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News ID: 47647
Publish Date : 16 December 2017 - 21:36

What Happened to All Daesh Terrorists?



WASHINGTON (Dispatches) -- An estimated 40,000 people traveled from around the world to take up arms for Daesh as it occupied territory in Syria and Iraq and declared a caliphate in 2014.
A few hundred are believed to still be fighting as Daesh struggles to survive, having lost most of its territory to campaigns by Syrian and Iraqi coalition armies. But what happened to the rest?
Many thousands were certainly killed in the intense fighting, but U.S. experts believe many have survived, posing a formidable threat going ahead.
"The issue is: how many have died? How many are still there and willing to fight? How many have gone elsewhere to fight?" said Seth Jones, director of the International Security and Defense Policy Center at the Rand Corporation.
"How many have given up? I don't think we have a good answer."
International counterterror groups are putting huge efforts into answering those questions, working hard to name, count and track Daesh foreign fighters.
In France, officials say, around 1,700 people went to Iraq and Syria since 2013 to join Daesh. Of those, 400 to 450 have been killed, and 250 returned to France.
Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on December 8 that about 500 are still in the Iraq-Syria theater, and for them, it is now very hard to return to France.
But that leaves another 500 whose whereabouts are unknown, many of them with the skills of war, wielding weapons and making bombs.
Terrorism specialist Bruce Hoffman of Georgetown University estimated during a conference Wednesday that "thousands" have escaped the war zone.
"Today, some of them are most likely in the Balkans, lying low for the time being, waiting for the opportunity to infiltrate themselves to the rest of Europe," he said.
Some have traveled to other Takfiri fronts, according to Thomas Sanderson, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies' Transnational Threats Project.
For example, he said, at least 80 Daesh fighters from Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen have joined since May the Daesh-allied Abu Sayyaf terrorists battling government forces in the southern Philippines.
Local people in the northern Afghanistan province of Jowzjan have told AFP that French-speaking Daesh veterans - from France or northern African countries - have recently set up camp there.
And they also have the option of other conflict zones in northern Africa, like Libya, Somalia, Yemen and elsewhere where Takfiri groups akin to Daesh are conducting violent insurgencies.
The defeat of Daesh on the battlefield in Syria in Iraq did not close off escape routes. Daesh fighters were able to blend in with civilian refugees or bribe their way to sneak into Turkey.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin said the U.S. may be sparing some militants in Syria in the hope that they will fight President Bashar Assad's government.
Speaking at an annual news conference in Moscow, Putin pointed to occasions when the Russian military in Syria would warn its U.S. counterparts about militants heading from Syria to Iraq, but the U.S. wouldn't launch an airstrike. Putin said that may indicate an intention to "use them in the fight against Assad."
Putin visited the Russian military air base in Syria Monday to declare victory in the fight against Daesh and other militants and a partial Russian military withdrawal from the country.
Last month, the British daily the Times Daesh bought free passage through Syrian territory controlled by the U.S.-backed PKK/PYD terror group for as little as $200.
The newspaper said 2,000 Daesh terrorists escaped Manbij in Syria's Aleppo province when it was taken by the PKK/PYD in August last year.
In an interview, former commander and spokesman of the SDF Talal Silo said Daesh terrorists bought documents from the U.S.-backed group that is largely controlled and manned by the PKK/PYD, allowing them to escape.
Even high-profile Daesh commanders, or emirs, were able to purchase the papers for a few thousand dollars, Silo told the newspaper.
Silo defected from the SDF last month and is currently in Turkey. "Around 2,000 militants ran away from Manbij," he told The Times. "I was there when they left. They were able to get papers from SDF commanders."
The SDF and the U.S. provided "security" as they headed towards Jarablus on the Turkish border, he said.
Silo also revealed that a similar deal was brokered in Al Tabqah on the Euphrates River.
His defection and revelations came after the BBC reported last month that the SDF and U.S. allowed 250 terrorists and 3,500 of their family members to flee Raqqah on Oct. 12.
The Times report said Manbij was known as "Little Britain" because of the high number of British recruits.
Citing the U.S.-based Soufan Center, the newspaper said around 35,000 Daesh terrorists, including 400 Brits, remained unaccounted for.
A new report released on Friday revealed that weapons provided by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia to militants in Syria ended up in the hands of the Daesh group.
According to Conflict Armament Research, an organization that tracks arm shipments, military equipment including anti-tank weapons that were secretly transferred by CIA to what the U.S. calls "moderate” militants fighting Bashar al-Assad were in Daesh possession within two months of leaving the factory.
The study, which was funded by the European Union and Germany, examined 40,000 weapons and equipment recovered from Daesh in the last three years, as the group's "caliphate" continues to shrink in the face of losses in Raqqah and Mosul.
Human rights lawyers said on Tuesday French cement group Lafarge paid close to $15.2m to armed organizations, including Daesh, to keep operating in Syria from 2011 to 2015.
The lawyers were speaking at a news conference on the course of a preliminary inquiry launched in June by French prosecutors into Lafarge's operations on suspicion of "financing of a terrorist enterprise".