Despite defeat, Syrians and Iraqis live in fear of IS resurgence

Though attacks have become more sporadic, local populations in some areas of both Iraq and Syria continue to feel threatened by the group

AFP

Iraqi woman from the Yazidi community, poses for a picture on April 19, 2023 while holding photos of other family members kidnapped by the Islamic State (IS) group.

Despite defeat, Syrians and Iraqis live in fear of IS resurgence

Shelly Kittleson

last update on 01 May 2023

Al-Qaim, Iraq: “He started yelling at me that I had killed his father, then refused to accept the gift I had brought.”

The member of Iraq’s security forces recounted how his son’s classmate had reacted when he went to the 10-year-old boy’s home in the city of al-Qaim in the Anbar province near the Syrian border.

The father of his son’s classmate had been a fighter with the Islamic State (IS) and had been killed years before. Following several years in the al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria after being captured across the border, his family had in recent months returned.

Shelly Kittleson — Two young boys walk along a street in Qaim in Iraq's western Anbar region near the Syrian border. April 22, 2023.

IS was declared territorially defeated in December 2017 in Iraq. In early 2019, they were declared defeated in eastern Syrian in their final territorial stronghold in the western part of the Baghouz plain, which straddles the Syrian-Iraqi border north of al-Qaim.

Many families and fighters pushed out of al-Qaim and Rawa in western Anbar in 2017 crossed into Syria. Rawa was the last city in Iraq to be liberated by Iraqi security forces with air support from the US-led international coalition in November 2017.

This reporter accompanied Iraqi forces into the western Anbar desert during these operations, which stopped at the border between the two countries. IS had not recognised this border during their years in control of the area.

Following the 2019 defeat of IS across the border in the Syrian city of Baghouz, many of these Iraqi nationals ended up at the al-Hol camp further north in the Hasakeh region, under the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration of North East Syria (AANES), or in detention centres in the same area.

Tens of thousands of people suspected of involvement and/or links to IS fighters remain in these facilities and camps four years later.

“The first time I met the little boy, I had also given him a gift and he had accepted — but I had been wearing civilian clothes. The second time I was wearing my police uniform and he reacted badly, saying we are all killers,” the security officer told Al Majalla over tea during a reporting trip to the city of al-Qaim in late April.

“These kids need help. We are afraid they will grow up hating us and our children,” the man added.

“And then who knows what will happen.”

Due to his position, he asked that he not be named.

Most peaceful Ramadan in years

During a 24 April briefing with journalists including this Al Majalla reporter, the commanding general of the Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) noted that this year’s Muslim holy month of Ramadan — which had ended shortly before the briefing — had been “one of the most peaceful in years thanks to the combined efforts of our partners.”

CJTF-OIR is a multinational military formation created by the US-led international coalition against the Islamic State.

“This year there were only 19 recorded attacks of any kind in Iraq — an 80% decrease from last year and 87% decrease from 2020,” Major General Matthew McFarlane added.

This year there were only 19 recorded attacks of any kind in Iraq — an 80% decrease from last year and 87% decrease from 2020.

Major General Matthew McFarlane

"The same was true in Syria, seeing only 19 attacks — a 37% decrease from 2022 and a 70% decrease from 2020," Maj. Gen. McFarlane added.

He went on to note that: "As our partners continue to disrupt and dismantle Islamic State [IS] cells and activities, we continue to also focus on preventing any reemergence of IS through our repatriation efforts from detention facilities and IDP camps."

"Repatriating the thousands of displaced persons in northeast Syria and those in detention facilities requires international action," he stressed, noting that IS "still have an unconstrained ideology."

Syria's prisons, camps and chaos fester on

The al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria, which houses mostly families with alleged links to IS, has been called a ticking time bomb.

"Women and children under the age of 17 make up about 93% of the 55,000 inhabitants. The centre accommodates approximately 60 different nationalities. Most are Syrian (34%) and Iraqi (52%)," the UN stated last October.

The children no-one wants. The families of Islamic State Group at Al Hol camp, Syria. pic.twitter.com/k8gQbJjtSV
— Quentin Sommerville (@sommervilletv) April 12, 2019

Multiple Iraqi nationals have been killed in the al-Hol camp in recent years, including women shot in the head and others beheaded.

The Lead Inspector General Report to the US Congress in the first quarter of 2022 noted: "At the current pace, it will take nearly 15 years to repatriate all the Iraqis at the camp."

