Tens of thousands of former Islamic State members held in detention in north-east Syria need to be put on trial or repatriated and deradicalised, a security thinktank has said.
Researchers at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) argue that the current situation, in which 30,000 adults and 40,000 children from more than 60 countries are being held in camps and jails by Syrian Kurdish forces, cannot endure and requires a new global taskforce to resolve.
“The current international response is one of containment, but this is not sustainable,” write Sabin Khan and Imogen Parsons. “As well as denying justice to those who have suffered abuses, there is a growing security threat,” they say, because local forces cannot “securely hold these people indefinitely”.
Bullets are cheap.
