ISIS fighters escape from Syrian prison due to fighting between the Syrian government and the Kurdish SDF.

 

A Syrian government soldier stands outside the prison. Al Jazeera/AFP.

ISIS fighters escaped from a Syrian prison due to fighting between the Syrian government and the Kurdish Syria Defense Force (SDF). Al Jazeera. An unknown number of fighters escaped the prison and both sides are blaming the other for the release. The Syrian regime says that the prisoners were released on purpose by the Kurds while the Kurds say that the prisoners escaped during fighting. The fighting stopped after a ceasefire deal was reached between the Syrian Government and the SDF, which would require the SDF to pull out from Arab dominated areas, including Raqqa and Dier ez Zor and would integrate their forces into the Syrian military. Thousands of ISIS fighters are still held by the Kurds after the defeat of the terror group in Syria in 2019. 

My Comment:

This is a very concerning situation. These are hardened ISIS fighters and as many as 1500 of them may have escaped. How many of them is unclear at this point, 1500 is the upper limit but the Syrian government says it's fewer than that. Either way, any of these fighters escaping is not a good thing, let alone 1500 of them. 

Given the numbers of terrorists that got out and the fact that other prisons could fall as well, there is a chance that ISIS could have a comeback due to this escape. ISIS fighters have taken advantage of local chaos before and they could do so again. 

My real fear though is that these ISIS fighters could make their way to Europe. ISIS has, of course, used Europe's weak borders as a way to get terrorists into the region and has resulted in several major attacks, most notably the 2015 Paris attacks and the 2016 Brussels bombing. There is a chance, albeit a small one, that this could happen again. 

However, there are some things that make it unlikely. The most obvious is that ISIS is largely a spent force, they control no territory in Syria and have no tax base to fund attacks. That could change if these ISIS fighters were to take some territory, exploiting the instability between the SDF and the government, but right now it's not the case. And Europe has tightened up their border controls a bit so it would be more difficult to infiltrate than it once was. 

The good news is that the fighting in Syria might be dying down. The whole conflict is between the SDF and the Syrian regime and they just announced a fragile cease fire and a plan to integrate the Kurds into the Syrian government. It's unclear if it will hold, the SDF has a lot of PKK communists that don't want peace with the Syrian regime. I would hope that even they would understand that fighting that ends up with released ISIS fighters is a bad thing.