Stop Sending Terrorists to College

The bloody skirmish that began as a prison break in the Syrian city of al-Hasakah has ended as a tactical defeat for IS, which failed to reconstitute its ranks with hundreds of prisoners – but a propaganda victory, demonstrating that the Islamist group still poses a considerable threat to the world. Since January 20, when a handful of IS suicide bombers breached the entrance of the prison that held 3,500 of their members and affiliates, 500 people – including young boys whom the escaping prisoners used as human shields – have been killed, and according to the UN, 45,000 civilians in the area were displaced.  

For decades, we had seen terrorist leaders emerge from prison more dangerous than when they arrived. Nine members of the Islamic State’s top command did time in “prison camps," including Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi; his deputy, Abu Muslim al-Turkmani; Haji Bakr, a senior military commander and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. These prisons were operated and secured by the United States, which has substantially more resources than the SDF.

On January 30, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan released a brief statement congratulating SDF and Coalition forces on retaking control of the al-Sina’a prison and reaffirming the conviction that “nations must work together to address the thousands of ISIS detainees in inadequate detention facilities.”

However, the statement offered no specifics about how this might be done. History – including the Coalition’s recent efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan – suggests that wiping out a regime, throwing money at a provisional government, and then leaving is not a solution. It creates a dependent relationship and invites corruption.

Northeast Syria has a fully functional political structure in place: The Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), a confederation of seven regional governments. But the security forces of the AANES, the SDF and Asayish, have neither the resources nor expertise to do much more than maintain the status quo under the strict sanctions imposed by Western allies on Syrian enterprises since 2011.

So what are the solutions?

In his April address, Gen. McKenzie proposed a “whole of nations approach” to the problem. “Nations need to take back their citizens,” he said, “. . . and we need to find and develop ways that actually allow you to achieve deradicalization.”

The international community has always advocated for repatriation but IS fighters’ countries of origin have taken all the people they’ve been willing to accept. By now, it’s obvious that the prisoners aren’t going anywhere.

The U.S. has to assume a leadership role and develop with the AANES a practical and effective plan. This is a governance issue; therefore, this can not be solved by engaging only with the SDF. The AANES has advanced several practical solutions for this whole-of-nations approach.

The United States and the international community can help ease the pressure on AANES. Sanctions must be selectively lifted to enable the AANES to deliver key services to constituents, including better security and conditions at prisons. Targeted sanctions enforcement has recent precedents – in 2011, for example, the U.S. government confirmed that its sanctions regime in Sudan no longer applied to South Sudan.

A group of penal experts needs to be set up to review the existing conditions in prisons, develop a reorganization plan, and layout the funding requirements.

If foreign IS combatants are not returned to their native countries within a designated time period, they must stand trial in northeast Syria, under laws legislated by elected officials, in cases adjudicated by judges appointed under the terms of the AANES Charter of the Social Contract. While prosecutors and judges can avail themselves of expert advice, it must ultimately be Syrian officials who try and resolve cases where the victims were mostly Syrians and the crimes were committed on Syrian land.

Large camps and prisons must be divided into smaller, safer, more secure facilities, with prisoners or detainees assigned according to their place of origin. Once organized into more manageable groups, the long work of deradicalization, rehabilitation, education and training can begin, but it must be life in prison for the irredeemable.

In 2004, when the 9/11 Commission began presenting its recommendations to Congress, commissioner Richard Ben-Veniste warned: “We are killing terrorists, but Bin Ladin and other organizations are recruiting them faster than we can kill them.”

Bin Ladin is dead now – and so is the former head of IS, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, killed during a U.S.-led raid on February 3. But as Gen. McKenzie pointed out in his April address, the prisons and detention camps of northeastern Syria are now perfectly arranged to produce more people just like them. “It will be a military problem in a few years,” he said, “if we don’t fix the non-military aspects of it now.”

Dominique L. Plewes is special advisor to Freedom Research Foundation and founder of 501(c)3 Special Operations Forces (SOF) Support Foundation, dedicated to educating Americans on the purposes and uses of our special operations forces.