Good afternoon and thank you all for being here. And thank you to the Government of Kuwait for again hosting us. This working group is critical to our collective effort to fight what continues to be a very real threat despite our significant progress.
Through this forum we are able to share information and coordinate efforts to confront the foreign terrorist fighter challenge.
My name is Ian Moss, and I serve as the Deputy Coordinator for Counterterrorism with responsibility for Terrorist Detention and Countering Violent Extremism.
I would like to frame my remarks today around a fact that many of you have heard me state previously: We cannot ignore the serious concerns posed by the detainee and displaced person populations in northeast Syria, because those concerns will not ignore us.
The tragic earthquakes that devasted parts of Türkiye and Syria last month have further highlighted the vulnerability of the region.
Importantly, working together with many of you in this room we have made significant progress. In 2022, over 3,000 foreign nationals were repatriated from northeast Syria. This figure is equal to all the repatriations in the three prior years of 2019, 2020, and 2021 put together.
This positive trend is continuing this year, with Iraq, Spain, Barbados, France, Slovakia, and Kyrgyzstan conducting successful repatriations in January and February.
We thank all of our partners for their support, particularly the Government of Kuwait, which has and continues to play an indispensable role by serving as the central transit hub for U.S.-assisted repatriation operations.
Thanks to Kuwait and the hard work of many - especially Assistant Foreign Minister Hamad S. Almashaan and his team - hundreds of innocent children are out of harm’s way and are able to live the lives that we all know they deserve; lives away from the daily threat of ISIS ideology, they are able to live where they have access to education and opportunity for meaningful and productive lives.
Additionally, I would like to also take this opportunity to thank Kosovo and Iraq for repatriating fighters in 2022. Repatriating women and children is important and urgent, but we must confront the hard truth that we must also repatriate fighters, not just their family members.
As I have said before, repatriating these individuals ultimately poses a much lower risk than leaving them in Syria. 10,000 ISIS fighters remain in custody, the largest concentration of detained terrorists in the world. ISIS will look for new opportunities to replenish its ranks with these detained fighters.
The best way to prevent that is to repatriate these individuals so they can be properly managed and - where appropriate - prosecuted. We prevented the worst from happening in January 2022, but the situation on the ground is tenuous and we cannot guarantee that future attempts will fail.
Our local partners are under increasing strain, which only exacerbates this risk. If these fighters escape, they will pose a threat not only to northeast Syria and the region, but to our homelands.
Repatriation, rehabilitation, reintegration, and - where appropriate - prosecution and incarceration are the only durable solutions to this problem. We cannot ignore our way out of this problem. We must continue to leverage our counterterrorism cooperation to repatriate the remaining foreign fighters while also mitigating the risks.
The United States stands ready to help, not just with the logistics but also by facilitating the sharing of best practices and expertise including from stalwart partners like Hedayah and the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF).
Western Balkans countries are among the leaders in repatriating their citizens and providing rehabilitative and reintegrative programming, and in the effort to hold individuals accountable for their actions.
We have also made great strides in the rehabilitation and reintegration of fighters and associated family members. There is a robust group of Coalition partners and international organizations including GCTF, GCERF, and Hedayah that stand ready to assist with ensuring the safe and successful reintegration of returnees into society once appropriate. Talk to them. They want to help and have the expertise on call.
Additionally, our military partners have access to an enormous amount of battlefield evidence from the Coalition’s counter-ISIS campaign. This information may aid your authorities in the prosecution of foreign fighters and we are prepared provide this information to your governments.
This can be done. And the Coalition is here to help. Please do not hesitate to engage me and my team.
Together we can continue making the type of progress that has already made us safer. But there is more to do and we cannot let up.
Source: U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Counterterrorism
