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The Global Story: Is ISIS having a resurgence in Syria?
00:28:05
The US has carried out strikes on ISIS targets, amid prison breaks and in-fighting
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Hey, this is US Olympic gold medalist Tara Davis Woodhull. And I'm US Paralympic gold medalist Hunter Woodhull. As athletes, our lives are about having a clear path and a team that you can absolutely trust. So when it came to getting the best mortgage, we chose PennyMac. PennyMac is proud to be the official mortgage provider of Team USA and you learn more at pennymac.com PennyMac Loan Services.
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For you from the Global Story podcast.
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The world order is shifting. Old alliances are fraying and new ones are emerging. Some of this turbulence can be traced to decisions made in the United States. But the US Isn't just a cause of the upheaval. Its politics are also a symptom of it.
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Every day we focus on one story looking at how America and the world shape each other.
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So we hope you enjoy this episode. And to find more of our show, just search for the Global Story wherever you get your BBC podcasts. In the past few weeks, the US Military has launched a steady stream of airstrikes in Syria. U.S. officials say they're targeting the group known as the Islamic State isis, in part its retaliation for an attack on US Forces in the region last December.
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Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calls new airstrikes tonight in Syria a declaration of vengeance against ISIS terrorists. The US military has struck more than 50 ISIS targets in the past two hours.
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We hit every site flawlessly, and we are restoring peace through strength.
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We're all over the world.
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These strikes also come against the backdrop of a recent jailbreak in which more than 100 militants escaped from a prison in Syria, raising fresh questions about the security and fate of ISIS detainees. And so now the US military is in the midst of transferring up to 6,7000 prisoners from Syria to Iraq because of instability and infighting. From the BBC, I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. and today on the Global Story, is the Islamic State group having a resurgence in Syria. Well, Josh, it's wonderful to have you on the show. I'm a big fan of your work. So thanks for joining us.
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Appreciate the compliment. You can send me an invoice for that later.
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Well, could I have you introduce yourself for those who may not be familiar with who you are and what you do.
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So I'm an investigative journalist, filmmaker and podcaster and I've sort of reported on ISIS predominantly since the emergence of the group right through to present day. I was even injured by the group in a suicide bombing back in 2016.
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Josh, I know you have created these epic series about isis. You've done a lot of reporting in the last decade or so when this group was at its height in Syria and Iraq. And the reason I wanted to have you on our show today is because for the last several weeks I have been getting these email notifications in my inbox from U.S. central Command talking about strikes on ISIS targets in Syria. And I had this moment of, well, wait a second, you know what's going on here? Because President Trump during his first term in the White House had said that ISIS was defeated. And I want to begin with a sort of broad big picture question, which is why are we talking about ISIS again?
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So I think the thing to think about ISIS is, look, they disappeared from the news cycle, right? And everyone kind of forgot about them. But on the ground, they were always still there. Now granted that wasn't at the scale that they once was, but they never really went away. And I think, you know, I was just in Damascus actually very recently, and on one of my last nights there, I was having this dinner with a group of Syrian friends. And while we were there, people's phones started buzzing and that was because a suicide bombing had gone off. And at that point I remember watching my friends faces and they were like, huh, the insurgency has started. And I think this is the key thing. While they disappeared from the headlines, they didn't actually disappear on the ground.
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Before we get any further into this conversation, I just want to pause for a moment and talk about terminology. You've heard me refer to the group here as isis. Some listeners may know it as is or the so called Islamic State. And the terminology can be a little confusing here because the group has been described under different names. But regardless of the name I think it is worth rewinding to 2014. And I think that's the moment when here in the United States, ISIS really penetrated into the public consciousness. It's the year that President Obama announced the global coalition to defeat isis. It was also the year that the American journalist James Foley was executed. And at that time, Josh, what was the group selling?
