Fighters in Syria wearing the black ISIS badge as Turkish-backed forces attack t (Image: Express)
We should all be concerned about the increasing evidence that – the terrorist group that was believed to be largely dead and buried in the dust of Syria after its putative caliphate was finally crushed by US-led Coalition forces in 2019 – is actually alive and kicking.
As is discovering in Gaza, where Hamas forces that have spent the last 15 months hiding like rats in sewers are now publicly re-emerging to try and take charge of that territory, it is difficult to defeat an ideology.
And ISIS was the maddest and baddest idea of them all, given the slavishness of its fealty to Radical Islam and the extreme brutality towards civilians that its fighters demonstrated during the terrorist group’s rise to power.
Now it appears that with the recent transfer of power in Syria from the dead hand of Bashar al-Assad to the mysterious Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), ISIS may be enjoying a renaissance.
In part, this was always to be expected. Assad had no real ability to keep ISIS in check, but the situation of stalemate his regime’s presence encouraged meant that a resurgence of terrorism was difficult.
Syria’s Kurdish minority, who have been policing the prisons in north eastern Syria that house the 10,000 ISIS fighters captured during the campaigns against ISIS, were secure in their own territory. And 2,000 US soldiers remained in Syria to retain a watchful eye on signs of an ISIS revival.
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But Syria’s new masters were once a formal part of the ISIS world, with their leader Abu Mohammed al-Jolani having been an acolyte of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Jolani did break with ISIS, but only to join al-Qaeda, before finally severing his ties with the extreme jihadists and striking out on his own. But as HTS has always been a coalition of forces from differing groups without too many questions being asked about their beliefs, there is every possibility that an ISIS wing has been able to re-establish itself as part of the new Syria.
Worse may follow. Syria’s Kurds are under renewed pressure from Turkey, which has long accused them of being connected to the banned terrorist PKK group, and which has seized the opportunity of Assad’s fall to launch attacks on the Kurds directly as well as through proxy forces on the ground.
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And HTS’ position towards Kurdish autonomy is unclear, with suspicions that Jolani has thrown in his lot with Turkey’s ambitions for the region, in exchange for practical and financial support.
If the Kurds are forced back and the prisons abandoned, battle-hardened ISIS fighters might escape and either try and recreate the ISIS Caliphate in Syria or even slip away to Europe claiming to be refugees.
With such uncertainty, the world must hope that President Trump sees the continuing value of maintaining a US military presence in Syria. With signs of an ISIS resurgence, it would be a huge mistake to remove the one force that we can trust will be unequivocal in its interest in stopping the spread of violent jihadism.