A prison break in late January 2022 at the Sinaa prison in Hasakeh's Gweiran neighbourhood marked the most significant attack by IS in Iraq and Syria since their territorial defeat in the region in early 2019.

Hundreds were killed in the attack and fighting that continued for several days. Many escaped. No precise numbers are available.

Both the al-Hol camp and the Sinaa prison are in the mixed Arab and Kurdish province of Hasakeh, north of the predominantly Arab Deir al-Zor province.

On 17 April, US Central Command (CENTCOM) issued a statement saying it had conducted a helicopter raid in northern Syria "targeting a senior IS Syria leader and operational planner."

Some reports state that the IS leader had escaped from the prison in Hasakeh during last year's attack.

Local population under threat

Though attacks have become more sporadic, local populations in some areas of both Iraq and Syria continue to feel threatened by the group.

Though attacks have become more sporadic, local populations in some areas of both Iraq and Syria continue to feel threatened by the group.

An Arab member of the local security forces in an area under AANES control in the eastern part of Syria's eastern Deir al-Zor region told Al Majalla via encrypted messaging on 27 April there had been "an attack two days ago in the Shuhail area by IS cells on a military point in the middle of the city in the middle of the night. The attack was with machine guns and RPG launchers."

The clash "lasted for a quarter of an hour. Then the attackers fled to an unknown destination", he said.

The city is located along the eastern banks of the Euphrates River, upstream and across the border from al-Qaim.

This reporter witnessed oil smuggling being conducted across the river near Suhail into areas under Syrian government control during a reporting trip to tribal areas of eastern Deir al-Zor in May 2019. The area was key for IS finances during the years it was under their control.

According to a 2021 report by the Australian Institute for International Affairs, "80% of the 56,000 barrels extracted a day by IS came from Syria, primarily from the Deir ez-Zor [Deir al-Zor] province in the Omar oil field."

IS "is very active in threatening people, especially those who have money, using the excuse that it is 'zakat'," the Arab member of the local security forces told Al Majalla in April, "hiding behind phone screens with fake names and different American, Dutch, Turkish, Iraqi, and Syrian numbers via WhatsApp."

Many people in Arab areas of eastern Deir al-Zor, he said, "have no other option but to pay or migrate from one area to another, safer one".

"Twenty days ago, one person was killed in Dhiban [another town in Arab tribal areas of eastern Deir al-Zor, south of Shuhail] for not paying them money," he noted.

IS – or possibly, he noted, some "other gang that calls itself IS" – had demanded $10,000. After failing to pay them, "he was killed late at night near his house," the member of the local security forces told Al Majalla.

IS – or possibly, he noted, some "other gang that calls itself IS" – had demanded $10,000. After failing to pay them, "he was killed late at night near his house," the member of the local security forces told Al Majalla.

He also warned that many people in the area "will join IS if there is a rapprochement with the [Syrian government] regime without implementing the UN Security Council Resolution 2254".

However, this would be, he stressed, "neither friendship with nor any love for IS. But as long as IS fights the regime, there will be more rapprochement with it" if the Kurdish-led AANES based further north were to come to an agreement with the Syrian government not in line with the aforementioned resolution.

The resolution was unanimously adopted on 18 December 2015 and calls for a ceasefire and political settlement, setting out a roadmap for a political transition. No real progress is seen as having been made on this in the seven years since it was adopted.

Iraq casts wary eye

In Iraq, meanwhile, security forces regularly announce operations against and arrests of IS cells. Discoveries of weapons caches are reported frequently, with large ones found in late April in both the Anbar and Nineveh provinces.

According to a statement posted on Telegram in late April linked to the Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU), "the Iraqi judiciary issued a death sentence – by hanging to death – against a number of IS terrorist emirs" after an investigation "targeting the largest network of IS inside prisons."

The statement said those sentenced to death had been found to have been spreading IS ideology, coordinating and "equipping" these prisoners while "planning an escape."

Though most IS fighters killed in Iraq in recent years have been Iraqi nationals, occasionally there have been ones of other nationalities. A number of men from the Lebanese city of Tripoli have also been identified following air strikes or other attacks on their hideouts in mainly rural areas.

Reliable figures for both the number of foreigners accused or convicted of IS membership and those of Iraqi nationality in the Iraqi detention system are unavailable. Information on the whereabouts of specific prisoners is notoriously difficult to obtain in Iraq.

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