To Rescue a Child

"The SDF [Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Forces] is under extreme pressure from the local Syrian tribes to release women and children from al-Hol. This situation was a major stress factor between the SDF and the tribes in eastern Syria."

"The SDF is essentially relying on the tribes to faithfully implement an honor system that the women and children will not turn into seeds of IS ready to spring up into a new caliphate. The SDF is transferring responsibility onto the tribes to make sure that emptying al-Hol of local women and children, many of whom may still have some sympathy for [IS], does not become a catastrophic security risk."

Nicholas Heras, Syria expert, Institute for the Study of War, Washington-based think tank

 

"The SDF’s waning capabilities and resources and the limitations they place on NGOs place the burden on local communities to integrate deeply traumatized and often radicalized women and children. That said, I doubt that the SDF will risk the security of the area by rushing into releasing all Syrians at once. They fear the chaos that might ensue more than anyone else."

Dareen Khalifa, Syria analyst, International Crisis Group

"Most IS women did not have combat roles and do not have blood on their hands. However, there are also IS diehards and enforcers in al-Hol who are dangerous and should not be amnestied. They have killed, burned tents, harassed and beaten the others who are disillusioned and now hate IS."

Anne Speckhard, director, International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism

In 2019 a little girl was found alone on a road in northeastern Syria whose parents and siblings had been killed it was conjectured in an airstrike during the battle against the Islamic State. The then-four-year-old was recognized as Canadian although she was born in Syria when her parents chose to leave Canada to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. They made their choice to join the 'caliphate' to take part in the brave new world of Islamist terror running rampant in the region. Their children paid the price of their parents' dream of an Islamist caliphate.

The government of Canada has been under pressure to bring the child known as Amira to Canada, to a country she has never known, to extended family she has no idea exists, but who are prepared to look after her and raise her, in the absence of her parents. She has been taken from the camp, and is being escorted by Canadian consular officials. She was initially taken to Iraq and from there flown to Canada. The remaining 46 Canadians who chose to leave Canada to join the Islamic State caliphate and make their future there, remain at the Al-Hawl camp with them, their 25 children.

Al-Hawl Camp, run by the Kurdish forces, where captured ISIL fighters and their families are held. Photo by Human Rights Watch

"We are delighted by this news and would like to express our gratitude to everyone who has made this possible."

"We would kindly request privacy as my niece  transitions into her new life in Canada."

Toronto engineer, Amira's uncle Ibrahim

The other 46 Canadians remain in the Al-Hawl camp. There is no question that they are ISIL members and were involved in Islamic State affairs, perhaps including the atrocities infamously committed by the terrorists. Collecting evidence to prove their state of ISIL involvement while in Syria is next to impossible. Returning them to Canada without evidence of their involvement would mean not knowing what kind of mindset is loose and what their presence might mean for the safety and security of the population and the state.

 

The reality is that they made a conscious choice to leave Canada to join an outlawed group of Islamists whose reputation as terrorists for whom no kind of bloodletting, no depth of inhumane treatment of others fazed them, but rather led them to ever more atrocious acts of depraved murder to enhance their formidable reputations as crazed butchers. They are themselves responsible for the miserable life they lead in a squalid prisoner camp, which is likely far better than what prisoners of ISIL experienced.

The al-Hawl refugee camp in north-eastern Syria where the five-year-old Canadian girl has been held by Kurdish forces. Photograph: Crispin Blunt/PA

Canada's Responsibilities for its Islamic State Citizens

"Those Canadian citizens who came here, they came to kill us and they came to kill our kids and to destroy our towns."
"And the moment that we arrested them and had them in our prisons or our camps, we were saving the Canadian people in Canada. We were preventing them from doing any terrorist attacks."
“So doing nothing towards those citizens, [Canada refusing to repatriate them to take them off Kurdish hands currently responsible for them], that’s really not respectful for the sacrifice that we have done."
"The Canadian citizens who are here, they are six men and 12 women and some kids so when we talk about Canada … it’s as big as 10 million metres squared. It’s a very big country compared to our country [Kurdistan]."
"I’m just surprised how a big country like Canada cannot take six or 12 citizens to their country."
"The situation is really getting worse. We have those women in our hands, and every day, they are taking care of the kids, how to make them ISIS, how to make them follow ISIS ideology."
Mustafa Bali, spokesman, Syrian Democratic Forces