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So look, let's just rewind for a moment because when we think about terrorist groups like, we tend to think of small entities running around, right, creating havoc. And actually what was unique about ISIS is that they actually formed a so called state, their caliphate, as they called it, if you will. And people sometimes forget this when we talk about this group is at the height of their power. They actually controlled an area the size of England, right, that spanned Iraq and Syria, and it had roughly 10 million people under their governance. And what they did then is they set about a really highly polished PR and propaganda campaign of selling this vision to the world of a supposed Islamic utopia and inviting people from all around the world to come and join them. And tens of thousands of people did from more than a hundred nations. And from there the state grew and grew and grew. But a lot of people felt like this was not a representation of Islam at all.
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Yeah, I mean, and just to be transparent with listeners, I mean, I'm a Muslim woman, I have a master's in Middle Eastern Islamic studies, so I've studied the faith quite a bit. And what they were selling was such a distortion of the religion and seemed so disconnected from reality that it is mind boggling to me that it was in any ways sold as a utopia. During the height of the ISIS caliphate days. Josh, I know you reported from the region. What was it like to report from the region at that time?
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It was an extraordinary time because you had a scenario where literally the map of two countries had been redrawn by this terrorist organization and you had a concerted effort to defeat them going on. So being inside the territory that they controlled or the fight to regain that territory was extraordinarily dangerous. We're in an armored car pulling back from one of the forward positions. The roads are literally littered with debris, with cars. I remember there was one time when I was in Iraq, I was embedded with Iraqi special forces and they were trying to retake the city of Mosul, which is where ISIS had declared its so called caliphate from. We have to be very careful how we move because it's a perfect place for an ambassador. It's going to be a long night. And when we were going into this city with them. You know, you're sort of embedded with them. You sleep with them, you eat with them, you ride around in their battered, bullet ridden, armored Humvees. We are here to bring peace and.
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Security inside Mosul and defeat isis. There are two forces at work here, good and evil.
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The world is divided in this way and we would go into these communities for the first time and it was amazing to see the shock on people's faces. There's suddenly this white western journalist there and they had very much lost contact with the outside world really, while ISIS was sort of dominating their environment.
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So if we fast forward a few years from that time period President Trump was in office, it was his first term. I've been president for almost two years and we've really stepped it up and we have won against isis. And I remember rather clearly when President Trump at the time announced that the US had beaten isis. So our boys, our young women, our men, they're all coming back and they're coming back now. We won and that's the way we want it, and that's the way they want it. What happened to the remaining people who were living in this so called caliphate? The fighters or family members?
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So look, you know, if you imagine at the height of 2014, 2015, that's when the group is at the height of their power. They control a massive territory. Fast forward to 2019. That so called state, if you will, has been pushed into less than a square kilometer in a town called Bagoose.
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Night after night, the assault from the air is relentless.
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And it is very heavily bombed. Shot, shelled, pounded the sky above. Barghou's coming alight as a coalition of.
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Nations seek to obliterate the darkness of Islamic State.
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And out of the ashes of that emerged tens of thousands of people.
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Their brutality has caused millions to leave their homes. Now they are the ones without a place to go.
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And nobody really knew what to do with them. These were people who had been associated with isis. Perhaps their family had taken them there or they'd been born inside it, or they were card carrying members who had fought and, you know, had had family members die for the group. Now at that point, the women and children were put into sort of makeshift camps, if you will, and the men were put into quite horrific prisons and sort of, they've largely been there ever since. And there's been no universal global policy about what to do with these people. And today that's created great tension.
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Josh, you mentioned these camps for ISIS fighters and their family members. You've been to them. I understand.
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What's it like a lot, substantially.
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What's it like?
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So it differs depending on whether you're a man or a woman. And if you're a man, you tend to end up in these very grim prison facilities where you are completely shut off from the outside world. For years, a lot of them weren't even sure whether the Caliphate had truly ended. And so they're a bit of a black box for the women and their children. They tend to end up in these white tented, almost imagined refugee camps at the edge of the desert. They're very barren places, but they do have slightly more access to the outside world than the men do. And I have this very vivid memory, actually, of just after the fall of the Caliphate. I'd been talking over text with a number of these women in these camps. They had a phone that they would use in secret, and they would get together and ask me questions. And it was so fascinating and also hysterical because the kind of questions they wanted to ask me was, what is Bitcoin? What is gender neutrality? Are gay men all good looking? And there were all these concepts which are funny on face value, but it shows you how isolated they'd become and how they were wrestling with this world that they'd emerged back into.
