The ISIS Detainees in AANES and Why the International Community Won’t Help

ISIS members as well. And in the Alhol camp you now have a population of essentially ISIS affiliated women and the children of ISIS members who are now housed in that camp as well. And this camp is a serious humanitarian issue. You have these children who are in very difficult conditions. It's a massive security problem for the surrounding Syrian and Iraqi communities that were victimized by ISIS, and the world ISIS openly wants to reconstitute itself. It is

operating inside the camp clandestinely to reconstitute itself. It wants to break prisoners out and go right back to its genocidal policies against minorities in the region like Yazidis and Christians, and to continue terror attacks not only in Iraq and Syria,

but around the world. It's also a real drain on the resources of the Autonomous Administration and the SDF themselves, who we have to remember are not a state actor, but are dealing with the sort of problems that even the wealthiest and most militarily established state actors would have trouble with, so they've ended up in this unenviable position of having to take care of essentially criminals from around the world who came to their country to commit mass atrocities,

while the victims of these ISIS crimes across Northern and Eastern Syria and victims of the subsequent Turkish invasions that a Northern and Eastern Syria suffered during and after the

fight against ISIS really lack basic resources. Now, this is something I heard a lot on the ground when I was in the region in February and March, speaking to people from off which was invaded and occupied by Turkey in twenty eighteen, and to people from Sera, Kanya and Tel Abyad which were invaded and occupied by Turkey in

twenty nineteen. Many of them asked rightly why there were so many resources from international bodies and NGOs and governments provided towards the ISIS detainees in al Hole and the ISIS affiliated individuals there when they're communities, their families who had done nothing other than simply living in areas that Turkey decided to invade and occupy, who were displaced because of that. In what experts, including myself, would refer to

as ethnic cleansing. These communities are receiving nothing from the international community. You know, they feel forgotten and they have some serious questions about that. Of course, the Autonomous Administration has many needs and many pressing security problems that it simply can't devote enough resources to when it's tasked with

managing the world's ISIS members. So in a recent study that we published at the Kurdish Peace Institute by journalist Matt Broomfield, who spent a lot of time on the ground in North East Syria during and after the defeat of ISIS, he found that just four percent of foreign ISIS fighters held by Syrian Kurdish authorities have been repatriated since twenty nineteen four percent. The most of the repatriations have been women and children, not the fighters themselves who

are housed in prisons. But of course the women and children are a humanitarian issue and a security issue too, so think about that. Those are really dangerous numbers.

And that's that's one thing. But like a lot of these people willingly participated in an extremely oppressive and violent regime and they sort of a being that they're often not portrayed as such in the press. Is that fair to say?

peoples that ISIS targeted. So that I think when you have these genocide survivors saying that no, these women participated fully in these crimes, they facilitated these crimes, They made

this system of genocide of crimes against humanity possible. That's something we have to listen to and I'm glad that you bring up the Western media portrayal because you really see this idea that the women could not have been perpetrators themselves, when what we hear on the ground is that that's not true, and what legal cases have begun to find is that that's not true either. There's been trials in Europe for ISIS affiliated women for their complicity

in acts of genocide against the Uzdi community. And you know, one point that you hear very commonly on the ground is that how can there have only been one or two, just a handful of trials. I'm not sure the exact number. But after all of these people missing, all of these people killed, how are all of these ISIS members? And that's why I said, you know ISIS affiliated women, because I don't think I do agree with you. It's a disservice to just refer to them as ISIS brides or

whatever sensationalistic media framing you have. These people simply aren't

being put on trial. And one of the reasons for that is that when we come to female members of ISIS, there is this perception, both in media and from governance, from international institutions that these women are victims that because they're women, because they subscribed willingly to a political and ideological system that was very very oppressive of women, that puts women only into certain roles as housewives, as mothers of the next generation of ISIS. That these women couldn't

have committed atrocities, but they have. They did, And you know what we're hearing right now, and some of the reporting that's coming out of Northeast Syria is that even within the camps, these women have continued to commit some of the most serious abuses that ISIS has been committing. There's reports that they have raped, sexually assaulted the teenage boys who are in the camp in order to essentially become pregnant and raise more children to create that next

generation of ISIS that they seek to create. This continued perpetration of sexual violence against these boys who've done nothing other than had the misfortune to have their parents be members of ISIS. You know, this is a very very serious allegation. The reporting about this is something that needs

to be taken very seriously. Like I said, this is a massive human rights crisis for these children, and it is you know, these women are no less dangerous and no less culpable for their crimes than their male counterparts who joined isis.