"I think it was pretty clear from our experience in Al-Hawl that there’s a small subset of women who kind of run the show at the camp, who are very much kind of overpowering a lot of the other women in the camp, policing what they wear, policing what they can say, policing how they act."
Foreign fighter expert Prof. Amarnath Amarasingam, Queens University, Kingston, Ontario

"The reality is that these individuals are Canada’s problem, yesterday, today and tomorrow. If they show up at our consulates or embassies, they will be a very real problem."
"If they help to reconstitute the Islamic State, they will be an even bigger one. And if they conduct terrorist attacks and take more lives, that will be on us."
Former Canadian Security Intelligence Service analyst Jessica Davis

At Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria, children watch as women confront Kurdish guards in a confrontation that quickly turned violent. Stewart Bell

For the past six months and more, since the Islamic State geographic caliphate was fully dissolved, Al-Hawl (Hol) camp in Syrian Kurdistan has housed an estimated 70,000 ISIL family members, women and children. Among them are 40 Canadians. Along with other foreign-sourced women who were pleased and excited to become part of a bold new Islamist enterprise in the creation of a dominating caliphate whose geographic presence was meant to expand, just as its ideology continues to fester in the Middle East and beyond.

The Canadian government -- like most other Western governments whose citizens answered the call to jihad and fled to Turkey to enter Syria and join the Islamic State terrorist group -- has no intention to reclaim its citizens. This is the very same government that overturned the previous Conservative-led government which had legislated a revocation of citizenship to any Canadians of immigrant status who left the country to go abroad to fight in the name of terrorist jihad with Islamic State. Justin Trudeau made it clear that to him, "A Canadian is a Canadian" and he would have no part of a two-tier citizenship system.

So these are still Canadians, their citizenship is intact (unlike Britain which detached their citizens), but the Liberal government sees no need to exert itself to relieve the pressure on the Kurds whose ill fortune it has been not only to be forced to be the only reliable fighting force to counter the malevolent deadly threat of Islamic State, but to imprison and to guard them, at the cost of manpower and treasury, attempting to handle a poisonous situation no other country is willing to undertake, much less assist with.

Al-Hawl Camp,  Associated Press

As for those Canadian Islamic State members who have returned of their own volition to Canada, many are free to roam the streets of the country, (instead of being peremptorily imprisoned) while Canada's security and intelligence agents twist their hands, and bemoan the fact that unless they are able to amass hard evidence directly implicating these ISIL stalwarts, arresting and imprisoning, much less trying them for the crimes they are suspected to have been involved with, won't pass muster under Canadian law.

The Turkish military invasion of southeast Syria enabled by a brain-distracted Trump administration has had the effect of disabling the Kurdish military from its preoccupation with ferreting out ISIL sleeper cells, as they must now respond to the defence of their nation and their people. Moreover, the hundreds of Kurdish YPG fighters deployed as guards over the prison camps housing tens of thousands of ISIL members and those of their families have been hollowed out in numbers, responding to the emergency imposed by Turkish President Erdogan's ambition to annihilate the YPG 'terrorists' and establish a 'safe corridor' between Turkey and Syria.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's plan is to forcibly dump Syrian refugees, an estimated two million of the three-and-a-half million living in squalid refugee camps inside Turkey, fearful of returning to Syria where the Baathist regime's Alawite President Bashar al-Assad will resume barrel-and-chemical-bombing them once again. In forcing the Syrian Democratic Forces to withdraw their guards for the urgency of the battlefield against Turkish invasion, the fears now focus on Islamic State prisoners being freed from their prison custody, enabled to resume their reign of terror, as a result.

In the Al-Hawl prison camp where the ISIL women and children are incarcerated, a message from ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi called for his supporters to free the women from what he called the "prisons of humiliation", pleasing the women no end. They had, in effect, the hard-core among them, been effectively running the camp along an Islamic State model, in defiance of the Kurdish guards, and even threatening them with knives and cudgels.

