The European Guantanamo
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talkpoliticsThe European leaders tend to often fiercely criticize the US (at times for a good reason) for, let's put it mildly, their shady practices at Guantanamo, where folks accused of Al Qaeda affiliations have been held with no due process, outside any law or jurisdiction. Except today, when the EU is standing at the dilemma what to do with its own citizens who've gone to join Al Qaeda and Daesh, seem to have resorted to a similar tactic. Holding those fighters in detention camps far outside Europe.
Now three months after Daesh lost most of its controlled territories, about a couple thousand of their fighters are still stuck in Syrian and Iraqi jails - out of them, about 800 EU citizens. Not including their spouses and kids, some of whom remain with non-EU citizenship by the way.
The European leaders have done very little during these three months to retrieve their own citizens, even when the US and Kurdish forces who administer the jails in Syria insisted that the EU should come up with a strategy for getting those people back to their countries. Otherwise, the Kurds warn, those jails will be opened up and the Daesh fighters will be moved to other regions. There's no easy answer to this problem of course: if the EU doesn't get its citizens back, they'd sink somewhere in the sand waste of Syria and Iraq, possibly regroup in Africa, and help build the new Caliphate there. Conversely, if they're returned to Europe to stand trial, they could pose a new threat with their very presence, including through recruitment and radicalization of new fighters for their cause from among the prison population.
So far the EU leaders have relied on public opinion. The majority in their countries is opposed to returning the jihadist fighters with EU citizenship, and the politicians have obeyed this preference. After the 2015/16 attacks in Paris and Brussels it'll be even harder to persuade anybody to accept such a step.
Even returning the children of those fighters is not accepted well, and very few countries do it openly. Noway recently managed to find 5 kids whose families were killed during the battles in Syria; France and the Netherlands have done the same, the main reason for bringing those kids back was that they're orphans and they don't pose a political threat. Still, the French authorities admitted they probably wouldn't have done it if their parents were alive.
Even Australia has done the same. And Belgium has announced a similar plan. The UK, however, has openly said it'll be stripping Daesh fighters of UK citizenship, thus potentially creating a vacuum because the Kurdish forces have no intention of sheltering such individuals long-term. Now the British politicians are hinting of a different option: putting UK Daesh fighters to trial in the US.
Now granted, some of the Daesh fighters and sympathizers have been prosecuted in absentia, since many of them are still in Syria, and the courts are not thrilled with the idea of going to all that pain. The idea of bringing some Daesh fighters to European jails is not met well by the experts either, due to the potential radicalization of other inmates. So Europe, with France leading the way, is basically washing its hands as of now.
The European countries are looking for alternative ways of conducting trials, by handing judicial rights over to Iraq. These trials tend to reach a fast conclusion in Iraq, there's a limited access to solicitors there, and the penalty is swift and categorical: death by hanging. As one might expect, there's a number of murky spots there, lots of errors and abuse of the judicial system, including questionable conclusions, and a considerably low rate of actual proof that this individual or that one was truly a Daesh fighter. For instance, 11 French nationals have been sentenced in Iraq in recent weeks, and France has signaled it won't be objecting the penalty because it "respects Iraq's sovereignty". Quite convenient indeed.
The question how those fighters and their families would be returned home seems to be less of a pain for the US, since only a few dozen US citizens had actually traveled to the Middle East to join Daesh. But the US has already started repatriating its own citizens. Earlier this month, 6 children and 2 women were returned from a camp in East Syria, to be settled back in the US. 3 men and a woman are now awaiting to stand trial in the US. 3 others have reached a deal, 1 man from Virginia is appealing a 20 year jail verdict for having provided logistic support to a terrorist organization, possibly Daesh itself.
All these challenges to the Western justice systems have arisen after the last Daesh strongholds in Syria and Iraq fell to the US-led coalition. The war has caused a wave of refugees, a number of refugee camps have been hastily set up to host both refugees and possibly a number of former fights along with their families. Many of the latter are held in improvised jails, administered by the Kurdish Peshmerga. The women and children are not under such a strict regime, but there are quite a few indications that the wives of the Daesh fighters could pose a significant threat too.
