American officials are scrambling to head off a new nightmare scenario in Syria: a major terrorist jailbreak.
Thousands of Islamic State group fighters and their families remain in makeshift prisons, watched over by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces with limited weapons. The prisons were supposed to be temporary, but their home countries don’t want the fighters back.
The situation was a slow-boil crisis until Syrian President Bashar Assad’s downfall, which tossed the country into an uncertain future. Now a full-scale ISIS comeback may hinge on whether the U.S. and a weakening group of allies can prevent their escape.
“I usually hate this cliche, but this is the closest thing we have to a ticking time bomb,” said one senior U.S. counterterrorism official, who like others was granted anonymity to speak about internal plans. “If Turkey doesn’t get these attacks on the [Syrian Democratic Forces] halted, we could have a massive jailbreak on our hands.”
The developments in Syria come at a precarious moment for the region and for the U.S., with a new administration about to take over that promises less foreign assistance.
“This is essentially a terrorist army in detention,” said Joseph Votel, a retired general who led U.S. Central Command from 2016 to 2019, during the fight against ISIS. “I am very concerned.”
While the majority of the detained ISIS fighters are from Iraq or Syria, many others hail from Europe, Central Asia and North America — including the United States. Some countries have dragged their heels on repatriating the prisoners, leading to a yearslong legal limbo for some 9,000 battle-hardened ISIS fighters and about 50,000 other people, including wives and children.
The Kurdish groups, which refer to themselves as the Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, have been one of the United States’ most reliable allies in Syria in its campaign against ISIS. But Turkey, a key NATO ally, views the Kurdish groups as a major security threat. Its own proxy forces in Syria have launched several high-scale attacks against the SDF since Assad lost power this month.
The tense situation has burdened Kurdish forces as they continue to fight Turkish-backed militias and active ISIS cells.
But a deal is possible. The SDF is looking to extend a recent cease-fire between their fighters and pro-Turkish fighters over the northeastern Syrian city of Manbij. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recently traveled to Ankara, Turkey, to discuss the U.S.-brokered cease-fire.
“We continue to engage with the SDF, with Turkey about a path forward,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said. “We don’t want to see any party take advantage of the current unstable situation to advance their own narrow interests at the expense of the broader Syrian national interest.”
SDF chief Mazloum Abdi said in a Tuesday post on X that his group is looking to keep the talks going, expand the cease-fire and establish a demilitarized zone “with the redistribution of security forces under U.S. supervision and presence.”
Around 900 U.S. troops are in Syria to train SDF forces. Pentagon officials have said there is no plan to send more or change the mission of those there now. But the U.S. may not want to take the lead in tackling the Syria crisis, particularly after President-elect Donald Trump takes office next month.
“We have a tendency to see all counterterrorism wars as never-ending,” said Jim Jeffrey, the special representative for Syria under the first Trump administration. “Trust me, Trump doesn’t see it that way.”
Jeffrey said he believes Kurdish forces can keep control of the Syrian prisons, whether or not the U.S. retains a troop presence in Syria. The Kurds are willing to work with Turkish-backed forces in northern Syria, he said, and have also reached out to the new Sunni-dominated government in Damascus.
That government, while made up of a patched-together conglomeration of Islamist factions that are sticking together for the moment, is no friend to the Islamic State.
Not everyone agrees. President Joe Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill have criticized Ankara for not stopping its proxies from launching attacks on the SDF, complicating the current administration’s response.
“If we want to make sure that those camps are properly guarded, we the United States need to provide the Syrian Kurds with assurances that we will prevent Turkey from attacking them,” Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview. “When Turkey supports the Syrian National Army’s attacks against the Kurds, the big winner is ISIS.”
U.S. forces in Syria could face a new threat if the ISIS prison camp system collapses.
“This is something that can unravel fast,” said Caroline Rose, an expert on Syria at the New Lines Institute, a foreign policy think tank. “The potential risks are not only to our partners, but also the U.S. soldiers that are on the ground carrying out this advise-and-assist mission.”
Over the past week, the U.S. conducted dozens of airstrikes against ISIS positions targeting the group’s leadership. Central Command chief Gen. Erik Kurilla visited U.S. forces in Syria and met with SDF fighters as well before flying to Baghdad to huddle with Iraqi leaders.
“There should be no doubt — we will not allow ISIS to reconstitute and take advantage of the current situation in Syria,” Kurilla said in a statement. “All organizations in Syria should know that we will hold them accountable if they partner with or support ISIS in any way.”