The Kurdish guards speak of the camp as a "ticking time bomb". A dismembered body, days ago, was discovered in a septic tank at Al-Hawl. Some time later the body of a 20-year-old women was found as well, with 16 fatal stab wounds, according to a camp official. Last month, a 14-year-old girl had been murdered, her penalty for refusing to wear a niqab. Guards have reportedly been stabbed by these ferociously Islamist-violent woman of Islamic State. Little wonder that the camp has been described as a "mini caliphate".

Somehow, the camp women have been able to take possession of cellphones, of knives and even, it was reported, guns. The 400 guards who were responsible for the camp prior to this week's redeployment, make no pretense that the women haven't taken command of the day-to-day operations of the camp. They have been making efforts to smuggle themselves out of the camp, efforts that increased after they were called on to "rise up" by Baghdadi.

Guards at Al-Hawl camp in northern Syria arrest women accused of gathering to whip a woman for violating their religious code. Stewart Bell

 

Why Is Turkey Still a NATO Member?

"The United States does not endorse this attack and has made it clear to Turkey that this operation is a bad idea."

"From the first day I entered the political arena, I made it clear that I did not want to fight these endless, senseless wars -- especially those that don't benefit the United States ... We expect Turkey to abide by all of its commitments, and we continue to monitor the situation closely."

"I told Turkey if they do anything outside of what we think is humane ... they could suffer the wrath of an extremely decimated economy."

U.S. President Donald J.Trump

 

"We will clash against the Turks to not allow them to cross the border. We will use all our possibilities against Turkish aggression."

"[The SDF had turned back the ground incursion near the border town of Til Abyad.] No advance as of now."

"[ISIS] 'sleeper cells' [attacked Kurdish positions in Raqqa, Syria, in the early hours]." 

Mustafa Bali, spokesman, Syrian Democratic Forces 

A photo taken from Turkey's Sanliurfa province shows smoke rising at the site of Ras al-Ain

"[The border areas of northeast Syria] are on the edge of a possible humanitarian catastrophe." 

"[We call upon the international community and those countries fighting against ISIS] to carry out their responsibilities [to avoid a] possible impending humanitarian disaster."

Syrian Democratic Forces,  General Command

 

 "[The country had\s] completed our preparations and action plan." 

"[We are ready to launch a] ground and air operation [east of the Euphrates river, with the goal of establishing] peace [by clearing the region of] terrorists."

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan 

Turkish army soldiers drive towards the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019

"Turkey is one of the countries most affected by DAESH's bloody activities and has fought against this terrorist organization both domestically and beyond its borders with increasing tempo and intensity", the blatantly disingenuous statement by the Turkish Defence Ministry, when it was clear years ago that Islamic State principals had safe haven in Turkey, and used the country as a black market conduit for the crude oil shipments it extracted from the oil installations it commandeered in Iraq and Syria.

 

Turkey's Minister of National Defense, Hulusi Akar, tweeted that the United States, United Nations and NATO, among others, had been informed of its intended offensive operation in northeast Syria at 7 a.m. ET. The response from the United Nations and NATO is absolutely deafening. No ostensible objections whatever. It appears that Syria's mass murdering tyrant Bashar al-Assad was right when he warned in the early stages of the Syrian civil war that disrupting Syria would have far-reaching, profound effects across the Middle East and beyond.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan's long-wished-for 'safe corridor' between Syria and Turkey (on the Syrian side) where his intention has always been to forcefully move the Kurdish presence away from the border where the YPG and the PKK have been too comfortable in their shared antagonism against Turkey and its response to their push for a greater Kurdistan to be established on its own heritage territory absorbed within the borders of Iran, Iraq, Syria and Turkey all of which refuse to surrender to the 40 million Kurds what is long overdue.

A tank trundles down from a truck as Turkish armed forces approach the border with Syria near Akcakale in Sanliurfa province on October 8, 2019.BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images)

The perpetually bad-natured, demanding, tyrannical Erdogan has appealed to U.S. President Donald Trump's vanity in pressing him to make a decision he has demanded to yank the Kurdish presence in Syria further from the Turkish border. Resisted halfheartedly to this point, though Trump has always intended to withdraw the U.S. presence from the area. One angrily demanding telephone conversation on Sunday succeeded in convincing Trump that the Kurds were no longer worth defending, despite the U.S. dependence on the Kurdish valiant fighting spirit to challenge and defeat the Islamic State.

