It has been four years since the fall of the Islamic statebut more than 10 thousand foreign fighters are still locked up in prisons and camps Rojavaa Kurdish-majority region in the North-East of the Syriawaiting to be processed. The Autonomous Administration of North-East Syria (Aanes) has long been asking Western States to take back their citizens and to try them once they are at home, but the requests of the Kurdish authorities have gone largely unheard of. Even the proposal to establish a international court has not been followed up, while the long-term effects on the detained minors in the fields and on the generations that will still come after.
The Autonomous Administration, born as a result of the Syrian civil war, is in fact having difficulty ensure safety of the places where fighters and their families are detained and the living conditions in these places are steadily deteriorating. Part of the responsibility also lies with Türkiye which continues to attack Kurdish-majority areas and has been imposing a tough one for years embargo against the territories of Rojava. To try to find an at least partial solution to the problem, Aanes has announced its intention to try the foreign fighter still in his custody on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The decision took Western chancelleries by surprise, but for the Autonomous Administration it was useless to continue waiting. The authorities have ensured that the trials will be open, fair and transparent in accordance with international and domestic laws on terrorism. The priority still remains the establishment of an international tribunal, as has already been requested several times.
Carrying on the processes, however, will not be easy. First of all there is a problem of legitimacy: The Administration of Rojava rules over northeastern Syria, but it is not officially recognized internationally as a state entity so the validity of the sentences issued can easily be questioned. There are also doubts about the possibility of guaranteeing i rights of defendantsstarting from the one to receive legal assistance, on which the Administration expressed itself in rather general terms. But what is also worrying is the ability to ensure safety of the places where the trials will take place and to avoid external attacks and escape attempts by the defendants.
The best solution would therefore be the establishment of an international court or the repatriation of foreign fighters, but it is easier for the West to continue to ignore the problem than to bring home subjects who represent a threat to national security. The fear is also that of not being able to inflict on the fighters of theIsis a fair penalty: on the one hand it is difficult to find evidence for crimes committed in a third country, on the other not all states have sufficiently severe laws for terrorist offences. An initial solution to the problem had actually already arrived in 2019 from the European Agency for Cooperation in Judicial Matters which had suggested accusing foreign fighters also of war crimes to increase the duration of any sentence. However, this call too fell on deaf ears, as member states continued to justify their inaction because of the lack of diplomatic relations with the Rojava authorities.
The only repatriations that have been witnessed are those of the minors, but these are still small numbers. In their case, the State must have at the disposal of de-radicalisation and re-integration programmes in adequate societies, but not all European countries are sufficiently equipped. The situation is even more complex donne: some ended up under the Caliphate against their will, others changed their minds once they knew the reality of the Islamic State, but a part adhered and still adheres to the values of Isis. By imposing among other things rules of conduct and obedience within the field of al Holone of the centers in which the highest number of ISIS militia families are detained.
“The living conditions in al Hol are very precarious. News keeps coming murders and of others punishments inflicted to enforce respect for a shadow system managed by those who still support the Islamic State,” he explains Francesco Strazzari, political scientist and professor of International Relations at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Pisa. “Aanes has repeatedly asked for help from the West, but until today inaction prevailed even for political reasons. Even the repatriation of minors has been very limited”, adds Strazzari. “In their case we are facing a legal limbobut that does not mean that there is no responsibility on the part of Western states”.
The levels of problems are therefore many, but there are too few questions about the long-term consequences. As Strazzari specifies, it is not just a question of deciding the future of minors born and raised under the Islamic State and now ended up in fields where the risk of radicalisation it’s tall. “We also need to understand what will happen with the next generations. We are facing a real one genealogy of jihadist militantism”.
Furthermore, the role of Turkey should not be underestimated, militarily active in North-East Syria and eager to further expand the area under its control. The population locked up in the camps relies precisely on this expansionism and on the precarious balance of power in the Kurdish-majority region to regain their freedom. Without going through a trial. The best solution for Western states would be to repatriate the militiamen and their families, subjecting them to a fair trial and specific paths of de-radicalization and re-integration into society, rather than waiting for them to return home on their own. Radicalized and free.