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Were these women you're referring to, Josh, were they Western women? Were they women who had grown up in Europe or the United States, or are they from Iraq and Syria?
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There were a couple there that were from the region specifically, but predominantly, you know, they were Canadian, there were English, there was Dutch. I think there was a German lady there at one point. There were women that had either traveled to be with the group, with their families, or they were women that would argue that they were taken there against their will.
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How are these prisons managed? How secure are they? You describe a situation where there's kind of refugee tents, essentially, and is the vision that these tents slash prison camps will exist in perpetuity? Like, is there an eventual plan for what to do with these people?
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These facilities were always meant to be a temporary solution, right? And it's not just adults that live in these facilities. It's children as well. Some of these children were born inside the Caliphate. Some of them were taken there by their parents. And so they're surrounded by this sort of dominant ideology of extremism. And the longer they're kept there, security experts will tell you that the further they get from easy de radicalization, if you will, because they don't know an outside world. Beyond that, they are as I said meant to be temporary facilities. Therefore, they are largely insecure. We do see prison breaks. We do see people paying to be smuggled out of these camps. ISIS themselves smuggle money into the camps as well. So the dominant sort of group inside are pro ISIS supporters. There's one in particular called Al Hol, which is this vast camp which kind of. It seems like you've stepped into the set of Mad Max at times to move about. You are essentially riding around in an armored vehicle with a massive machine gun on the top of it because it's so insecure. And that's just to move around in sight.
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Hold up, Josh, you say ISIS is running the camp on the inside. What do you mean by that?
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So whether they would admit it to you or not, if you are a Syrian soldier at this moment and you wanted to walk into certain parts of this camp, you would be taking your life in your hands. I mean, when I was there a while ago, in one week, I think there were two people murdered inside this camp. They are camps where they have found makeshift weapons, knives, but also guns. It is very lawless in these parts of these camps.
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And how many people are you talking about inside one of these camps?
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I mean, it depends where you go. Conservative estimates would place it. Tens of thousands of people from as many as 52 nations still remain inside Syria, and there's a massive divergence about what we do with these people.
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Well, let's talk about that more, Josh. This issue of what to do with the people inside. There are so many, you're saying, foreign detainees inside some of these prisons. You mentioned 52 nations, I believe, a moment ago.
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So there's a massive difference here between what is politically acceptable and what security experts will tell you should happen. Nobody would dispute that these people pose a threat. But if our notion and our goal is security, this isn't a route to it. And security experts will tell you that. And here's where there's quite a big divergence.
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Hey.
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Hey, Sam. How are you?
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I'm doing okay.
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How are you? I'm good. I mean, I have a lot of questions. You know, America has been quite good at repatriations. I followed the story very closely of a lady called Sam Sally, which is our series, one of our podcast, who is an American woman who says she was tricked into going to ISIS. So you knew in 2014 that Musa wanted to join ISIS?
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Categorically, yes, I knew that he wanted to. I thought I had him talked out of it. I thought his family had him talked out of it.
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As well, then after that, although you think you've talked him out of it, you begin a process of smuggling tens of thousands of dollars of gold and cash out of the country to Hong Kong, making multiple trips. Yeah. Right.
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Yes.
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So you have supported terrorism, then? Yep. You know, America took her and her kids back, put her in prison, rehabilitated the kids. What's the best thing about being home?
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Everything. Just everything. Like there isn't a best part.
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And have had great success at doing that with her and others.
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Yeah, there isn't. Just being here is nice.
