Will Syria’s War on the Kurds Lead to a Resurgence of ISIS?

The Damascus government’s subjugation of Kurdish fighters in northern Syria, with America’s and Turkey’s backing, will lead to a resurgence of the Islamic State, some Syrian neighbors fear. On Tuesday President Ahmed al Sharaa announced a four-day ceasefire in his army’s days-long fight in Kurdish-controlled areas. The Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces are said to have agreed to lay down their arms and integrate into the national army. The SDF’s commander, Mazlum Abdi, was named Syria’s deputy defense minister. While the Syrian army assaulted Kurdish-held areas this week, though, a large number of ISIS fighters escaped from prisons that have long been guarded by Kurds. Armed Kurdish fighters have been America’s top ally in fighting ISIS. Now Washington’s ambassador to Turkey, Tom Barrack, is echoing Damascus’ and Ankara’s demands that the Kurds must disarm. “The original purpose of the SDF as the primary anti-ISIS force on the ground has largely expired,” Mr. Barrack wrote on X Tuesday. “Damascus is now both willing and positioned to take over security responsibilities, including control of ISIS detention facilities and camps.”Is it, though?Damascus is accusing SDF wardens of abandoning posts in order to blackmail the Syrian army into ending its assault on the Kurds. “It’s a shame that the SDF resorted to a blackmail method and dealt with those prisons in the way that they have, and allowed the escape of these individuals,” Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations, Ibrahim Olabi, tells The New York Sun. Kurds dispute that version. In some cases, Kurdish sources say, ISIS sympathizers in the Syrian army allowed detainees to walk away after capturing prisons. Among the Syrian army soldiers, some even proudly wore ISIS insignia on their sleeves, a Kurdish source told the Sun. As both sides blame each other, the escape is raising alarms among the neighbors. Iraq reportedly is closing its border with Syria for fear that escaped ISIS fighters will reunite with their Iraqi allies. “Daesh is emboldened and resurgent,” a top analyst at Alma Research Center in northern Israel, Tal Beeri, tells the Sun, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.“Among the dozens, or even hundreds of escaped prisoners are veteran, battle-tested Daesh fighters,” Mr. Beeri says. “The freed prisoners will further contribute to the rehabilitation of Daesh in Syria and beyond. Some of them will arrive at the eastern part of the country, near Iraq, and in the south, along the Israeli border, which could lead to heightened terrorist activity.”One of President Trump’s proudest achievements of his first term was a victory over ISIS, including the 2019 killing of its leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Before Mr. Shara became a suit-wearing statesman, he was known as Abu Mohammad al Joulani, a commander of the Syrian faction of al Qaeda.Early on, Joulani even allied with al-Baghdadi. Then the two had a falling out, and ISIS now sees the Damascus government as its sworn enemy, and at one point it even threatened to kill Mr. Sharaa. “We have a lot of experience fighting ISIS,” Mr. Olabi, the Syrian U.N. ambassador, told the Sun. “We have the skills and the patience and the expertise to be able to deal with it.”The Syrian army, though, is widely seen as an undisciplined assortment of fighters. Last summer it massacred Druze in the south and Alawites in Syria’s coastal region. War crimes were recorded, including the deliberate mass killing of civilians, humiliation, and rape. In this week’s battles against the Kurds, Damascus tried to prevent a return of such atrocities.It even emulated Israel’s methods, dropping leaflets to warn civilians to leave battle areas. The army is also censoring battlefield information. Mr. Sharaa’s problem, though, is that “much of his army is composed of rebranded former jihadists, including some that identify with Daesh,” Mr. Beeri says. The Kurds, meanwhile, feel betrayed by their American allies, in favor of the top regional power behind Mr. Shara, Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan considers the Syrian Kurds to be a mortal enemy.Mr. Barrack says the Kurds no longer have a role in the war on ISIS, “so our mission in this part is over,” the co-chairwoman of the Syrian Kurdish autonomous government, Ilham Ahmed, told reporters on Tuesday. “But we still have the mission of protecting our people, because still, the Syrian army consists of radical and extremist factions that no one in Syria can trust.”

Will Syria’s War on the Kurds Lead to a Resurgence of ISIS?

Will Syria’s War on the Kurds Lead to a Resurgence of ISIS?

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