A wounded man receives treatment at a hospital in the northeastern Syrian Kurdish city of Qamishli on Sunday. Picture: AFP
Southeast Asia faces a resurgence of ISIS recruitment and potential lone wolf terror attacks as a result of the chaos in northeastern Syria where hundreds of Islamic State-linked detainees escaped from a Kurdish camp late Sunday, regional terror experts have warned.
As many as 700 Indonesians and more than 50 Malaysians, among them hardened ISIS fighters but mostly their wives and young children, are believed to be among tens of thousands held in camps and pop-up prisons across Kurdish-held Syria.
The weekend breakout of about 800 from the Ain Issa camp has heightened fears that further escapes could enable seasoned foreign terrorist fighters to make their way home and wage jihad. Syrian Democratic Forces have warned they may not be able to guard the centres holding 11,000 suspected ISIS militants.
Indonesian counter-terrorism expert Adhe Bhakti said the chances of terrorist fighters returning to Indonesia was high and the government did not have a program to handle those who posed a “threat not only to Indonesia but to Southeast Asia”.
“The Makassar couple who ended up bombing a church in Jolo, Philippines is just one example of the dangers,” Mr Adhe said, referring to the Indonesian husband and wife suicide bombers who killed 20 last January in an ISIS-claimed attack after they were deported from Turkey.
“There is also the fear that many of the women and children in Syrian camps have been completely radicalised. Many are no longer just supporters of ISIS, but initiators and actors of violence.”
But Sidney Jones from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict said a far greater threat was that events in northeastern Syria boosted the ISIS brand among supporters who never left Southeast Asia.
“From the very beginning the real and most immediate threat has been from ISIS supporters who never went to Syria,” Ms Jones said, adding the likely deaths of ISIS women and children caught between Turkish forces and Syria and Russian-backed Kurdish troops would only feed that recruitment drive.
”If people get slaughtered in camps that becomes the new narrative and it is particularly powerful if it is women and children who are killed. It will just strengthen the ISIS narrative of persecution and hatred and give new justification for waging war.”
Deakin University terror expert Greg Barton said any boost to ISIS recruitment in Southeast Asia would likely be felt first in the southern Philippines, where ISIS-linked militants laid siege for five months to the town of Marawi in 2017, and which continued to be a regional hub for Islamic militancy.
But a stronger ISIS brand was also “bad news for Indonesia because people who didn’t travel are more likely to respond to recruitment efforts”, and be encouraged to stage lone wolf attacks such as knife and truck attacks.
“If there is a sense that ISIS is a revived brand, and that is likely to happen from what’s occurring now, that means the number of people have to keep their eyes on is going to get to a point where they don’t have enough resources. That was the backstory with the Manchester bombing — not that MI5 and 6 were not paying attention,” Dr Barton said.
That would be a “concern for Australia because that’s where our particular vulnerability is in terms of people being caught up in attacks”.
Even beyond the potential threat to regional security, there are signs the conflict is also feeding into the ongoing US/China struggle for regional influence in Southeast Asia.
Philippines security analyst Richard Heydarian said there were already signs pro-Beijing forces were using the US withdrawal from northeast Syria and perceived betrayal of its Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS as an argument for a foreign policy pivot away from Washington.
“The spin is that this says a lot about America’s willingness to throw its allies under a bus for a greater interest,” he said. “It is just a further emasculation of American credibility.”
Southeast Asia faces a resurgence of ISIS recruitment and potential lone wolf terror attacks as a result of the chaos in northeastern Syria where hundreds of Islamic State-linked detainees escaped from a Kurdish camp late Sunday, regional terror experts have warned.
As many as 700 Indonesians and more than 50 Malaysians, among them hardened ISIS fighters but mostly their wives and young children, are believed to be among tens of thousands held in camps and pop-up prisons across Kurdish-held Syria.
The weekend breakout of about 800 from the Ain Issa camp has heightened fears that further escapes could enable seasoned foreign terrorist fighters to make their way home and wage jihad. Syrian Democratic Forces have warned they may not be able to guard the centres holding 11,000 suspected ISIS militants.
Indonesian counter-terrorism expert Adhe Bhakti said the chances of terrorist fighters returning to Indonesia was high and the government did not have a program to handle those who posed a “threat not only to Indonesia but to Southeast Asia”.
“The Makassar couple who ended up bombing a church in Jolo, Philippines is just one example of the dangers,” Mr Adhe said, referring to the Indonesian husband and wife suicide bombers who killed 20 last January in an ISIS-claimed attack after they were deported from Turkey.
“There is also the fear that many of the women and children in Syrian camps have been completely radicalised. Many are no longer just supporters of ISIS, but initiators and actors of violence.”
But Sidney Jones from the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict said a far greater threat was that events in northeastern Syria boosted the ISIS brand among supporters who never left Southeast Asia.
“From the very beginning the real and most immediate threat has been from ISIS supporters who never went to Syria,” Ms Jones said, adding the likely deaths of ISIS women and children caught between Turkish forces and Syria and Russian-backed Kurdish troops would only feed that recruitment drive.
”If people get slaughtered in camps that becomes the new narrative and it is particularly powerful if it is women and children who are killed. It will just strengthen the ISIS narrative of persecution and hatred and give new justification for waging war.”
Deakin University terror expert Greg Barton said any boost to ISIS recruitment in Southeast Asia would likely be felt first in the southern Philippines, where ISIS-linked militants laid siege for five months to the town of Marawi in 2017, and which continued to be a regional hub for Islamic militancy.
But a stronger ISIS brand was also “bad news for Indonesia because people who didn’t travel are more likely to respond to recruitment efforts”, and be encouraged to stage lone wolf attacks such as knife and truck attacks.
“If there is a sense that ISIS is a revived brand, and that is likely to happen from what’s occurring now, that means the number of people have to keep their eyes on is going to get to a point where they don’t have enough resources. That was the backstory with the Manchester bombing — not that MI5 and 6 were not paying attention,” Dr Barton said.
That would be a “concern for Australia because that’s where our particular vulnerability is in terms of people being caught up in attacks”.
Even beyond the potential threat to regional security, there are signs the conflict is also feeding into the ongoing US/China struggle for regional influence in Southeast Asia.
Philippines security analyst Richard Heydarian said there were already signs pro-Beijing forces were using the US withdrawal from northeast Syria and perceived betrayal of its Kurdish allies in the fight against ISIS as an argument for a foreign policy pivot away from Washington.
“The spin is that this says a lot about America’s willingness to throw its allies under a bus for a greater interest,” he said. “It is just a further emasculation of American credibility.”
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