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You know, I was texting with a former ISIS woman by the name of Noel just before coming into this studio. She's back in Holland. She was brought back, put into prison. Her case went for review, and it was found that she was likely a victim of a coercive relationship, and the charges against her were dropped, and she's now back with her kids. Then there's England. And England has brought back some people quietly, often children and women. But predominantly what the view has been is that we leave them in Syria. Where this gets interesting is that is the status quo that's been maintained to now, but in just the last few weeks, Damascus, under President Al Shara, has been trying to reconcile the country after, you know, more than a decade of civil war. And I think when that happens, Syria will move towards a position of asking nations to take their former citizens home. And at that point, it becomes a very difficult and unpalatable thing to think about what politicians in this country are going to do and indeed, around the world. What's really interesting about Donald Trump is on this issue, he has been consistent largely in telling nations to take their former citizens home.
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That's such a curiosity to hear, Josh, because here on the domestic front, we hear President Trump talk about possible denaturalization of U.S. citizens. And there's been so much unrest and turmoil, as I'm sure you're familiar with, around issues of migration. And it's really striking to hear you say that he's putting pressure on other countries to repatriate some of these people in the ISIS prison camps, certainly within his first term.
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It was a major issue for him in some respects, when it came to maintaining troops in Syria, he did not want to continue to have troops in Syria. At one point, he pulled a number of them out. And while these camps exist, there is some need for the US to have a military presence there.
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Yeah, so let me back up for a minute because I'm conscious that it can be a very, like, tangled picture if you're New to the subject. So when ISIS's caliphate emerged, Syria was in a state of civil war. It was governed by the dictator Bashar Al Assad. And it wasn't until 2019 that that so called ISIS caliphate was defeated. And the way that that was done was the US Government basically didn't want to put a lot of boots on the ground, neither did the Brits themselves. So they empowered a sort of militia, if you will. And that militia, known as the Syrian Democratic Forces, was made up of predominantly Kurds, but also Arabs as well. And they were very much our boots on the ground in the fight against isis. They defeated the caliphate for us, with assistance from us, but they defeated the caliphate for us.
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B
And when you say us, Josh, you mean the global coalition to defeat isis?
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Exactly. You know, every, every nation that sort of felt that this, this terror state could no longer exist. And in the aftermath of that, they kind of became, if you will, the world's jailers for, for members of isis. And the US and the UK and others to some degree, provided nominal support to the Syrian Democratic Forces to maintain that situation. Now, Fast forward to December 2024 and the now president Al Shara topples Assad and he takes control. And one of the key things that he's been trying to do is unify the country. And part of that unification process involves the areas that have been controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces, predominantly Kurdish group coming under his control. The fighting between the Syrian army and the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces in aleppo has killed six people and injured 19 others. Up until recently, the Kurdish led SDF controlled about a quarter of the country in the northeast. But over the last week, that has shrunk considerably as government forces have advanced.
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The Syrian government and Kurdish led Syrian.
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Democratic Forces say they've agreed to a comprehensive ceasefire deal. And what's happened in recent weeks is the American government who longed for, backed the Syrian Democratic Forces basically turned around and said this agreement has now expired and the most important thing for the future of Syria is a united Syria. And they very much shifted their focus now to supporting Damascus. And it's interesting because even if you, if you look at, say, Lindsey Graham.
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South Carolina Republican Senator.
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Yeah, exactly. You know, he came out and he said, you know, we probably owe the Kurds something. The idea that we would abandon them.
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And let the new Syrian government run.
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By Al Shira, the former Al Qaeda.
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Guy, would destroy American credibility for generations. I don't believe President Trump's going to let that happen. That's striking because he's quite a loyal ally of President Trump Completely.
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They helped us. They fought for us.
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We need to have their backs.
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What we've got here is we've got a question of honor and loyalty, Right? And America is a society that recognizes the value of military might and so on and so forth. And I think there's a sense that the Kurds fought for us and we shouldn't abandon them amongst some Republican lawmakers and so on and so forth.
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What does this actually mean for the security and the governance of the camps on the grounds? And does it mean that ISIS has the potential to restrengthen in terms of.
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The security situation around ISIS? Since the fall of President Assad in December of 2024, ISIS was able to move around the country much more freely. Before that, they'd very much been confined to certain areas. The American Special Forces would go in on these targeted missions or drop bombs. But after the fall, they started moving about the country. And since then, there have been attacks. And from these prisons that we're talking about, there have also been escapes. So one of the things that America has done very recently, it's enacted a policy of going into Syria and trying to remove some of these detainees from certain facilities and bring them actually into a secret place in Iraq because they feel that moving them into Iraq is safer at this moment than leaving them inside Syria.
