ISIS militants, many of them foreigners, surrendered to US-backed
fighters in eastern Syria on Wednesday, bringing the Kurdish-led force closer
to taking full control of the last remaining area controlled by the extremists,
a Kurdish official and activists said, according to AP.
Çiyager Amed, an official with the Syrian Democratic Forces,
confirmed that a number of ISIS fighters who had been holed up in Baghouz gave
themselves up, without giving numbers. He said most of those remaining were
Iraqis and foreigners and that few civilians remained in the tiny area still
controlled by ISIS, although women and children continued to trickle out of the
enclave.
The capture of Baghouz and nearby areas would mark the end
of a devastating four-year global campaign against the extremist group. US
President Donald Trump has said the group is all but defeated, and announced in
December that he would withdraw all American forces from Syria.
Amed said the operation was slowed down due to the
militants’ use of civilians as human shields.
Mustafa Bali, an SDF spokesman, said hundreds of women and
children came out Wednesday.
Bali also said the fighters who remained appeared to be
among the ISIS elite who have lots of experience and are fighting “fiercely.′
“They also don’t have other options. Either to surrender or
die,” he said. He said the women and children coming out are treated as
civilians “even if they are families of ISIS.”
Rami Abdurrahman who heads the Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, a Syria war monitor, and Omar Abu Laila, who runs
the Deir Ezzor 24 group that monitors developments in the eastern province of
Deir Ezzor where the fighting is ongoing, said more than 200 ISIS fighters,
many of them foreigners, surrendered.
“The mostly foreign fighters were put in seven trucks and
taken away” by the US-led coalition and the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces,
Abdurrahman said.
Abu Laila said “the battle is almost over in eastern Syria
with SDF fighters almost in full control of the last pocket held by ISIS.”
The SDF began its final push to recapture the last sliver of
territory controlled by ISIS on Saturday. Hundreds of mostly foreign ISIS
fighters were believed to be making a final stand there, after months of
fighting. They have been fighting back with suicide car bombs, sniper fire and
booby traps, and have used civilians as human shields, according to the SDF.
The latest fighting caused an exodus of around 20,000
civilians from Baghouz and nearby areas, many of them the foreign wives and
children of ISIS militants. The SDF is holding hundreds of foreign fighters it
says are a burden on the force, but their own countries don’t want them back.
Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul Mahdi said Iraq will
repatriate Iraqi ISIS members held by SDF in Syria as well as thousands of
their family members.
Abdul Mahdi told reporters late Tuesday that families of
those fighters will also be brought back and that tent settlements will be
prepared to host them. Abdul Mahdi’s comments came after a meeting he held in
Baghdad with acting US Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.
A senior Iraqi intelligence official said up to 20,000
Iraqis, including ISIS fighters, their families and refugees will be brought
back home by April where many of them will live in a tent settlement in western
Anbar province.
The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition
of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said ISIS
members will be interrogated by Iraqi security agencies.
Abdul Mahdi’s announcement came a week after the US called
on other nations to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who traveled to
Syria to fight with ISIS and who are now being held by Washington’s local
partners.
The SDF say they detained more than 900 foreign fighters
during their US-backed campaign against ISIS in northeastern Syria.
The SDF has warned they may not be able to continue to hold
the ISIS fighters after the withdrawal of American forces from Syria ordered by
President Donald Trump in December.
A US State Department official said last week that if the
fighters can’t be repatriated, though, the detention center on the US base at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be used to hold them “where lawful and
appropriate.”
A US official said Guantanamo is the “option of last
resort.” The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the US has
identified about 50 people among the more than 900 held by Syrian forces as “high
value” suspects that could be transported to Guantanamo if they are not
repatriated.
Sending ISIS prisoners to Guantanamo would open up new legal
challenges, according to experts.
Last month, France’s Interior Minister Christophe Castaner
told French media that a handful of French jihadis had already returned home
and more would follow soon after the departure of American troops. Britain
refuses to take back citizens who joined ISIS and has reportedly stripped them
of their citizenship. Other European countries have remained largely silent
about the fate of men and women whom many see as a security threat.
Since the latest push began on Baghouz and nearby area, 19
SDF fighters and 27 ISIS gunmen, including eight suicide attackers, have been
killed, according to the Observatory.
More than 20,000 people have left the ISIS-held area and
most of them have been moved to al-Hol camp settlement in Syria’s northeastern
province of Hassakeh, where human conditions are miserable and more than two
dozen children have died in recent weeks.
