Dealing with detainees in camps

Authors Sabin Khan and Imogen Parsons of British think-tank Royal United Services Institute in a report have raised the issue of members of Daesh in detention centres in north Syria with no thought of what is to be done with them. The authors suggest that they should be tried for violation of human rights and punished, and this is to do justice for the victims and their families. They reckon that the number of Daesh detainees is around 70,000, and these include women and children. They feel that a hybrid court of the sort set up in Kosovo, Cambodia and East Timor could be a solution in dealing with Daesh detainees. And this could be done through the United Nations or Global Counterterrorism Forum. They argue correctly that these detainees cannot be held indefinitely. It is also true as has been argued that leaving the detention centres poses a security threat. But what is puzzling is the presence of women and children. They should have been separated from the men and dealt with separately.

It is surprising that the authors of this report fail to consider what has happened with the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay after the Afghan war in 2001, and how it turned out to be a humanitarian and judicial mess, which held people for years without trial, and an overwhelming majority of them were found to be innocent and they were released. Where the Americans have failed to deal with the cases against Daesh in Afghanistan, the authors hope that a European solution would work better. The suggestion need not be dismissed out of hand without due consideration. Perhaps, Europe, with the help of the United Nations and the International Court of Justice or the International Criminal Court, could deal with the issue in a transparent manner. Europe has dealt with a similar problem at the Nuremberg trials in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. The Nazi members of Hitler’s regime were tried and punished. The authors say that those found guilty and convicted can be repatriated to their countries of origin.

It would however be necessary to draw the right lessons from the Guantanamo Bay experience. It would be futile to detain thousands of people against whom no charges can be made nor proved. The commanders and leaders who led the Daesh draftees should be isolated and tried. And the opportunity should also be used to establish how the network flourished and who supplied them guns and food and funds. The temptation to suppress evidence which would show the involvement of European governments in supporting the Daesh in their bid to unseat the Bashar Assad government in Damascus has to be resisted. And this can be best achieved by the appointment of committee or commission which does not involve Europeans.

The emergence of Daesh in Syria and in parts of Iraq was not a spontaneous event. It was orchestrated. And the forces that opposed the Daesh included the Iraqi Shia militias and the Kurds. It is a cauldron of confusion, and it became difficult to know who was sponsoring whom in this battle. The Americans seemed to support Daesh initially, and then supported the Iraqi and Kurd troops in parts of Iraq. And the Russians helped the Assad forces in Syria to counter the Daesh in Syria. A ‘hybrid court’ that would try the Daesh commanders would unwittingly stumble upon the inconvenient political support systems of these private armies which threatened established governments in Syria and Iraq. The truth has to be out and that is the way to end the menace of global terrorism that is emanating from West Asia.