Foreigners in Syria

IS fighters could be released from prisons

There is a threat of an uncontrolled return of IS fighters from Syria who are currently still in prison. US President-elect Donald Trump could withdraw US troops from the end of January. These troops oversee Kurdish prisons in Syria.

There are currently around 9,000 fighters in Syrian prisons under US supervision, 2,000 of whom are from abroad. Around 25 of them are from Germany, said Guido Steinberg from the Berlin-based German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP). "That's quite a lot." There are fewer than ten people from Austria in camps, about half of them children.

With the events of the past few days in Damascus and Donald Trump's victory in the US presidential election at the beginning of November, the risk of the fighters being released has "increased enormously", Steinberg said. "The foreign fighters should have been returned to their home countries years ago and brought to justice there."

The foreign fighters should have been repatriated to their home countries years ago and brought to justice there.

Guido Steinberg, Berliner Stiftung Wissenschaft und Politik

The US government and the Kurds had also repeatedly demanded this. However, the last two German governments had "tried to sit out the problem." It could soon be too late for a controlled repatriation. Some terrorists could return to Germany.

At the same time, IS could sense an opportunity to reposition itself in Syria, said Austrian terrorism and extremism researcher Nicolas Stockhammer. "If mercenaries take control of the prisons, what already happened in October 2019 could happen, namely that a large number of IS fighters are released. Then we would have thousands of IS followers, who are still fully ideologized, at large," said political scientist Thomas Schmidinger.

An IS member

(Bild: AFP)

There are already pictures of members of the Syrian National Army wearing IS insignia. "If the civil war in Syria continues and jihadist groups are given a boost, this could also mobilize international jihadists."

US President Joe Biden had promised to deploy American troops against IS, but his successor Trump could withdraw them as early as the end of January.

"The danger that the situation will become less secure next year and that terrorists will be released from prison is very real," Steinberg emphasized. As reported, the Islamist group Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its allied militias launched a major offensive in Syria on November 27. On Sunday, they captured the capital Damascus and overthrew Assad, who had been in power for decades. He fled the country.