I think, like the ongoing like not only the abuse of children, but like the sort of attempt to indoctrinate children into that same like extremist ideology to even like I've seen videos of kids training with little wooden guns, and yeah, I'm sort of raising another generation of people who believe in this kind of painful outlook. And can you talk a little bit about how common that is or I guess you don't know entirely, but can you speak to that a little bit.

is to raise the next generation of ISIS fighters. There's no reason to believe that the majority of these women have given up on their beliefs, and there is evidence

that this is what they're trying to do. And of course, when you look at the broader situation that these children are in, it's a situation that's exceedingly conducive to radicalization because of the poor conditions in the camps, because of the fact that they remain with their mothers, many of whom believe firmly in ISIS ideology and who see the role of women in ISIS as doing exactly that, as

passing down this ideology. And you know, when these children they can't be safely repatriated to their countries, they can't be put into safe environments where they can receive the support they need, the positive influences, they need, any kind

of medical or psychological help that they need. In these conditions, it's inevitable that you're going to have the continuation of this ISIS ideology being perpetrated and the adults there, these women continuing to pass this down on these children, who again have done nothing to be put in the situation that they're in. They're continuing to be victimized by the

actions of their parents and the other ISIS members. So and the international community too as a fault here for refusing to repatriate at least these children and to try ISIS perpetrators of war crimes, kinds against humanity and genocide.

of like these people celebrating a drone strike inside the camp, and can you talk about the impact these drone strikes have.

for any form of Kurdish autonomy, any kind of multi ethnic project to potentially be able to exist there, either

now or in the future. And this facilitation of the rise of ISIS reached such a level that you've had legal experts through the Yazidi Justice Committee, which published an in depth report on this last year find based on a review of the evidence that Turkey was quote complicit in the commission of genocide end quote by ISIS by allowing fighters to cross its borders to join the group, allowing ISIS related economic activity to go on, and other forms of facilitation of the rise of ISIS when it

was committing its most serious crimes. So this is not something new. The way that these drone strikes specifically impact this issue. They're part of the broader Turkish campaign of aggression against northeast Syria. Obviously, the two ground invasions of Afrin and of Sera Kanya and Talabyad had very negative impacts on the fight against ISIS. And the drone strikes now, first of all, they make it difficult for any SDF or autonomous administration structure to simply do the day to

day work of providing security and providing the government. You know, if a government official or a member of the local security forces has to modify their behavior, has to modify where they go, how they interact with their constituents. You know, what kind of missions they can conduct to avoid being assassinated in a drone strike. They're simply not going to be as effective. Right, So this is a problem in

many areas. It certainly impacts the counter ISIS mission, and Turkey has specifically started to increasingly target ans, SDF and Asayish internal security forces personnel who are directly engaged in counter ISIS missions. We saw this in late twenty twenty two when there were severe Turkish air operations following a bombing in Istanbul that Turkey, based on all evidence, falsely attempted to attribute to Kurdish groups despite there being no

real evidence supporting that claim. These attacks targeted civilians, civilian infrastructure, and SDF forces engaged in key counter ISIS missions, including SDF forces involved in securing the Alhole camp. And now we've even started to see in addition to these anti SDF anti autonomous administration drone strikes, Turkey's been using drones to fire essentially warning shots at the international coalition led

by the US and the other coalition countries itself. We saw this in November when there was a drone strike on the joint SDF coalition base where the SDF and the international community worked together to plan ongoing counter ISIS missions, and earlier this year, in i believe April of this year, the drone strike on Sulimania International Airport in Iraqi Kurdastan, where there was a joint SDF coalition convoy where SDF Commander in Chief Muslim Kobani was present and US forces

were also present. That strike, for all intents and purposes, was Turkey's attempt not only to threaten the SDF and the Autonomous Administration, but to threaten the coalition as well, specifically for its continuing counter ISIS partnership with Syrian Kurds.

