Turkey's military incursion into Syria threatens to revive Isis cells

Turkey's military incursion in north-east Syria will revive Isis because Kurdish forces detaining thousands of jihadis are diverting manpower to fend off Ankara's onslaught, European and US officials have warned.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's operation, designed to quash Kurdish forces, was facilitated by President Donald Trump's decision on Sunday to redeploy US troops in the area.

Mr Erdogan says the Kurdish fighters pose a grave risk to Turkey's security, but the operation increases the odds of a jailbreak that would fuel violence in the region and farther afield, given that many of the Isis militants are European nationals.

Seeking to assuage concerns over Isis captives, Mr Trump tweeted on Wednesday that the US had taken custody of two Isis fighters nicknamed "The Beatles" who were responsible for executing western hostages.

"In case the Kurds or Turkey lose control, the United States has already taken the 2 Isis militants tied to beheadings in Syria, known as the Beetles, out of that country and into a secure location controlled by the U.S!" he wrote, without specifying where they had been taken. In the past few months, French nationals accused of being Isis fighters have been transferred to Iraqi state custody.

Sam Heller, an analyst with International Crisis Group, said Isis "seems certain to benefit from the chaos that would ensue . . . both by reasserting itself locally and scattering currently detained Isis militants to the winds, potentially catalysing jihadist militancy on other battlefields".

Isis seized huge swaths of Syria and Iraq after launching a blitz across the two countries in 2014, but has been driven from the territory by international coalitions working with local forces.

The most immediate danger of the Turkish operation is a reassertion of Isis activity in familiar combat territory as the US reverses a strategy to train and arm the Kurdish-dominated troops known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) to secure the area.

Abdul Salam Ahmed, an SDF representative in Beirut, said: "The cells will be revived and they'll do military operations to save their prisoners. There are dormant [Isis] cells all over the area . . . they won't leave the area easily."

Mr Trump's decision to give Turkey the green light for its incursion runs against his administration's security assessment. Isis's self-declared "caliphate" surrendered its final piece of Syrian territory in March. But the US military warned two months ago that Isis had already "solidified its insurgent capabilities in Iraq and was resurging in Syria", carrying out assassinations, ambushes and suicide bombings.

[Isis] seems certain to benefit from the chaos that would ensue . . . both by reasserting itself locally and scattering currently detained militants to the winds

Sam Heller, International Crisis Group

"We certainly don't want the worst of the worst to be let go," one senior US official told the Financial Times weeks before the Turkish military offensive. "Insurgency 101 is what happens if there's a jailbreak, right? I spend a bit of every day thinking about it and trying to come up with contingencies."

A US bipartisan congressional group that recently visited the Middle East warned on Monday: "If Turkey attacks these Kurdish soldiers, there is a grave risk that the Isis fighters they guard will escape and return to the battlefield."

The White House said Turkey would be responsible for all detainees. The statement surprised Turkish officials: the subject was not discussed during the months of talks with their US counterparts, a senior Turkish official said. "Our position was that every country should repatriate their own nationals," he said.

But on Wednesday, Fahrettin Altun, a senior aide to Mr Erdogan, said Ankara was "willing and able to take the lead now [in the campaign against Isis] and drive it home".

Turkey suffered a wave of deadly Isis bombings in 2015 and 2016 and now has more than 1,100 people in its prisons for Isis-related crimes and is reluctant to take on more.

Nigar Goksel, director of the International Crisis Group's Turkey office, noted that - like other countries confronting the group - Ankara had no "magic formula" for dealing with Isis militants or their families.

"Deradicalisation programmes are at embryonic stages," Ms Goksel said. "Legally there are the same challenges here as is elsewhere. Insufficient evidence leads to release [of those who are jailed] in a short few years for most. It's all experimental here, as it is everywhere."

European leaders have resisted US pressure to repatriate their fighters. The SDF previously estimated that about 10 per cent of just over 2,000 detained fighters were Europeans - predominantly from the UK, France, Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Returnees played a leading role in deadly attacks in France in 2015 and Belgium in 2016. In the UK, it is also harder to prosecute and convict terrorists than in the US.

France's foreign affairs ministry said: "Terrorist fighters in detention, including those of foreign nationality, should be tried where they committed their crimes."

However, discussions on possible solutions, such as an international tribunal to deal with the fighters in Syria, have made little headway. Sweden and Belgium have repatriated orphans. But the case of Shamima Begum, a British schoolgirl who left London aged 15 and resurfaced in a Syrian camp four years later, highlighted public opposition to bringing back Isis recruits. When Ms Begum asked for help returning home, the government removed her British citizenship through the courts.

Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute in London, said that European countries were concerned returnees "are likely to be the really hardened fighters and ideologues with a range of links which mean that among them there are people who will present a significant risk".

"Even the so-called brides, or wives, it's just not believable that they have spent the last few years as cleaners or cooks or whatever they claim," he said.

But the strategy of leaving foreign fighters in Syrian camps depends on the US military and SDF forces maintaining stability and securing camps in the region.

Mr Trump's decision to retreat has "completely exposed" the weakness of this position, said Julien Barnes-Dacey, head of the Middle East programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations think-tank.

"Europeans . . . have been aware for a long time that the US presence could evaporate at any moment," Mr Barnes-Dacey said. "And yet they have totally failed to step up and take any responsibility for managing this."