Evidence is increasing day after day of the re-emergence of the Islamic State (ISIS) in Syria and Iraq, three years after it lost its last foothold in the so-called caliphate state.
Since ISIS has the ability to launch multiple, coordinated and sophisticated attacks, this is evidence that what was believed to be disparate sleeper cells has again emerged as a more serious threat, and a declaration of the organization’s ability to withstand and respond in a time and place of its choosing.
A few days ago, its fighters attacked a prison in the city of al-Hasakah, northeastern Syria, in an attempt to release 3,500 of their prisoners, and took a group of imprisoned boys hostage to use them as human shields. The American army intervened in the fighting alongside the defending Kurdish forces, however, ISIS control lasted for days before they withdrew and some of them surrendered.
Ardian Shajkovc, director of the US Institute for Counter-Terrorism, said that many of the ISIS fighters who have been arrested in attacks since the group lost its last territory three years ago were younger, and came from families with older members with ties to ISIS, and that this meant a new generation of ISIS recruits who can change the calculations.
There are thousands of ISIS youth in the Sinai prison in Hasakah, including 700 minors, 150 of whom are foreign children, who were brought to the “caliphate state” by their parents when they were young.
The battle over Hasakah prison shed light on their plight, and how their Arab countries forgot them, and their Western countries ignored them, including those as young as 12 years old, and the Islamic State was at the height of its strength when an estimated forty thousand foreigners, including women and children, went to Syria to fight or work for the caliphate state, and others were born to them, and when ISIS fell, the surviving women and children were placed in filthy, overcrowded camps lacking everything, while young suspects, some as young as ten, were sent to prison.
Extremism also increases among the residents of displacement camps, with the increase in extremism of a segment of detainees who terrorize other camp residents. When the boys in the camps reach their adolescence age, they are usually taken to the Sinai prison, where they are crammed into overcrowded and unsanitary cells. No one seems to know what can be done about these child prisoners who have become men impregnated with violence and extremism, and no party wants to take them back.
On the other hand, ISIS attacks on Iraqi and Kurdish forces have recently increased, taking advantage of the formal logistical differences between the two parties. ISIS also killed Arab and Kurdish Iraqi soldiers and fishermen, filmed the executions and the beheading of an Iraqi police colonel, in a frightening reminder of the organization’s brutal crimes.
In conjunction with the increasing dangers of ISIS, the authorities in Kuwait intend to issue an amnesty for some terrorists who had previously participated in combat and terrorist operations in Syria with ISIS, and other terrorists, who have been sentenced to prison terms related to state security issues.
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By Ahmad alsarraf
