The Al Hol camp, in northeastern Syria, very close to the border with Iraq, still holds more than 45,000 people, mostly women and children, linked to what the Islamic State terrorist group (ISIS, in its a decade ago called the caliphate, a ruthless jihadist and terror project born in ancient Mesopotamia and defeated by weapons in March 2019. Almost 7,000 of the inhabitants of these camps are foreigners. On March 28, Abu Hudhaifa al Ansari, current spokesperson for ISIS, broadcast a 41-minute message. In the audio, Al Ansari urged his followers to attack, among other objectives, the Al Hol camp to free his “prisoners.” A proclamation that indicates, at least, two things: first, that the jihadist organization is far from surrendering, and, secondly, that that legal limbo created in Syria, with thousands of people trapped, many ignored and feared in their countries of origin. origin, poses a danger. “One of the biggest threats posed by [el ISIS] “It is the ability to re-emerge if the international community does not continue to confront the group,” said Devorah Margolin, an expert at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, in an exchange of emails.
Abu Mohamed al Adnani, a veteran fighter and old acquaintance of the US prisons in Iraq, was in charge of announcing, on June 29, 2014, the creation of the Islamic State, a group known until then as ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). ), and the proclamation of the caliphate, staged five days later, in a Mosul mosque, by its leader and declared caliph, Abubaker al Bagdadi. Both Al Adnani and Al Baghdadi lie underground, as well as several of his successors, annihilated by United States fighters. For almost five years, ISIS established a fundamentalist dictatorship on both sides of the Syrian-Iraqi border for a vast territory with around 10 million inhabitants. It attracted faithful from all over the world; he kidnapped, extorted and killed locals and foreigners, and launched a unit to strike abroad (Emni), responsible for the attacks in Paris (2015) and Brussels (2016).
A decade after the caliphate was founded and five years after its defeat in the Battle of Baguz (eastern Syria) at the hands of Kurdish-Arab militias supported by the United States, Washington still considers ISIS “a threat in Syria and Iraq,” as Ian J. McCary, of the US State Department’s Counterterrorism Office, said in a statement in March. McCary, an envoy for the international anti-ISIS coalition, insisted on one idea: the repatriation of the population of the Al Hol and Al Roj camps (about 2,600 inhabitants), separated by a hundred kilometres and managed by the Kurdish autonomous authority (AANES), “is essential to reduce the risk of a resurgence” of ISIS and the “most important tool” to prevent it. The AANES, which is already working on the trial of the members of the group behind bars, has warned that there is a risk to security if the countries of origin do not take charge of their citizens.
The latest report prepared within the UN Security Council on the threat of ISIS estimates that the group maintains between 3,000 and 5,000 combatants in the region, organized in cells with the aim of developing low-intensity operations for the recruitment of men – as in the assault on a Hasaka prison in 2022 – and the increase in financing via extortion. Security failures and tribal disputes have allowed ISIS to grow in areas of eastern Syria.
The Rojava Information Center (RIC) keeps up-to-date figures of inmates in these camps. According to the latest data provided to Morning Express, Al Hol is home to 45,488 people, including 21,377 Iraqis, 17,199 Syrians and 6,912 of other nationalities, many of them of European origin. The Iraqi National Security Advisor, Qasim Malaraji, recently detailed that in Al Hol there are citizens from up to 60 different countries. The RIC maintains in its analyzes that, although repatriations have been carried out since 2019, the pace has declined for two years. More than 30 countries have not removed a single one of their citizens from there. To the tenants of Al Hol and Al Roj, locked up but with freedom of movement inside, many still immersed in the fundamentalist universe, we must add the nearly 9,000 combatants imprisoned in detention centers in northeastern Syria. That is, the largest jihadist prison in the world.
These are figures that prove the magnitude of the ISIS phenomenon and its short-term threat. “Their ideology persists,” says Devorah Margolin, a professor at Georgetown University. “As its supporters, the insurgency and the shadow government demonstrate,” this analyst continues, “ISIS is biding its time to take advantage of ungoverned areas.”
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Repatriations
France is a good example of the growing disinterest in the remains left by the caliphate. Nearly 1,500 French people have travelled to join the ranks of ISIS. According to information provided by the Collective of United Families, which has been fighting for years for the return of French people in the custody of the Kurdish authorities, the last repatriation organised by the Elysée took place in July 2023 (10 women and 25 children) – the ongoing pre-election climate makes any new arrivals unpopular. There are still around 120 minors and around fifty women there, all in Al Roj, to which must be added five boys in the Orkesh detention centre and around 60 men in other prisons in the north-east. Lubna Miludi, a Spanish national from Ceuta, lives in the camps with her eight-year-old son. Two other Spanish women and 13 minors were repatriated in January 2023. Moroccan Lubna Fares and her three children, whose father is Spanish, are missing.
But the threat under the ISIS seal is not limited to the Middle East. In the audio released in March, jihadist spokesman Al Ansari called on his followers to emigrate to any of the group’s branches spread around the world. This was a novelty: after its defeat in Baguz, ISIS had insisted on encouraging its sympathisers to carry out attacks wherever they were and with whatever they had at hand. Al Ansari’s latest message reinforces the idea that the organisation is now confident in the growth of its regional bases in Asia and Africa. The American J. McCary offered a figure in this regard in his speech: approximately 60% of ISIS propaganda comes from sub-Saharan Africa, particularly from Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Mozambique. McCary also warned of the growing threat of the Afghan terrorist group affiliated with the jihadists (ISIS Khorasan or ISIS-K), responsible for the deaths of more than 80 people in January in Kerman (Iran) and more than 140 in Moscow, the Russian capital, in March.
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