Fighting continues on Saturday January 22 for the third consecutive day between the Islamic State (IS) group and Kurdish forces in northeastern Syria. Daesh launched an assault on the night of January 20 to 21 against this prison, located in the city of Hassaké, which is said to house around 3,500 of its alleged members, including leaders of the group.
Friday, January 21, in a statement released by “his news agency” Amaq, the jihadist group claimed responsibility for the attack on the prison indicating that the objective of this operation was “to release the prisoners”.
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The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), dominated by Kurdish fighters, said in a statement on Saturday that “Operations to maintain security in the city of Hassaké and the perimeter of Ghwayran prison continue”, with the help of the international coalition and the Kurdish internal security forces.
Local or global action?
The precise circumstances of the operation remained to be determined. Is it the result of an action coordinated in high places by the central leadership of the IS, or rather the fruit of an initiative of the local cell of the group? Daesh “is not in the same situation as when she controlled a large territory and made her decisions in a very pyramidal way”, underlines Jérôme Drevon, jihad analyst for the Crisis Group think-tank. According to him, either the operation was carried out “to send a sign that IS is back. Or it may be much more local, with an ISIS cell that wants to release members of this particular prison”.
For Nicholas Heras of the Newlines Institute in Washington, “ISIS wants to go beyond its status as a terrorist and criminal network and to do this it needs more fighters”. “Prison breaks represent the best opportunity for IS to regain its strength in arms. And Ghwayran prison is a good target because it is overcrowded”, he points out.
Increased demand for Western financial aid
Many prisons in Syrian Kurdish-controlled areas, where much of the former “army” ISIS is detained, were originally schools: they are ill-suited to keep detainees for long periods. According to Kurdish authorities, who control large areas of northern Syria, around 12,000 jihadists of more than 50 nationalities are still being held there.
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Kurdish forces regularly complain about the lack of Western financial aid to run these prisons. In this vein, Abdelkarim Omar, a senior foreign policy official in the semi-autonomous Kurdish administration, believed that the IS attack was due to “the inability of the international community to assume its responsibilities”.
In any case, the incident could well happen again. Analysts, military officials and civil authorities have agreed since the fall of the caliphate to admit that these establishments constitute real breeding grounds for jihadists, sheltering local militants and foreign fighters.
A struggle far from over
In official discourse, Americans, Europeans and Arabs readily acknowledge that the fight against ISIS – and international jihadism in general – is far from over, as evidenced by the activity of the many affiliates of ISIS and its Al-Qaeda rival.
But these incantatory declarations do not hide a crucial absence of concrete actions on the ground. Founder of the Shaikh Group (TSG), specializing in conflict resolution in the Middle East, Salman Shaikh regrets in this regard “the lack of clarity on the part of the Americans and the international community”, as to their goalsand plead for more “international recognition and financial assistance”.
In addition to the nagging question of the judicialization of these Daesh fighters, there is also that of the possible repatriation of their families, women and children, held not in prisons but in camps, also controlled by Kurdish forces.