint of the author and the sources of the article I cite. 

That being said, I have noted for awhile that after ISIS was defeated we were going to have problems with former ISIS fighters. Given the horrible actions these people have done and the fact that many of them could commit further crimes, it's completely understandable that the home countries don't want to take them back in. And when they do they can cause major problems in those prisons... 

This camp illustrates the problem quite clearly. If you leave thousands of former ISIS fighters and dependents back in Syria then ISIS may use those people as a recruitment station. I don't think that ISIS will actually be able to regroup with the small number of fighters left in al-Hol, as most of the people there are small children and women, but it might be a useful source of recruits as these children age into teenagers and young adults. It's also a horrible thing for those very same ISIS extremists to enforce their version of Islam in those camps. 

I do have to note that ISIS was originally founded in a US prison camp in Iraq. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was recruiting people while he was detained and once he was released he started fighting with the forerunner ISIS groups. So it's not like there isn't a risk of something like that happening again. 

However, what I disagree with is why this is America's problem. The SDF are on the ground and they should be able to handle it. I know that they fear both Turkey and the Syrian government but it's way overdue for some kind of deal to be made. The Syrian regime is never going to be overthrown and if some kind of deal could be made between the various groups fighting ISIS and al-Qaeda everyone would be better off. 

Failing that, the SDF could just shift some troops around. All it would take is a few dozen to hundred more fighters in the area and they could end this problem right away. They probably wouldn't even need American backup either but a CIA team or the Green Berets could help them with their mission until the problem is resolved if the problem were to escalate. 

Still, it's not like this prison camp is a huge threat. It's a worry yes, but the war in Syria is winding down. ISIS is largely defeated and isn't really capable of launching attacks even in Syria, let alone outside of it. There is a risk they could regroup but that is more due to the continued instability and warfare in Syria that continues. Once the war is over and the al-Nusra group is defeated, I doubt ISIS will be anything other than a bad memory in Syria.