Now, the tens of thousands of ISIL terrorists held by the SDF are in danger of breaking free from prison camps no longer as closely guarded by Kurdish soldiers, hurriedly dispatched as a suddenly-imposed priority to the scenes of Turkish attack, in defence of Kurdish towns and villages in direct danger of aerial bombardment and Howitzer attacks by the second largest military in NATO, and one of the best equipped, prepared to shed as much Kurdish blood as it will take to cleanse the border area of their presence under guise of fighting "terrorists".

What's That? Dungeon Them, Throw Away The Key?!!

"No, I don't regret it [enlisting as a conscript with Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant]. I was asked the same thing by my interrogators, and I told them the same thing."
"He  [Iraqi Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, ISIL media chief] would give me a text, like a script, and I would review it for mistakes, and then we would record. He would then review it and see if there was anything that he would like me to place emphasis on."
"The intention was to not make anyone into a celebrity. I was just the voice."
"I was exhausted. My ammo was gone. They [his eventual captors, the Kurdish militia] kept calling on me to surrender, and so I threw down my weapon."
Mohammed Khalifa, aka Mohammed Abdullah Mohammed

The Flames of War propaganda video was allegedly narrated by Mohammed Khalifa

"He is a symbol -- the voice coming out of ISIL, speaking to the English-speaking world, for the better part of the last four to five years."
"I thought [when first hearing an Islamic State video] this guy sounds like people I grew up with [in Toronto]."
Amarnath Amarasingam, Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, University of Waterloo

Captured in Syria a month ago by a U.S.-backed Kurdish-led militia with the Syrian Democratic Forces, the man known as Mohammed Khalifa described his role as a rank-and-file member of the Ministry of Media representing the Islamic State's propaganda arm, responsible for publishing video footage to horrify a Western audience such as the beheading of James Foley and other journalists along with a British aid worker, and placing a Jordanian pilot in a cage, then setting him aflame.

Grinning throughout his interview with a journalist after his surrender following a violent clash between ISIL fighters and members of the SDF, he spoke of his background, as a child immigrating from Saudi Arabia to Toronto, later studying computer systems technology and working for a contracting firm, and finally the decision to leave for Syria after intently watching YouTube battlefield scenes that drew him to the Islamist groups associated with al-Qaeda.

"His voice is the most recognizable English-speaking voice to have ever appeared in Islamic State propaganda", Charlie Winter, senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King's College London, stated categorically as though to emphasize just how influential he was in extolling the Islamist virtues of ISIL, cajoling susceptible Muslims in the West to join the fight against the kuffars.

Three audio-forensic experts were invited to compare the anonymous voice on the Flames of War video, the 55-minute long, professionally produced video in which this man's voice narrated a broad presentation of Islamic State's capture of a great swath of Iraq and Syria and in the process dispatched its enemies with a cruel zeal unmatched in modern times, with a more recent televised statement by Khalifa aired in Syria, post-capture. The voice experts were unanimous in their confirmation: It is "134 times more likely that the unknown speaker is Khalifa than someone else" two reported.

Forensic audio specialists, voice recognition expert, all concluded that "the speech tone, pitch, cadence and pronunciation is the same in these examples". Further official confirmation was delivered by a U.S. official identifying Khalifa as the ISIL video narrator. Equipped with a GoPro camera the 55-minute video was shot showed a trench being dug before a killing operation; it became an irresistible draw for recruiting from Australia, Britain and North America, stressed Mr. Winter.

Khalifa was involved in the production of dozens of audio and video clips in the production of the Islamic State's influential English-language propaganda and recruitment tools appealing to those eager to become part of the action. Although merely one among hundreds of Islamic State fighters from some 50 countries now securely locked away in prisons in northern Syria, this man played a pivotal role in recruitment and actively fighting for Islamic State. 

