NEWSMAX | Published January 3, 2025
Retired U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark cautioned on Newsmax on Thursday against the potential release of tens of thousands of detained Islamic State group members and their families in Syria, warning of global security implications.
“Well, I think the big concern really, that I have is the ISIS members who’ve been detained in Syria,” the former NATO supreme allied commander told “American Agenda.”
“There’s tens of thousands of them. They’ve been in prison camps. They’re being guarded by the Syrian Democratic Front, which is a Kurdish organization supported by the United States.
“And we’ve got our advisers there. We’ve got firepower behind it to protect them.”
Clark outlined the fragile dynamics surrounding the detained Islamic State group members. The Syrian Democratic Forces, who currently oversee the camps, face pressure from various fronts, including Turkey and Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, a faction gaining influence in Syria.
Clark warned that if the detainees were released, it could echo the chaos caused by the mass release of prisoners in Afghanistan before the U.S. pullout.
”
There’s no rehabilitation possible, and there’s none attempted. They’re just incarcerated. Let them loose, and it will have global implications,” he said.
The conversation shifted to the steps a future administration should take to prevent the Islamic State group from regrouping and posing renewed threats.
“Well, I think the first thing is to get a grip on these people who are currently in prison or held in Syria. Don’t let them free,” Clark said.
“Now, how you do that working with Turkey, working with HTS, working with the Syrian Democratic Forces, with U.S. Forces there, might be a little premature to jerk everybody out of there right now. That’s the sort of nest of this.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.newsmax.com
RELATED: ISIS no longer rules a territory. But its recruits still pose a global threat
A mural bearing the ISIS logo on the outskirts of Mosul, Iraq on March 1, 2017. Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP/Getty Images
CNN | Published January 3, 2025
It’s many years since ISIS, also known as Islamic State, held sway over much of Syria and northern Iraq a time when it spawned affiliates throughout Africa and Asia and organized a series of deadly terror attacks in European cities
But as a terror group it remains active in more than a dozen countries – and has inspired and supported individuals and cells in Europe and Russia in recent years.
ISIS is far from moribund, even if it is now a loosely linked network rather than a self-declared caliphate controlling sizeable cities.
The most high-profile attack claimed by ISIS in 2024 was the devastating assault on a Moscow shopping mall in March, which left at least 150 dead and more than 500 injured.
It thrust ISIS back into the spotlight, as have events in Syria. US officials are concerned that instability following the collapse of the Assad regime may allow ISIS to expand from its remote desert strongholds, nearly six years after the “caliphate” fell, and also regain a foothold in Iraq.
There is also the perennial concern among Western security services that individuals inspired by ISIS will launch low-tech attacks – such as stabbings, shootings and driving vehicles into crowds. Such plans are notoriously difficult to detect.
Vehicle attacks in the name of ISIS in the last few years – including in Nice, Barcelona, Berlin and New York – have killed more than 100 people.
After Wednesday’s attack in New Orleans, FBI assistant special agent in charge, Alethea Duncan, said an ISIS flag was located on the trailer hitch of the suspect’s vehicle. FBI investigators are now searching for anyone who may have worked with the suspect – Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Texas man and Army veteran – to plan or execute the assault, Duncan said.
“We do not believe that Jabbar was solely responsible,” she told a news conference Wednesday. “We are aggressively running down every lead, including those of his known associates.”
US President Joe Biden said late Wednesday that he had been told by the FBI that the driver had posted videos on social media “mere hours” before the attack “indicating that he was inspired” by ISIS. The suspect was killed in a firefight with police officers.
READ FULL ARTICLE
SOURCE: www.edition.cnn.com
Be the first to comment