A U.S.-backed rebel group in Syria is holding Islamic State defectors and their families in a makeshift camp, highlighting the lack of U.S. planning on how to deal with Syrian detainees.
The Obama administration’s policy towards detainees has focused on closing the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, by transferring prisoners to countries willing to accept them. As ISIS continues to lose territory in Iraq and Syria, the U.S. has yet to take any detainees, instead relying on allies and proxy groups to hold them.
“The United States does not intend to engage in the long-term detention of ISIL detainees, nor will we send any such detainees to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay,” a White House National Security Council spokesman told The New York Times in May.
The lack of a U.S. plan may hinder the ability to gleam valuable intelligence from potential detainees, and may spark a human rights disaster. As ISIS loses territory in Iraq and Syria, thousands of ISIS fighters may not be killed in the initial battles and could surrender.
“If they’re not killed but detained, we are concerned about the standards of care, who would do it and how it would be done,” an International Red Cross spokesman said of potential ISIS detainees.
Experts fear a repeat of Afghanistan in 2001, when Afghan warlords backed by the U.S. simply massacred any Taliban prisoners of war. “If the numbers start climbing, they’re going to shoot them and you’ll never hear about it,” a former senior Pentagon official responsible for detention told TheNYT.
“On the one hand, detention operations post-9/11 have been incredibly problematic from a treatment and legal position. But on the other hand, the answer can’t be simply to wash our hands of it and turn over operations to local partners who may not follow the same principles that Western governments would follow in terms of adherence to human rights norms. So you’re sort of in between a rock and a hard place,” a Human Rights Watch official said, summarizing the U.S. dilemma.
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