While the men are locked in jails, their wives in the thousands along with their children are held in detention camps, where they may move about freely but not leave. Among them would be Khalifa's caliphate wife and two children whose exact whereabouts are unknown. Canada, like most European nations has been undecided about retrieving their citizens, concerned that evidence of battlefield involvement may be difficult to obtain, making prosecution difficult. How like a democracy, unwilling to let actions, available evidence and reality speak for themselves.

Accordingly, not a whisper of a venture of commitment to reclaim this disgusting representative of humanity has been undertaken, no contact nor visit from Canadian authorities through consular aid and nor has the national police body, the RCMP commented on his detention. Toronto researcher Amarasingam recalled tuning his ears to the speaker's accent in an Islamic State video where the 2015 attacks in Paris were being acclaimed as a brilliant strike for the caliphate.

Muhammed Ali, a captured fighter for the Islamic State who helped identify the English-speaking narrator of some of the group’s films, at an office near the detention facility where he is being held by American-backed militia in northern Syria, Jan. 31, 2019. Ivor Prickett/The New York Times

During a research trip to Syria with Global News journalist Stewart Bell, Amarasingam, given access to a Canadian ISIL fighter captured and imprisoned, Muhammed Ali, further collaboration describing Khalifa under the nom de guerre Abu Ridwan was presented, describing him as a Canadian of African descent by way of Saudi Arabia. Born in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia to parents from Ethiopia his work life as an information technology specialist evidently left something to be desired for excitement and commitment.

He took to listening to online lectures by al-Qaeda propagandist Anwar al-Awlaki which convinced him of the need to engage in jihad, but it wasn't until seeing a YouTube video where a group of British fighters speaking English on the Syrian front line gave him the impression that he would not be out of place in Syria, fighting alongside them. He left for Syria in 2013 at the birth of the caliphate,  joining the Muhajireen Ansar Brigade headed by a Georgian militant who later become the Islamic State minister of war.

The brigade he was with pledged allegiance to Islamic State soon afterward at a time when Khalifa claims to have begun working for the media ministry, a critical organ of the Islamic State as an influential recruitment tool. Under the media chief, Abu Muhammad al-Furqan, a close adviser to ISIL leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, execution videos were to feature a diversity of killers to avoid any one participant becoming too prominent and rising to challenge the leadership.

Khalifa transferred from media voice to fighter when he claimed a Kalashnikov rifle in defence of the embattled Islamic State. The final gunfight he took part in, left him wounded and, he claimed, exhausted. And after six years of commitment and loyalty to the cause of the caliphate he surrendered. Leaving Canada, like its other democratic counterparts whose Muslim citizens had leaked across borders into Syria, to ponder what to do with this legion of human scum.

The English narrator, now identified as a Canadian, Mohammed Khalifa, speaks as Syrians dig what he describes as their graves in the video Flames of War. SITE

Penalizing Mass Murderers : Strip Their Citizenship

"[Alexanda Kotey] likely engaged in the group's executions and exceptionally cruel torture methods, including electronic  shock and water-boarding."
"Kotey has also acted as an ISIL recruiter and is responsible for recruiting several U.K. nationals to join the terrorist organization."
"[El Shafee] Ellheikh was said to have earned a reputation for waterboarding, mock executions and crucifixions while serving as an ISIS jailer."
U.S. State Department 

The pair was captured by the American-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, reports said. Photograph: Erik de Castro/Reuters

"We were scared from the moment we entered Raqqa. We were supposed to go in with the SDF, but we went alone. As soon as we entered, we saw IS fighters with their weapons and suicide belts on." "They booby-trapped our trucks. If something were to go wrong in the deal, they would bomb the entire convoy. Even their children and women had suicide belts on."
Abu Fawzi, driver, 18-wheeler, Raqqa

"We didn’t want anyone to leave."
"But this goes to the heart of our strategy, ‘by, with and through’ local leaders on the ground. It comes down to Syrians – they are the ones fighting and dying, they get to make the decisions regarding operations."
Col. Ryan Dillon, spokesman, Operation Inherent Resolve

When Raqqa was surrounded by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and house-to-house battles in the centre of the besieged Islamic State-held city were unfolding, with terrorists booby-trapping buildings, alleyways, hiding out in tunnels dug under the streets, and the threat of casualties was high, an agreement was made to allow ISIL fighters and their families to leave the city. A convoy of trucks ended up carrying an estimated 2,000 fighters and 3,500 of their family members to safety where they could join ISIL forces elsewhere.