So this has risen to a level where Turkey is not only using these to disrupt governance and security at the local level in the Autonomous Administration, it's not only using them against locally led SDFYPG led counter ISIS missions, but Turkey is using drones to threaten the entire global counter ISIS campaign, of which on paper is formally a member. So there you go.

long time. I wonder if you can talk about, like, so, what is the into as far as the international community exists, which is a pretty nebulous thing to really kind of pin down, but is what is specifically like this US

led coalition to the fea isis. I think they call it doing to help and like I guess a little more broadly, building on that, this coalition has a very narrow focus in a place where there are a lot of different aggresses to include various other Islamist groups, to include the Turkish State and obviously the day the state

in Syria. Can you explain a little bit about how the mission of this coalition is narrow in a way that helps it doing the things that people on the ground they need to ensure peace and stability.

of genocide and war crimes to justice. But it also connects to the deeper problem of the kind of long term stability in Syria that's necessary to end this ongoing civil war, to bring justice to the victims of ISIS and to all other abuses and atrocities during the twelve years of conflict in Syria, and to prevent the next endless war in this region from inevitably taking place in

the future. So we have this narrow military partnership. The reason that this relationship evolved in this way was going back to the role of Turkey, because the United States and its European allies had no other option but to partner with Kurdish groups if they wanted to achieve a territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq and Syria. There was no force other than the SDF and the YPG and the YPGA at that time that would be capable of

the military responsibility of defeating ISIS. It was essentially, if people remember the resistance the YPG and the YPJ at Kobani in northeast northeastern Syria that held out long enough where the United States and the international Coalition realized that their only option if they wanted to defeat ISIS on

the ground was to partner with these forces. Before that, also, we're recording this in August, the situation in Sinjar where ISIS had gone in, had committed genocide against the Azdi community, and we're the only people who were able to actually come in and help Uzidis defend themselves and evacuate refugees to safety in Syria, where again the YPG, the YPJ

and the PKK gorillas as well. Because these Kurdish forces were able to help local civilians in Sinjar defend themselves and evacuate so many refugees to safety, it forced the international community's hand to act. The PKK intervened in Sinjar to start that humanitarian mission on August fourth. US air strikes began on August seventh. It was this local response from these non state actors that forced the international community. You know, these states with actual treaty obligations to respond

to and prevent massatrocities, to take action. But because Turkey views the PKK as a terrorist group, it views the YPG and the YPG as indistinguishable from the PKK and therefore as a terrorist group. The entire counter ISIS mission from the very beginning was faced with this question of how these states that wanted to fight ISIS could do so without offending their relationships with Turkey as a member

of NATO and an ally in other respects. So this connects specifically to the ISIS issue, not only because the contradiction here dates back to the counter ISIS campaign, but because actual international trials for ISIS members, actual security policies that could address the problems in al Hole would legitimize the SDF and the autonomous administration on the international stage and would legitimize the political philosophies behind what they're doing,

all of which Turkey deems to be a very serious

national security threat to its existence. I mean, imagine you have a Kurdish woman judge questioning an ISIS member responsible for potentially European and American casualties, certainly responsible for casualties and all sorts of abuses across Iraq and Syria, about the evidence that we have, that the international community has, that North East Syria has, about how Turkey facilitated ISIS actions, you know, with the YPG and the YPG there for security,

with international observers from the US and other coalition countries facilitating providing legal and security support, that would absolutely destroy Turkey's narrative about what individuals and entities are terrorists and which ones have actually contributed not only to the territorial militarily defeat of ISIS, but to social and political and governance projects that are able to prevent, you know, the

resurgence of the next ISIS. So, you know, this kind of fear of building political relationships with the Autonomous administration with legitimate this fear of legitimizing the autonomous administration project and helping it address security problems in a way that would you know, both increase its standing and legitimacy locally and internationally, and would show how the actions of states like Turkey contributed to prolonging and intensifying the civil war

in Syria. States simply don't want to do that yet.

But you know, when we look at the long term consequences of whether it's allowing Turkey to continue aggressive actions against North East Syria and more broadly, to pursue a military solution to its Kurdish conflict, whether it's allowing ISIS atrocities to go unpunished, you know, leaving communities that were impacted by ISIS to be essentially re traumatized and left to live in difficult conditions, you know, not receiving justice, and allowing these ISIS members to continue to have the

space to attempt to reconstitute their group and go back to the kind of atrocities they were committing and attacks they were carrying out worldwide in twenty fourteen twenty fifteen. In the long run, this sort of appeasement of Turkey over the issue of the Kurdish question and the role of the Autonomous Administration, it's going to create the start

of the next endless war in the Middle East. And you know, if policymakers want to avoid that, they need to be addressing these problems from a pro peace perspective, from a perspective that brings about justice. You know, political solutions based on democracy, on gender equality, on the equality of all communities in the region, all of these values that while imperfectly the autonomous administration is really trying to fight for.