Al-Hawl is the largest detention camp in East Syria, hosting 73K+. This includes 3.2K women and 7.9K children with EU passports. There are only three clinics in that camp, so there's a high risk of epidemics, and the miserable conditions are the perfect breeding ground for radicalism.
Though the Kurds insist that the EU should intervene, so far the EU has no strategy or plan. And while the Europeans are hesitating how to act, Trump has announced the partial withdrawal of the US troops from the region - you know, the ones that helped tip the balance against Daesh. If that does happen, it would make it easier for the remaining Daesh fighters to attack the camp and free their brethren.
The EU might be saying it doesn't want to create another Guantanamo (and by the way they've often indicated they have a problem with the current situation in the East Syrian detention camps). But in the meantime, the terrorism-related cases receive much lighter verdicts in the EU compared to the US: between 2 and 5 years of jail, which is ridiculous. An even trickier question is what should be done with the sympathizers of radicalism, since many countries still lack any law addressing the matter.
While Europe is stalling, the local governments in the Middle East are growing impatient. Iraq has already announced they intend to repatriate about 30K of their citizens who fought in Syria, but they don't intend to bear the responsibility for all those others who are of European citizenship. This means the EU will very soon have a large problem on its hands, and unless they've come up with a comprehensive strategy in the meantime, it's going to be yet another disaster.
Now three months after Daesh lost most of its controlled territories, about a couple thousand of their fighters are still stuck in Syrian and Iraqi jails - out of them, about 800 EU citizens. Not including their spouses and kids, some of whom remain with non-EU citizenship by the way.
The European leaders have done very little during these three months to retrieve their own citizens, even when the US and Kurdish forces who administer the jails in Syria insisted that the EU should come up with a strategy for getting those people back to their countries. Otherwise, the Kurds warn, those jails will be opened up and the Daesh fighters will be moved to other regions. There's no easy answer to this problem of course: if the EU doesn't get its citizens back, they'd sink somewhere in the sand waste of Syria and Iraq, possibly regroup in Africa, and help build the new Caliphate there. Conversely, if they're returned to Europe to stand trial, they could pose a new threat with their very presence, including through recruitment and radicalization of new fighters for their cause from among the prison population.
So far the EU leaders have relied on public opinion. The majority in their countries is opposed to returning the jihadist fighters with EU citizenship, and the politicians have obeyed this preference. After the 2015/16 attacks in Paris and Brussels it'll be even harder to persuade anybody to accept such a step.
Even returning the children of those fighters is not accepted well, and very few countries do it openly. Noway recently managed to find 5 kids whose families were killed during the battles in Syria; France and the Netherlands have done the same, the main reason for bringing those kids back was that they're orphans and they don't pose a political threat. Still, the French authorities admitted they probably wouldn't have done it if their parents were alive.
Even Australia has done the same. And Belgium has announced a similar plan. The UK, however, has openly said it'll be stripping Daesh fighters of UK citizenship, thus potentially creating a vacuum because the Kurdish forces have no intention of sheltering such individuals long-term. Now the British politicians are hinting of a different option: putting UK Daesh fighters to trial in the US.
Now granted, some of the Daesh fighters and sympathizers have been prosecuted in absentia, since many of them are still in Syria, and the courts are not thrilled with the idea of going to all that pain. The idea of bringing some Daesh fighters to European jails is not met well by the experts either, due to the potential radicalization of other inmates. So Europe, with France leading the way, is basically washing its hands as of now.
The European countries are looking for alternative ways of conducting trials, by handing judicial rights over to Iraq. These trials tend to reach a fast conclusion in Iraq, there's a limited access to solicitors there, and the penalty is swift and categorical: death by hanging. As one might expect, there's a number of murky spots there, lots of errors and abuse of the judicial system, including questionable conclusions, and a considerably low rate of actual proof that this individual or that one was truly a Daesh fighter. For instance, 11 French nationals have been sentenced in Iraq in recent weeks, and France has signaled it won't be objecting the penalty because it "respects Iraq's sovereignty". Quite convenient indeed.
