Congress expands Pentagon aid in North Syria to include ISIS-detainees
Washington – North-Press Agency
The Congress is working to grant the Pentagon more authorities to help the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) in northern Syria including assistance in the case of the Islamic State detained militants.
The Senate is working to provide the National Defense Authorization Act which was issued last week, with permissions to enable Pentagon building temporary small-scale facilities, supply points in several areas and modern equipment to help organize the capture of ISIS militants.
This is the new support that Congress wants to provide the Syrian Democratic Forces with. As well the enactment and administration of laws to repatriate foreign detained members in accordance with the international law.
The challenge of Al-Hol camp, which houses more than 70 thousand people, has spurred congressional lawmakers to intervene, according to the Pentagon’s inspector general, the number of camp residents has increased sevenfold over the past year.
The United States is playing a role in encouraging its allies, such as France, to repatriate the foreign militants of the Islamic State and hold them to justice, the demand which the SDF considers as “urgent”.
Kenneth Roth, the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, criticized the current laws that might not lead to just accountability for the “Islamic state” detainees.
“There must be a credible judicial system to end this issue, not prisons that are not fit to live in Syria and Iraq,” he said.
The Senate is trying to address this aspect of the problem in the new defense bill, where the Senate calls on the Pentagon to appoint an inter-agency coordinator to deal with the detention issue, and calls for the enactment of a law that accurately restricts the numbers of ISIS militants detained by the Syrian Democratic forces and foreign militants who have been repatriated every 90 days, since early next year.
The Senate is due to start discussing the full bill later this week.
Samuel Ramani, a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment, told North-Press: “The bill is supported by both parties in the Senate and has great chances as the United States still sees the specter of the group return as a direct threat to its interests.”
He added, “Turkey is concerned about every new support that empowers the SDF, which is taken into account by the Senate, yet, the Global coalition holds the responsibility of supporting the SDF to secure the situation of thousands of prisoners of the Islamic State militants, and cannot turn its back on it, which became a demand by the Rights Organizations and local population, also it’s a necessary measure that should be taken to ensure the non-return of ISIS,” he said.
Ramani points out that the purpose of the Pentagon’s planned support for SDF regarding the group’s detainees is on two ways, “The first one is to make the places of detention better in terms of conditions, safer and to ensure that the culprits remain in detention until their trial, so that these camps do not become hotbeds of chaos and violence or uncontrolled places.
While the second way is to set a mechanism that seeks to reduce the numbers of those detainees, especially foreigners, by handing them over to their countries with more flexible mechanisms and under the United States’ contribution.”
The United States takes a leading role in urging the involved countries to take back their citizens who have joined the Islamic State, where the US Defense Department is hosting a meeting titled “Treating remnants of ISIS” in Brussels this week, as it will discuss the issue of prisoners and the continuation of the group’s use of digital media for recruitment and propaganda.