Earlier this year, Islamic State fighters
detonated a car bomb outside a prison in northeastern Syria.
As fires raged, militants stormed the jail.
Inside, inmates rioted,
and scores of suspected ISIS fighters escaped.
It took over a week for US-backed, Kurdish-led militia
to seize back control.
Scores are dead after a mass prison break
at a jail holding suspected ISIS fighters in Syria.
It was the group’s boldest attack since 2019,
when an international coalition
pushed ISIS out of its self-declared caliphate.
Victory was declared.
We knocked out the--
100 percent of the ISIS caliphate.
And tens of thousands who had fought or lived under ISIS
were rounded up and put in prisons and detention camps.
But there are fears that those captured
are using their time in detention to keep the ideology alive.
Because we will bring back a new caliphate,
God willing.
Time and time again,
prisons have proven to be incubators for jihadism.
Britain’s top-security jails housing radical Islamist leaders
are becoming breeding grounds for their violent ideology.
During the Iraq war,
the detention of men at Camp Bucca, a US military prison,
was key to the formation of ISIS.
At least 12 of the top leaders of ISIS served time at Camp Bucca.
Today, some worry history could be repeating.
The unmitigated detention crisis across Iraq and Syria
is a huge blind spot that is going to come back to bite us.
Among those detained,
thousands of children left to grow up alongside hardened militants.
In another video, young boys chant
that they’ll crush the heads of nonbelievers.
So why has ISIS been given the opportunity
to enlist this next generation of fighters?
We want you to broadcast this across the world:
The Islamic State will return.
This is how the terror group is using prisons to prepare its comeback.
We are a ticking time bomb.
And how governments who spent billions on the fight against ISIS
are turning a blind eye.
[SYSTEM ERROR]
In March 2003, a US-led coalition invaded Iraq.
On my orders, coalition forces have begun
striking selected targets of military importance
to undermine Saddam Hussein’s ability to wage war.
A man called Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was swept up in a raid
targeting men who had taken up arms against the occupation
and taken to Camp Bucca, a US-run military prison.
Camp Bucca, the United States’ biggest detention facility in Iraq.
There are more than 19,000 civilian detainees.
It was here Baghdadi would sow the seeds of ISIS,
the terror group he would later come to lead.
Most of the senior leadership
and probably a good portion of the mid-level management
and footsoldiers came from Bucca.
Camp Bucca allowed Baghdadi to network with al Qaeda’s leadership
and recruits.
There are 24 camps.
He was allowed open access to all of them.
Now, as tens of thousands of individuals
who lived in the caliphate
remain in limbo in northeastern Syria,
many are seeing a parallel.
The kind of interaction and grooming
that occurred with what would become major ISIS leaders
is being replicated.
Like Camp Bucca,
hardline militants are held in a melting pot
with desperate individuals.
This is just a hodgepodge of people from different places.
You have supporters and victims all kind of stuck into one big mix.
You need to separate out those who are radicalized
and those who are potential targets of radicalization.
One problem is that the Syrian Democratic Forces
who were left to manage these facilities
don’t know who’s who.
They don’t have IDs
or details on all of the detainees that they have.
It’s a huge intelligence problem.
In the prisons,
hundreds of boys are kept alongside hardened adult fighters.
Are there any kids in there?
-Here, here. -Yeah.
How old are you?
-15 years old. -15 years old.
His charge is Daesh [ISIS].
We’ve seen little boys and men all being held
in one large, crowded room.
You get those rashes all over the body.
It’s because of the overcrowding in the room.
It's very dangerous for these young children to be held with adults.
These children are really... incredibly vulnerable.
Recruiting and brainwashing these boys is top of ISIS’s agenda.
ISIS has needed to find
a way to continue to breathe life into its idea of a caliphate.
This is where you see the ISIS emphasis on
what it calls “the cubs of the caliphate,”
which are underage boys.
In the sprawling detention camps,
thousands of families live in fear.
Killing has become a daily occurrence here.
Almost every day,
they kill one or two people at the camp.
A young child who is a victim in this situation
where they have complete insecurity,
this is what leads to engagement in violent extremism down the line.
When you grow up,
what are you going to do with me while I’m not wearing hijab?
We’ll kill you.
We are preparing our weapons for infidels.
What we’ve done is create a vacuum where the only future, maybe,
a young person can think about in these camps
is something like ISIS.
The harsh conditions in the camp
also serve to fuel ISIS’s propaganda machine.
Sometimes they bring us green water, sometimes white-colored water,
and sometimes yellow.