The question how those fighters and their families would be returned home seems to be less of a pain for the US, since only a few dozen US citizens had actually traveled to the Middle East to join Daesh. But the US has already started repatriating its own citizens. Earlier this month, 6 children and 2 women were returned from a camp in East Syria, to be settled back in the US. 3 men and a woman are now awaiting to stand trial in the US. 3 others have reached a deal, 1 man from Virginia is appealing a 20 year jail verdict for having provided logistic support to a terrorist organization, possibly Daesh itself.
All these challenges to the Western justice systems have arisen after the last Daesh strongholds in Syria and Iraq fell to the US-led coalition. The war has caused a wave of refugees, a number of refugee camps have been hastily set up to host both refugees and possibly a number of former fights along with their families. Many of the latter are held in improvised jails, administered by the Kurdish Peshmerga. The women and children are not under such a strict regime, but there are quite a few indications that the wives of the Daesh fighters could pose a significant threat too.
Al-Hawl is the largest detention camp in East Syria, hosting 73K+. This includes 3.2K women and 7.9K children with EU passports. There are only three clinics in that camp, so there's a high risk of epidemics, and the miserable conditions are the perfect breeding ground for radicalism.
Though the Kurds insist that the EU should intervene, so far the EU has no strategy or plan. And while the Europeans are hesitating how to act, Trump has announced the partial withdrawal of the US troops from the region - you know, the ones that helped tip the balance against Daesh. If that does happen, it would make it easier for the remaining Daesh fighters to attack the camp and free their brethren.
The EU might be saying it doesn't want to create another Guantanamo (and by the way they've often indicated they have a problem with the current situation in the East Syrian detention camps). But in the meantime, the terrorism-related cases receive much lighter verdicts in the EU compared to the US: between 2 and 5 years of jail, which is ridiculous. An even trickier question is what should be done with the sympathizers of radicalism, since many countries still lack any law addressing the matter.
While Europe is stalling, the local governments in the Middle East are growing impatient. Iraq has already announced they intend to repatriate about 30K of their citizens who fought in Syria, but they don't intend to bear the responsibility for all those others who are of European citizenship. This means the EU will very soon have a large problem on its hands, and unless they've come up with a comprehensive strategy in the meantime, it's going to be yet another disaster.
(no subject)
Date: 28/6/19 06:41 (UTC)With typical robustness, the Daily Mail (and others) addressed the issue of returnees a couple of years ago; I seem to recall they opted for death before due process, which is just about what one would expect from the Mail's fascist carelessness when it comes to either due process or populist incitement.
The returnees are in a bit of a bind. But many folk ask what if Daesh had won, and we had been within the "Caliphate", what would they have done to us? Nevertheless if we think we are better than they are, we have to behave better to them than they would have done to us. But at the same time we cannot expose our citizens and our polities to folk who have murdered, enslaved, and raped using some spurious religious or cultural justification.
When in doubt, follow due process; it is there for precisely that reason. If things go wrong with our processes we amend them when it is pointed out.
Incarcerating them all is an expensive protection for society and given, as you have mentioned, the lack of laws addressing this issue in many countries, there are no clear paths to deal with the problem within current human rights legislation and treaties. In the '70's the UK opted for internment for suspected IRA terrorists. That worked so well it all got sorted out sometime after the millennium.
Just another great intractable problem of our time. There are no wins here; just managed, minimal losses; in practical terms, accepting a disgustingly grubby realism, those losses will probably be to our morality and consciences, but there you go. As a polity we are beholden to keep our own folk safe, so our returning terrorists must be kept apart from the rest of us unless they have properly recanted and are prepared to be monitored continuously.
(no subject)
Date: 28/6/19 06:43 (UTC)