Islamist perspective or on the basis of class interests. And you have Turks, ethnic Turkish people who went to North East Syria during the height of the fight against ISIS as members of socialist groups to provide humanitarian aid and to join Kurdish forces in their fight against ISIS. On the ground, you have Yuzids, Christians, Syriacs, Assyrians, Armenians, Arabs, all different ethnic groups in Iraq and Syria that are very much impacted by this conflict, and particularly because of

the Autonomous Administration's multi ethnic and multi religious model. And while the Autonomous Administration system certainly hasn't shortcomings and hasn't been able to perfectly overcome years and years of sectarian and religious and ethnic challenges, it has made a real attempt at including all of the peoples of the region.

And that's one of the reasons why despite all of these Turkish attacks, despite the DEVISIS, you know, these communities have continued to band together and participate in SDF and Autonomous Administration structures in order to try to build governance and real post ISIS security. So it's certainly not just

a very narrowly defined Turkish Kurdish issue. It's an issue of civil rights, of political rights, of long term security and stability, of what kind of society and what kind of governance can and should exist in this region where many Kurds and many other ethnic and religious minorities would argue the European imposition of artificial borders and nation states onto areas that were multi ethnic and multi religious for thousands and thousands of years was the source of a

lot of these problems that we see today, not only with ISIS, not only with the Syrian War, with the Kurdish conflict in Turkey as well with many of the issues that we're seeing in Iraq, in Iran, all over the region. So it goes much deeper than that. And I think that understanding, you know, the very deep historical roots of these issues is what can start to point us to the actual, very radical solutions that would be necessary to get long term peace and security.

So it creates this sort of half assed, like you've said that, this sort of limited support for only some parts of a project, which it doesn't work if you only support part of this project right as we're seeing, I wonder if people are interested in following more about this. I think it's something that like so much of the coverage of this whole area focuses on, like specifically women in our whole right or women who went to join ICEIS.

Where can people find out more about like the What sources would you suggest for following goings on in this area?

backed groups in the occupied areas. You have arguably one of the best English language resources, not only for their own publications, but for researchers and journalists to reach out to, the Ulsheva Information Center that does a lot of good work on their own and also a lot of really incredible work to facilitate the work of international researchers and journalists. You have the Kurdish media sites like Koar News that will give good updates on what the Autonomous Administration is

doing and saying from their perspective. Of course, there are a lot of official pages and sites for Autonomous Administration and SDF institutions as well. Those tend to be in Kurdish or Arabic, so of course if you know either of those languages, you can follow them. For English, you have some of the SDF affiliated sites that have been translated. The YPG Information and Documentation Office have done a lot of work on this issue of ISIS and the related

security challenges. They publish in English. They provide good information from that security perspective, and then really, I think any sources on social media online that provide good perspectives from people who are on the ground, who are providing reputable information, whether it's from a human rights side of things, from the security side of things, from the administration side of things, it's good to get that full spectrum of perspectives of

what different actors are doing and seeing. And then, of course I'd be remiss if I did not promote my own institution. We have published coverage of certainly the ISIS issue in North East Syria, but also a lot on the wider political, humanitarian and security challenges related to these interlocking conflicts in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Kurdistan that have sort of formed the very unstable basis on which these developments relevant to global security issues like ISIS are taking place.

So you can certainly read what we've been publishing.

to see, that's probably a video you don't want to watch. Megan, is there anything people can do to help like this? I was thinking when we were talking of like I met a Kurdish man a month ago at the border being held by immigrats and customs enforcement. But it's not a topic that gets much coverage in the US, and as a result, like people both there and people coming

here don't get the compassion. Then let's say Ukrainian people who are also fleeing conflict, do get and you can see that in a way that they're literally treated differently in immigration laws. So is there anything people can do to help?