At the time, denial was high that many of the terrorists were being allowed to leave. One of the drivers of the trucks stuffed with fighters and their weapons however, later described the convoy to be six to seven kilometres long and comprised of  close to 50 trucks, 13 buses and over a hundred of the ISIL's own vehicles. As for discreet;  ISIL fighters with faces masked as usual, sat atop some of the vehicles. The truck drivers say they were threatened and physically abused, that the fighters they were conveying stated their intention to return and restore Sharia.

An agreement to allow the Islamic State evacuees to take with them only their personal hand guns, led to ten of those convoy trucks being loaded with weapons and ammunition, everything that could be moved, weapons that had been cached in some of those underground tunnels, accompanying them to enable them to set up shop once again wherever they arrived, once a suitable lapse of time gave them the opportunity to recoup their strength and their resources.

Among the evacuees appeared fighters from France, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, China, Tunisia and Egypt. Germany also, of course, and the U.S. and Canada, and needless to say, the United Kingdom.

Most international watchers can cast their minds back several years to the publicized horrors of videos showing the beheading of journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff, among others who might have pleaded for mercy from their captors to no avail. Four Britons were among those in the halcyon days of the Islamic State caliphate and their proudly terrifying entry into the annals of the world's most barbaric killing techniques that shocked the world with their propaganda.

One of those Britons whose identifying accents merited them the sobriquet the "Beatles", is dead. The notorious and detested "Jihadi John", Mohammed Emwazi, who coldly presided over the videoed beheadings of American and British hostages that brought him to public attention, was killed by an airstrike in 2015 in Syria following a manhunt. Another, Aine Davis was incarcerated on terrorism charges, in Turkey.

Two of the four remaining have now been captured by Kurdish forces; Alexanda Kotey and El Shafee Elsheikh.

  Alexanda Kotey, left, and El Shafee Elsheikh were the last two members of the cell at large

They had all lived in West London, one born of Ghanaian and Greek Cypriot heritage, the other born in Sudan, gravitated as a child to Britain. Britain has stripped these outstanding citizens of Islamist jihadi conviction of their citizenship. And both men were designated foreign terrorists by the authority of the United States in recognition of  their extreme brutality in Raqqa, Syria, known to have subjected prisoners to beating hostages and other actions identifying them for the brutes they are.

In the process of fighting the last groups of Islamic State terrorists in towns and villages along the Euphrates River to the Iraqi border, the Syrian Democratic Forces captured Kotey, 34, and Elsheikh, 29. They had been, in all likelihood, among the thousands of ISIL fighter evacuated from Raqqa when the SDF finally cleared the captive city identified as the Syrian capital of the Islamic State caliphate. The SDF, suspecting the two were foreign fighters, alerted the U.S. Special Operations forces, giving the Americans the opportunity to confirm their identities.

Because the Kurdish fighters are humanely democratic these men remain alive. The deaths they are responsible for likely number in the hundreds for each of them. Despite which they will be placed on trial to face Western-style justice. There is now a dispute whether the U.S. military should take custody of these barbarians or whether the American Justice Department would seek to prosecute the two.

Captured at the end of January, while in custody, according to a senior U.S. official, the two terrorists had provided information felt to be valuable to the American military interrogators who questioned them about the Islamic State leadership that remains, as well as its support structure, now under pressure from ongoing air and ground attacks. While the Islamic State never hesitated to use torture to acquire information they wanted, the U.S. after its flirtation with waterboarding likely did not, so would any intelligence acquired from these brutes be credible?

Given the likelihood of capital punishment being meted out to these sterling past-citizens of Britain for their spectacular dedication to committing atrocities against other human beings, what possible benefit might they be persuaded might derive from their delivery to American agents of intelligence useful to those that Islamic State view as their enemies?