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ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Myles Caggins, former spokesperson for the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat the Islamic State (ISIS), said Monday that the situation in northeast Syria (Rojava) is “extreme,” warning of a potential resurgence by the extremist group amid what he described as limited US engagement.
Caggins, who is a retired US Army colonel, told Rudaw that that the situation in Rojava as “extreme” and “scary,” saying the US “has chosen to focus narrowly in a very small way on protecting its own small bases with [the Kurdish-led] Syrian Democratic Forces [SDF] in the Hasaka area.”
His remarks come amid ongoing clashes between the SDF and Damascus-affiliated factions in northern Syria, despite a ceasefire brokered on Sunday under US mediation.
Videos circulating online showed captured SDF members and civilians being insulted, beaten and killed by armed men believed to be affiliated with Damascus.
Earlier on Monday, the SDF accused Damascus-aligned armed groups of decapitating several of its fighters in Rojava, releasing footage it described as a “heinous crime” committed and recorded in “the style of” ISIS.
The footage shows at least four captured fighters in military uniforms, while Arabic-speaking men refer to them as “Havalan [comrades in Kurdish]” and “the [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] PKK pigs.”
Caggins warned that ISIS detention facilities in Rojava are now at risk, namely prisons in Raqqa and al-Shadadi in Hasaka, “are under threat.”
SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami told Rudaw early Tuesday that around "1,500 ISIS militants - including both foreign and Syrian nationals - have all been released" by Damascus-affiliated armed groups from the al-Shaddadi prison.
The statement followed an earlier SDF announcement that it had lost control of the facility after “repeated attacks” by those forces.
Caggins remarked, “We know that it is always the dream of ISIS to break the walls of the prisons, and the United States has chosen to accept the risks because the US is focused on its relationship with Damascus and Ankara.
He added that despite recent US operations against the extremist group in Syria, Washington “is so quiet about the biggest problem, and that is the problem of thousands of ISIS fighters who can come back to the battlefield, and there are so many weapons available for them in Syria.”
The retired US army colonel anticipated that the US would maintain a military presence in Syria, but that it would be “in a small area in northeast” and “more in the western part of Syria.”
“Some of these groups that are making [up] the Syrian government’s military, some of these groups are Jihadis, are extremists, are takfiri, and I do not know if Damascus can actually control them,” he said.
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