The Kurdish-controlled administration has decided to free some 600 Syrian ISIS militants, a move that has been very welcomed by the Arab tribe leaders in the region.

To shed light on the unexpected move by the Syrian Kurds, KurdPress interviewed Anne Speckhard, the Director of ICSVE global operations and an Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry in the School of Medicine. Ms. Speckhard and the international institute under her supervision regularly review the situation in the areas where the ISISI emerged and established a caliphate, and the current and future situation of the ISIS and groups affiliated to it.

“The AANES has over the past year been carefully vetting and working with these Syrian detainees, treating them as respectfully as possible with respect to human rights and winning their trust in the new governance. In that regard they had already beginning to free those they deemed as least dangerous and now “deradicalized”, that is no longer aligned with ISIS. ,” she said about the decision by the Syrian Kurds in releasing that IS prisoners.

“I can also add that at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) we have now interviewed over 250 ISIS prisoners, defectors and returnees, many of them Syrian, and the Syrians who served on low levels in ISIS, and even some emirs, have been for the most part very disillusioned with ISIS,” she told KurdPress about the possibility of rejoining the militants to the ISIS.

Dr. Speckhard said about the reason behind the decision of the people in joining that ISIS that “Many joined ISIS hoping to win freedom from Assad, but then understood that there was a “devils bargain” with Assad’s regime and that ISIS was in fact fighting other rebel groups rather than the regime. Likewise, many poor youth joined hoping for material benefits which did not materialize and all who hoped for a truly Islamic State were disgusted by ISIS’s brutal and corrupt practices.”

The Georgetown University professor stressed on the cooperation of the Kurds in Syria and the Arab tribe leaders and freeing that ISIS prisoners and stated that: “The AANES and SDF understand that working with the Arabic tribal leaders is important to preserve regional unity, particularly with all the “bad” actors in the region interfering in that unity, and that it is unlikely to benefit anyone locally for ISIS to reemerge.”

“Moreover, they are confident that those they are releasing are too disillusioned to return to the group which is largely scattered and no longer holds significant territory at this point. Likewise it should be noted that ISIS leaders and trainers are not being amnestied,” Dr Speckhard who is also the Global Director of the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism and who directs the Breaking the ISIS Brand Counternarratives Project told KurdPress in the interview.

“That said of course there may be incidents of returns to the terrorist group, but there were already smugglers aiding escapes from al Hol so that hardly changes the situation,” the professor said about the illegal runaway of some ISIS militants.

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