The Turkish invasion did not come out of nowhere in twenty nineteen. And had we as a society and certainly our institutions been more informed, more aware of the root conditions causing these outbursts of violence, these outbursts of violence may not have happened. They might have been addressed before they happened. And so what does it mean to build

that awareness? That means everything from writing a letter to your local newspaper to producing a report at your university with input from institutions in North East Syria, some of these local media and human rights organizations that we've talked about to hosting an event for your community group on the state of this broadly defined conflict in Turkey and Iraq and Syria in Kurdistan between the Turkish state and these Kurdish groups that, in addition to fighting against ISIS,

have been struggling for autonomy, self determination, equality between men and women, equality of people of different religious beliefs, of different ethnic backgrounds. Long before ISIS was on the agenda and Northeast Syria it was on the agenda. We at the Kurdish Peace Institute are always available to help you do this. You can reach out to us on our contact page. We have information on everything from submitting content of your own to resources for reaching out to us

for media appearances. Of course, there's all the sources I mentioned as well, and there are other episodes of this wonderful podcast with very talented expert speakers and interviewers as well who've spoken about issues related to Syria, Turkey and Kurdistan.

You can advocate for greater political support for the Autonomous Administration, for an end to Turkey's aggressive actions against Northeast Syria and its ongoing human rights violations in the occupied areas of Afriin and russ a line, and for international political support for a democratic, just peaceful solution to the Turkish

Kurdish conflict. This is, i think, at the end of the day, the root of all of these problems that we're seeing here, and if this conflict were to be resolved, if Turkey were no longer to take an aggressive militaristic approach to the very concept of Kurdish autonomy, the very social base of Kurdish communities that has the capacity to seek and organize for autonomy itself, this would mean an end to authoritarianism in Turkey, which has been leading Turkey

to all sorts of destabilizing behavior and certainly and miserating countless Turkish citizens. This is one of the reasons why not only Kurbs, but many Turkish people of all ethnicities as well have been fleeing Turkey to Europe and even

to the United States. Has been the escalating persecution, poverty, and difficulty of life under Erdowan, which is directly connected to air Dowan's choice in twenty fifteen to end piece talks with the Kurdish movement in order to consolidate his total power over the state using war and far right nationalism. This would end not only these difficult conditions within Turkey, this persecution, this economic devastation, this oppression of all oppressed

segments of society. It would end Turkey's aggressive foreign policy in the region as well, which would be hugely important

for allowing North East Syria the stability. It means to put ISIS members on trial, hold them accountable for what they've done, begin to rebuild, give post Isis communities a future, allow these people who have suffered so much to defeat this group, of course for themselves, but really for all humanity to be able to build new lives, recover and have a say in their future, and by doing that,

to pursue a political solution to the Syrian conflict. Right now, North Assyria is the only major part of Syria outside of government control that has a system that is semi functional despite all of the setbacks of the war and the economic crisis, which again could be a whole other episode. Which has empowered women, which has empowered different ethnic and religious communities. They could be part of a political solution in Syria. Turkey's war on the Kurdish movement, you know,

is preventing that. This goes into a lot of challenges in Iraq as well, with increasing Turkish military operations there related to the conflict that have made life extremely difficult for many different Iraqi communities. But again all of this, this conflict, you could argue, is the largest and most impactful and certainly one of the longest running, you know, for forty years now of the modern Middle East. It

is an international conflict. The United States European governments, like we saw with the example of the US and European position on NATO accession and the concessions to Turkey made there, have been very involved in supporting militarily and politically Turkey's efforts to resolve this conflict militarily and to deny the Kurdish people their rights by force. And we you listening to this are communities in all of these different countries

that have a stake in this conflict. We're the ones you can change that, and you can do that on two different tracks. So one, you can build awareness in

your own community. You can build connections between your community groups and institutions in North East Syria, in Turkey, in different places impacted by this conflict in order to find ways that you can help respond to specific needs, work specific projects together, and two, in the long run, use those connections, your knowledge you gain from those connections, the resources you create, as you reach out to the media, as you meet different people working on this, to reach

out to decision makers and show this is an issue that their constituents care about. This is an issue that's not something that governments can do without a response from public opinion. And this is an issue where there is organized pressure to change policy, you know, in favor of peace,

in favor of stability, in favor of political solutions. Because when we do that, and there's lots of examples of how different communities and organizations have done that, when we do that on a large enough scale, we're not only addressing a humanitarian problem, we're not only contributing to peace

and stability in the region. But at the end of the day, we can find solutions for these conflicts that mean that there won't be another rise of Isis, there won't be another Turkish invasion in ocup patient of northern Syria, and there will be models for political and social transformation that can help us end conflicts in other parts of the world as well, So there's lots of ways to contribute.

I hope you're inspired to do so. And I think that just listening to this conversation, hearing about what's going on and thinking about what you can do, that's already the first step. You're already there and that's the most important thing.

lot of other really great people. But I'm very lucky to collaborate.