WASHINGTON -- The escalating chaos in northern Syria as Turkey presses forward with its attack on the United States' erstwhile Kurdish allies is raising fears about the fate of thousands of detainees from the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, that the Kurds have been holding in makeshift wartime
WASHINGTON — The escalating chaos in northern Syria as Turkey presses forward with its attack on the United States’ erstwhile Kurdish allies is raising fears about the fate of thousands of detainees from the Islamic State group, also known as ISIS, that the Kurds have been holding in makeshift wartime prisons.
Meanwhile, President Bashar Assad of Syria, backed by Russia, controls the southern part of the country and wants to retake it all. On Sunday, the Kurds apparently struck a deal with the Syrian government, but its details — and what it would mean for detainees — were not yet clear.
The “worst-case scenario” is that the Kurds are so frustrated and angered by the United States’ action that “they decide to release wholesale some of the detainees,” said Christopher P. Costa, a former senior director for counterterrorism on Trump’s National Security Council who now heads the International Spy Museum.The White House said Turkey would “now be responsible for all ISIS fighters in the area captured over the past two years.
On Wednesday, as the chaos was intensifying in northern Syria, Trump made reassuring remarks to reporters, disclosing that the United States was taking custody of the worst Islamic State detainees to ensure that they would not escape. But even though Trump spoke in the past tense, as if that operation had been carried out, it was instead largely aspirational — and now appears increasingly unlikely.The United States got only two high-value detainees out — far short of its goal.
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