How US-Turkey deal jeopardizes hard-fought counterterrorism gains

Turkey’s military action yesterday against the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria threatens to reverse years of hard-fought counterterrorism gains against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). The incursion comes on the heels of President Trump’s recent decision to move U.S. forces away from the Syria-Turkey border following his phone call with Turkish President Recep Erdogan.

The SDF played a key role in achieving critical objectives against ISIS, including the destruction of its physical caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Over the past year, the SDF has assumed the burden of overseeing the interment of thousands of ISIS fighters and families — the large majority of whom have nowhere else to go and have been abandoned by their home countries. Turkey’s attacks against the SDF will likely cause grave damage to the U.S. relationship with the group and send the wrong signal about U.S. leadership to other potential allies and partners in future counterterrorism fights.

Following the loss of ISIS’s geographic caliphate in early 2019, more than 70,000 ISIS family members (mostly women and children) were placed at al-Hol, a camp in northeast Syria guarded by the SDF. The SDF lacks proper resources to indefinitely manage the border of the camp and is unable to govern the interior, which by most accounts is ruled by the group’s most militant women. It is within this camp that the group’s ideology remains strong. As we recently warned, if the international community does not mobilize, the camp may spawn the next generation of ISIS supporters and sympathizers.

Facilities like the ISIS camps in Syria have taught us lessons. In 2009, prisoners from Iraq’s Camp Bucca were released as the United States withdrew from Iraq. Those prisoners quickly mobilized to reestablish old networks and relationships formed during the insurgency, including individuals with ties to al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). Prisoners brought to Camp Bucca were separated into camps of Sunnis and Shiites, and further separated into groups of moderate and extreme Sunnis.

The United States quickly realized that by isolating the most extreme prisoners, the recruitment and indoctrination was compounded. In 2012-2013, ISIS chief Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (who also did time at Camp Bucca) masterminded a series of prison breaks, a campaign called “breaking the walls,” resulting in the escape of more than 500 prisoners, many of whom later became key figures in ISIS following the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war. While precise estimates are difficult to discern, some reports indicate that there are 12,000 ISIS fighters detained in Syria. The reports also claimed that prior to Turkey’s attacks on the SDF  ISIS was regrouping.

As a result of this sobering perspective from recent history, jeopardizing the U.S.-SDF relationship at the expense of a larger deal with Turkey would have significant international security ramifications. It would allow ISIS to regain captured personnel with years of battlefield and terrorist planning experience. It would also have propaganda value, buoying the group’s supporters worldwide.

Establishing safety nets with the SDF – especially where the ISIS prisons and al-Hol are concerned – might be a meaningful gesture that would both maintain the value the U.S. places on allies and ensure that a resurgence of the Islamic State cannot happen.

Additionally, confidence-building measures between the SDF and the government in Ankara could go a long way in maintaining the status quo until a better solution is devised for the situation at al-Hol and other facilities managed by the SDF. Such measures would prove that the group has no designs on threatening Turkey or partnering with the PKK.

Turkey considers the SDF (comprised of mostly Syrian Kurdish forces) an extension of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which is considered a terrorist organization by Turkey and a threat to their security. The head of the SDF, Gen. Mazloum Kobane, may soon have no choice but to relinquish control of the ISIS detainees and families. While SDF calls the situation with the ISIS camps “grave,” the United Nations human rights chief is pressuring the SDF to prosecute the detainees or let them go. According to Sunday’s White House statement, Turkey would take responsibility for ISIS fighters and families. But already many security experts believe Turkey lacks the capability or political will to follow through on this potential commitment.

Turkey has every right to express concerns about the SDF and its relationship with the PKK to ensure its domestic security is not threatened. But as national security professionals who spent years involved in different aspects of the fight against ISIS, we likewise believe the U.S. should not sacrifice its national interests on this critically important issue. 

Javed Ali is a Towsley Policymaker in Residence at the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. He is formerly senior director for counterterrorism on the Trump administration’s National Security Council from 2017 to 2018. Marcella Huber is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve, has served on several deployments to the Middle East and is in the graduate program at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy