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Chances Growing Captured Islamic State Fighters Will Return to Battlefield

Jeff Seldin

   U.S. counterterrorism officials are increasingly worried Islamic State
   fighters captured as the terror group's caliphate collapsed in Syria
   will find their way back to the battlefield.

   The concern, they say, is most acute for the approximately 2,000
   foreign fighters who are being kept in a state of limbo, held in
   makeshift prisons run by the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces as
   their home countries refuse to take them back.

   "We've gotten kind of fatalistic about this," Russell Travers, acting
   director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, said Friday.

   "There's a growing likelihood that eventually we could see many of
   these foreign fighters again when they've broken out of prison or been
   released," he told an audience at the Washington Institute for Near
   East Policy. "The greatest midterm concern is the retention of those
   prisoners and not bolstering the [Islamic State] ranks and not seeing a
   foreign fighter outflow from Syria."

   For months, U.S. officials at the State Department and the Pentagon
   have urged countries, especially those who joined the coalition to
   defeat IS, to repatriate and prosecute their citizens or residents who
   left to fight for the self-declared caliphate.

   But those pleas have largely gone nowhere, as European countries
   especially have raised concerns, arguing their legal systems will not
   allow for the successful prosecution of IS fighters whose alleged
   crimes were committed thousands of kilometers away.

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