Asia faces a resurgence of ISIS recruitment and potential Jihadi terror attacks as a result of the chaos in northeastern Syria, regional terror experts have warned.
From India to Sri Lanka and across Southeast Asia, experts said the chances of terrorist fighters returning was high and that governments did not have a program to handle those who posed a threat.
Last weekend’s 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 also warned they may not be able to guard the centres holding 11,000 suspected ISIS militants.
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.
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.”
Dr. Adil Rasheed, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses in New Delhi said that jihadist propaganda suggests ISIS sees India as promising territory and is intent on aggravating Muslim-Hindu tensions there.
“Far from over, the ISIS threat may have become deadlier internationally and seems more intent on exploring new pastures, particularly India.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump brushed off reports this week that hundreds of ISIS family members had escaped a Kurdish-run camp in northern Syria, a day after the U.S. announced it was pulling out all its troops, sparking a dramatic wave of upheaval in the conflict.
Last Sunday, the U.S. triggered a series of whirlwind developments by announcing it was pulling out its remaining 1,000 troops still deployed in northern Syria as soon as possible, as the brutal cross-border Turkish offensive against the Kurds began to threaten U.S. military positions. The announcement heralded the sudden collapse of five years of U.S. strategy in Syria, with a full U.S. withdrawal expected to be completed within days, according to officials.
The escapes have already begun, according to Kurdish officials. Kurdish authorities said 785 “people affiliated with foreign ISIS fighters” escaped a camp at Ain Issa last Sunday, after an ISIS cell attacked the guards and opened the gates.
The UK-based war monitor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said about 100 people had escaped, citing sources in the camp, which holds relatives of ISIS fighters along with internally displaced people.
Last Friday, five ISIS captives also escaped during a Turkish attack on a prison in Qamishli, Kurdish officials said.
Trump downplayed the threat of ISIS jailbreaks last week, saying at a press conference: “Well, they're going to be escaping to Europe.”
Southeast Asia may be the newest breeding ground for militant Islam. Deeply interconnected but hard to rule, the island-studded region lends itself to unconventional warfare, reported ForeignAffairs.com
And since at least 2018, when it became increasingly difficult to travel to Iraq and Syria, foreign fighters from the region and farther abroad have flocked to the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia because of these countries’ growing reputation as emerging fronts for global jihad. The violence perpetrated by pro-ISIS groups in this region has been episodic and uncoordinated, but the underlying trend is clear—ISIS has shifted away from its initial concern with sovereignty over land and people, moving, in the process, toward a decentralized, global insurgency model.
A UN report estimates that up to 30,000 foreign nationals who traveled to Syria and Iraq to join the caliphate are still alive, whether at large in the region, detained or relocated to Europe.
These caliphate veterans now pose a radicalization threat, whether in prison or out.
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