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SYRIA-CONFLICT-KURDS-JIHADISTS
Syria Kurds urge world to take back foreign jihadists
OMAR OIL FIELD, Syria, March 24, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Syria’s Kurds warned
Sunday that the thousands of foreign jihadists they have detained in their
fight against the Islamic State group are a time-bomb the international
community urgently needs to defuse.
Speaking a day after Kurdish-led forces announced the final demise of the
jihadists’ physical “caliphate”, the Kurdish administration’s top foreign
affairs official Abdel Karim Omar warned that its foreign captives still pose
a threat.
“There are thousands of fighters, children and women and from 54
countries, not including Iraqis and Syrians, who are a serious burden and
danger for us and for the international community,” Omar told AFP.
“Numbers increased massively during the last 20 days of the Baghouz
operation,” he said, referring to the village by the Euphrates where diehard
jihadists made a bloody last stand.
The fate of foreign IS fighers has become a major issue as the Kurdish-led
Syrian Democratic Forces closed in on the once-sprawling proto-state the
jihadists declared in 2014.
After a months-long assault by the US-backed SDF to flush out the last IS
strongholds in the Euphrates Valley, jihadists and their families gradually
gathered in Baghouz as the last rump of the “caliphate” shrank around them.
While some managed to escape, many of the foreigners stayed behind, either
surrendering to the SDF or fighting to the death.
According to the SDF, 66,000 people left the last IS pocket since January,
including 5,000 jihadists and 24,000 of their relatives.
The assault was paused multiple times as the SDF opened humanitarian
corridors for people evacuating the besieged enclave.
The droves of people scrambling out of Baghouz in recent weeks were
screened by the SDF and dispatched to camps further north, where most are
still held.
The de facto autonomous Kurdish administration is northeastern Syria has
warned it does not have capacity to detain so many people, let alone put them
on trial.
But many of the suspected jihadists’ countries of origin are reluctant to
take them back due to potential security risks and a likely public backlash.
Some have even withdrawn citizenship from their nationals detained in
Syria.
“There has to be coordination between us and the international community
to address this danger,” Abdel Karim Omar said.
“There are thousands of children who have been raised according to IS
ideology,” he added.
“If these children are not reeducated and reintegrated in their societies
of origin, they are potential future terrorists.”
BSS/AFP/RY/1502 hrs