Thousands of jihadists linked to ISIS remain in limbo as the families of the victims of the terrorist group remain unanswered in the face of justice.
This Monday marks a year since Mustafa Bali, the spokesman for the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDS), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces, proclaimed "the end of the caliphate . " US President Donald Trump had already gone ahead the day before. Bali spoke from a remote part of the Syrian desert, the town of Baguz, on the border with Iraq, where the so-called caliphate of the Islamic State group (ISIS) gave its last death rattles. A year later, this victory has not brought justice. Neither ISIS victims have obtained it, nor have jihadists been tried in these 12 months. The throne of Abubaker al Baghdadi, killed in northwestern Syria in an operation by elite US forces on October 26, has barely remained empty for five days forbe relieved by Abu Ibrahim al Hachemí al Qurashi , new caliph without caliphate, and the atomized jihadist army continues to strike.
The offensive on the dusty Baguz oasis survived around 100,000 jihadist women and men along with their children, of whom 14,000 are foreigners - the rest being of Iraqi or Syrian nationality. It is a large part of what remains of that territory governed by ISIS that for a five-year period extended between Syria and Iraq to subdue a population of 7.7 million people.
They have lived captive for a year in unhealthy camps or crowded in prisons in northeast Syria - among the half-dozen camps in which they are locked, those of Al Hol, Ain Isa and Al Roj stand out. They are guarded by Kurdish militias who say they are weary of the neglect of the countries of origin that refuse to repatriate them to judge them in their respective judicial systems.
ISIS survivors include a male and three female jihadists along with 17 Spanish minors . "The government [of Spain] remains undecided and is now overwhelmed with the health crisis of COVID-19, so the debate on repatriation has been put aside," a Spanish government official told the phone. The opposing positions persist between "a Ministry of the Interior reluctant to repatriation" and "that of Foreign Affairs, favorable to a return of minors and the prosecution of their mothers in Spanish territory," reiterated various government sources. Debate that is repeated in other EU member countries.
However, the offensive launched in northern Syria last October by Turkey against the Kurdish People's Protection Units -YPG, for its Kurdish initials and which it calls a terrorist group for its close ties with the Turkish PKK-, has This was a drastic change in the already complex and internationalized conflict: on the one hand, the US announced in mid-October the withdrawal of its troops from the country - which has only been partially carried out; He maintains around half a thousand- and parked his fighters to clear the way for the aviation of Turkey - Washington's allied in NATO-. On the other, Ankara maintains its war against the YPG, which were allies in the campaign that the United States launched against ISIS in the summer of 2014.
The Turkish offensive has brought the political arm of the Kurdish militias closer to the Bachar el Asad government and reactivated negotiations with Damascus for a return of the regular Army to the north of the country to stop the Turkish advance. If they materialize, the custody of the jihadists could change hands. The Syrian president has assured in various interviews that jihadists will be tried according to Syrian national law on terrorism - where the death penalty continues. An option that several European diplomats consulted in Madrid and Beirut describe behind the scenes as “favorable” and that “adapts”. "That means that Syria takes over the weight of adults, which is what we are concerned about, while we negotiate the humanitarian aspect that is the return of minors," explains one of them.
Over the months, the administration of the Al Hol camp, in the northeast of the country and the most crowded with around 69,000 people, ensures that the settlement has transformed in these 12 months, ceasing to be a detention center to become a field of intensive radicalization for both the more than 40,000 minors and the more moderate captive jihadists. Most, a civil worker points out, "do not say they are sorry for having joined ISIS."
Several jihadists imprisoned in the Al Roj camp, further northeast, on the Syrian-Iraqi border, and less crowded, with some 6,000 people, say that last December "masked men who do not speak during interrogations" have supervised a series of interrogations and collected biometric data of all the foreign women who have also been photographed with their children.
Among them the Spanish Luna Fernández and Yolanda Martínez with 13 dependent minors, of whom four orphans and one newborn. Interrogations that Kurdish officials have confirmed to EL PAÍS although they declined to rule on the nationality or mission of the "masked".
With the aim of decongesting Al Hol, Kurdish security forces began the transfer of several thousand women and children to Al Roj in late 2019 - including the more than 360 orphans. Relatives of the Spanish jihadists consulted by EL PAÍS fear a rapid and deadly contagion from Covid-19. "The camp guards wear masks, but women and children have no protection. Some don't even have soaps ”, regrets a relative from Spain.
The year has also brought no justice to ISIS victims. Human Rights Watch has denounced in a recent report the “collective failure to search for the more than 8,000 disappeared” under the caliphate whose families continue to live an ordeal in life . Among them, 3,000 Yazidi women who were kidnapped and sold as sex slaves in Iraq. The relatives of the more than 3,000 civilians killed in Syria - according to estimates by the Airwars organization - have not been compensated in bombings by the international coalition against ISIS, of which Spain is a member.
As for the dusty Baguz oasis , it has once again become the same unknown and forgotten spot on the map of Syria that it was before it became the caliphate's grave. Hardly half of the 7,000 inhabitants have returned to cultivate a land strewn with explosives and corpses.
SPANISH MUJAHIDEEN FIGHTING IN SYRIA
ISIS no longer controls any territory and its army has shrunk, so its mujahideen have chosen to migrate to new open fronts in Africa or Asia, or carry out attacks and attacks from their bases on sleeping cells against regular Syrian, Turkish or militia troops. Kurds in Syria. Others have chosen to return to the orbit of Al Qaeda, from whom ISIS was spun off in 2014, and in increasing activity on the opposite side of the country and in the insurgent province of Idlib, current epicenter of the war in Syria. It was precisely in Idlib that Abubaker al Baghdadi, a self-proclaimed caliph, left Al Qaeda to found ISIS. "Unlike other European jihadists, most Spanish fighters or those with close ties to Spain have strong ties to al-Qaeda networks and not to ISIS," explains a Spanish military intelligence source. "Hence, it is very plausible that in Idlib we find more Spanish fighters than those who appeared in Baguz," he points out. According to estimates by the Intelligence Center against Terrorism and Organized Crime, one hundred of the estimated 234 foreign fighters who traveled from Spain to Syria have died or returned.
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