The Islamic State can use the poor humanitarian conditions in the camp
as a propaganda tool to basically say,
“Look, our women and our children are being indiscriminately persecuted
by the SDF, by the crusaders, et cetera, et cetera.”
In April 2015, eight-year-old Matthew traveled with his family from the US
to the Syrian city of Raqqa to join ISIS.
Matthew became the face of ISIS propaganda against America.
My message to Trump: get ready, for the fighting has just begun.
A victim of his parents’ desires to join the caliphate...
It was hard.
I didn’t want to do it.
Matthew has since been rehabilitated into American life.
What’s the best thing about being home?
Everything.
Just everything.
But for thousands of other children brought to Syria,
the future is less hopeful.
The SDF have explicitly asked governments
to take back their nationals time and time again.
Whether it’s experts on radicalization
or intelligence services,
the consensus is really that bringing them back is the much safer,
more prudent long- and mid-term option.
Governments globally pretend they are not here.
There is really no plan for them whatsoever.
Governments think in shorter term,
so they’ll kick it down the can to the next government.
Some countries, like the UK
have gone as far as strip citizenship from some of their nationals.
In the end, it turned out, for me, it was a very clear-cut decision.
It’s such a politically sensitive issue
that no politician wants to be the first to sort of
stick their hand up to actively repatriate their nationals.
Some governments say there is not enough evidence
for prosecutions at home,
but this excuse can be unfounded.
ISIS kept really detailed records,
and those records have been confiscated.
So we do have lots of evidence
that can be used to prosecute foreign terrorist fighters.
The real challenge has been convincing the public.
Just before they go to Syria, we take away their passports.
You talk about them as if they were enemies.
They are citizens too.
Citizens, my ass.
We have a sense of what works
in terms of disengaging somebody from violent extremism.
We just haven’t been willing to apply it to this group of people.
The resistance to even bringing children back,
I think, is an enormous failure of societies.
In the wake of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan,
Islamic State militants escaped prison alongside Taliban members,
as this clip appears to show.
Just days later, as Afghans rushed to flee the country,
one escapee detonated a suicide bomb outside Kabul Airport.
Hundreds were killed.
The attack showed how militants can exploit instability
to break out of prisons,
with devastating consequences.
Prison breaks have long been a key strategy for jihadists.
In the wake of the US’s departure from Iraq in 2011,
ISIS launched a series of attacks on prisons.
Militants wearing suicide vests then entered the compound
and helped free the inmates.
The climax was a simultaneous raid on jails in Taji and Abu Ghraib.
Hundreds of prisoners escaped Abu Ghraib prison
during a violent prison breakout.
Attacks paved the way to the capture of Mosul
and then subsequently the declaration of the caliphate in 2014.
When I shout, “The Caliphate,” you say, “Established.”
The Caliphate.
Established.
In recent years, to regain momentum,
the Islamic State has continued to orchestrate prison breaks.
They’ve been happening all over, from West Africa to Southeast Asia.
The ISIS campaign against prisons and detention facilities
is a global emphasis for the ISIS organizations.
In every leadership statement
that the Islamic State’s published since 2019,
Prisons have always been a priority issue.
Not only do they help ISIS replenish its ranks,
they also help energize global supporters.
It features in their propaganda frequently,
and it is an important aspect for the group.
Go and free your brothers and sisters in the kufar prisons.
The scale of the latest attack in Syria in January 2022
proved what happens when the threat of prisons is overlooked.
We are surprised every single time that happens,
which should not be the case.
And when the responsibility of guarding prisoners
is left to militia force
in an impoverished breakaway region of Syria.
They've really been reaching out to the international community
for help on these issues,
and that’s unfortunately largely gone ignored.
The attack also demonstrated the group's eagerness
and growing capability to return.
This one in particular was being framed as a new kind of episode
in the apocalyptic war of the Islamic State.
The recent attack was testament to the fact that
ISIS does have the capacity to regroup,
and they have the strategic patience
to be able to make sure that their priority leaders and operatives
will at some point be able to rejoin the fight.
In February 2022,
the leader of ISIS was killed in an operation by US Special Forces.
Thanks to the bravery of our troops,
this horrible terrorist leader is no more.
But these military victories do not equate to ideological defeats.
Defeating the group militarily is not enough
because the group can always come back.
As the world looks away,
ISIS continues to capitalize on those detained.
Detention facilities are a necessary evil,
and it's that lack of priority attention
and lack of resourcing
that presents an opportunity for ISIS.
And my fear is that we're going to look back on this period and say,
“Man, I really wish we had done more.”