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B
Josh, I feel like I now have a clear sense of the dynamic in the camps and the security situation, but I want us to zoom out a bit to the state of ISIS more broadly outside the camps. The United States has maintained a minimal troop presence on the ground in Syria. And in December, there was news of an ambush on US Forces. What exactly happened?
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A
Yeah, at that point, very sadly, two US Soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in an ISIS attack. The gunman is believed to be an ISIS operative who infiltrated a local security force. He was killed after forces engaged. And Donald Trump had an extraordinarily strong response to that.
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We hit the ISIS thugs in Syria who were trying to regroup after their decimation by the Trump administration five years ago. We hit them on. I ordered a massive strike on the terrorists that killed our three great patriots last week. In that response that the Trump administration had to the ambush in December, we have seen a number of strikes. And I'm just gonna pull this up here, but it seems like whenever the strikes are conducted, we'll get a notification from US Central Command. You know, this one says that more than a hundred ISIS infrastructure targets were hit. And that has me wondering, well, what exactly is An ISIS infrastructure target, especially if there's no geographic site, what are they referring to?
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A
So what they're commonly referring to when they say that is basically a cave or a hole somewhere in the desert where there might be a weapons cachet or there might be people in hiding. And a lot of those targets, I'm sure are legitimate. But also every now and again, you know, again, when I was in Syria recently, people were joking with me about how America had blown up another cave. What the US did in those strikes is, you know, they essentially used a mallet to try to degrade this group. They did a very targeted strike campaign, but over a vast area. And within, within that you are hitting these sort of very small hidden sites in an attempt to degrade ISIS as well as targeting their leadership as well. What has been consistent is the US has gone in and tried to target anyone who is senior leadership of ISIS to continue to degrade the group. And it's that old cliche of cut off the head and the body will die. And by maintaining that, it has been extraordinarily hard for ISIS to get back to anywhere near where it was.
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B
But that leads me to my central question, which is, does ISIS remain a real threat in Syria? And if not in Syria, does it remain a real threat in some other capacity?
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A
So if you imagine the current picture of ISIS looks something like this, it breaks down into a number of issues. There is an insurgency that has to be contained, and that's contained largely through airstrikes and targeted killings of its leadership. There are tens of thousands of prisoners from when that group had its so called state, where there is no coherent strategy of what to do with them. And then there is the group's footholds overseas. And I think this is the thing to think about. It's like while the so called state is gone, there isn't a physical nation that people can go and join anymore. The group's ability to inflict harm isn't. It causes a lot of issues on the continent of Africa. A brutal massacre at a church in Africa over the weekend, it causes issues in Afghanistan.
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A blast in Kabul has killed at least seven people and wounded more than a dozen others.
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It inspires attacks around the world.
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It would appear that there is evidence that this was inspired by a terrorist organization, Final isis.
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Not at the scale it once did. But that threat is still there. And I think herein lies the problem. While the caliphate is gone, these small issues remain. But if these issues aren't dealt with, they can become a much bigger pain for the world to deal with.
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B
On that note, thank you so much for your time, Josh.
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A
You're welcome. It's lovely to be here.
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B
That was the investigative journalist and filmmaker Josh Baker. You can hear more of his reporting on ISIS in his BBC podcast series, I'm Not a Monster. Also, we have a quick recommendation. If you're looking to catch up on the latest news from around the world, then check out our sister show, the Global News Podcast. You can find it wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. And we here at the Global Story, we really love hearing from you all. So if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions for us, you can email us@theglobalstorybc.com Today's show is was produced by Sam Chantarasak and Lucy Pole. It was mixed by Travis Evans. And our senior news editor is China Collins. I'm Asma Khalid. And that's it for the Global Story. Thanks as always for tuning in and we'll talk to you again tomorrow, Day or night. VRBoCare is here 247 to help make.
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