Why Did France Back Down From 'Ignoring' its Detained Nationals in Northern Syria?

In a regressive move, France, after a long disregard, reopened the file on the recovery of French citizens from ISIS families held in camps in northeastern Syria run by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

Since 2019, Paris has stalled on solving the problem of its nationals held in closed camps in the Hasaka countryside and has refused to resettle them in their home country, in connection with the state organization, which Washington announced was eliminated in Syria in March of that year.

In July 2022, however, it had already received 51 women and children. French women, accompanied by their children, are only talking about ISIS operatives and leaders who were displaced from villages and towns in Deir ez-Zor province during the 2019 fighting between SDF and the international coalition and the organization.

At first, Paris ignored solving their problem and working to return them to France, despite local calls to restore them and bring them before French law, but this demand was met with the French authorities' adherence to their trial in the territories where they committed crimes in Syria and Iraq.

But that French vision is applicable in Iraq because there are defense, security, and judicial cooperation agreements with Paris, but in the case of Syria, this is not possible because of the absence of a similar agreement.

 

Resettlement

Sources tell the French intelligence magazine Intelligence Online on July 12, 2022, that the French Foreign Ministry's crisis center, along with the Foreign Intelligence Agency, is active as a key player in the resettlement of French people in northeastern Syria.

On July 5, the director of the Crisis and Support Center at the French Foreign Ministry, Stephane Romatet, arrived in Qamishli, northeastern Syria, and appeared in casual clothes.

Romatet was ordered by President Emmanuel Macron's Office to receive 16 women and 35 French children detained in the Roj camp.

After battles between ISIS and the SDF with the full support of the U.S.-led international coalition, the group was forced on March 23, 2019, to surrender, and hundreds of its members, wives, and children surrendered to SDF.

Women members of ISIS and children under the age of 10 were subsequently detained in the al-Hol camp, while those over the age of 12 were placed in al-Hadath prison.

U.S. forces have also designated the so-called Roj camp near the city of al-Malikiyah, north of Hasaka, as a very sensitive security prison, in which only women and children of ISIS leaders and princes have been detained.

ISIS operatives who surrendered or were captured in combat were also transferred to prisons in Hasaka, while U.S. forces isolated the group's princes from private prisons.

The new repatriation of 35 children and 16 mothers to France took place under a more restrictive gradual policy after the elections and the end of trials in the Paris terrorist attacks.

President Macron has finally agreed to organize a larger operation to retake the French in Syria's camps.

The State Department said in a statement on July 5 that the mothers had been handed over to the judicial authorities while the minors had been handed over to childcare services.

Seven of the 35 minors were unaccompanied, according to the Office of the National Prosecutor for Counter-Terrorism.

For the 16 women between the ages of 22 and 39, "four of them agreed to return their children in the past months," and 12 "returned with their children."

The Office noted in a statement that they all hold French citizenship "except for two of their children who are French."

Eight of them were placed in police custody "in accordance with a search warrant, and eight others were arrested," the Office said. A minor was also arrested pending investigation.

The palace is in addition to the 126 children whose parents joined the fighting in territory controlled by ISIS and have been returned to France since 2016.

 

Political Variables

Although Paris neglected the French detainees for four years, new political changes on the French scene have encouraged a deadlock in the issue.

The issue puts French President Emmanuel Macron, winner of a second term, before court proceedings pressing his government by the families of the detainees.

According to a French government statistic, some 1,700 French have joined ISIS since 2014.

The French authorities and much of the political class viewed the move to join ISIS as a declaration of war against Paris.

That strong opinion intensified following the violent attacks in Paris on November 13, 2015, when "suicide bombers" attacked the French stadium, gunmen opened fire on the balconies of cafés and at the Bataclan concert hall.

The attack killed 130 people and injured 350 others in Paris and Saint-Denis on the outskirts of the French capital.

The main suspect in the attacks, Salah Abdeslam, a Moroccan immigrant with French nationality, justified the attack during his trial as a response to French intervention (September 27, 2015) against ISIS.

Since then, Paris has been alerted to the step of returnees or ISIS sympathizers from its citizens, who pose a threat to its territory.

France has been monitoring huge intelligence possibilities to monitor and track those following in the footsteps of ISIS to prevent others from joining its ranks.

It has also strengthened its legislative and legal arsenal to counter organized crime, similar to the anti-terrorism law ratified by the French Parliament once and for all on October 18, 2017.

But this has been largely reflected in the issue of the recovery of its citizens from detention camps in Syria, who live in deplorable living conditions, amid the formation of a security burden as the children of ISIS members grow up and are saturated with his ideology and faith there.

 

Exposing the Lie

In 2019, seven out of ten French people opposed the return of children, according to a survey conducted by Odoxa/Dentsu Consulting for Le Figaro and France Info.

The fate of children for three years has been the subject of political debate in France, where lawyers, parliamentarians, and non-governmental organizations are calling on the French authorities to repatriate them.

Syrian journalist Hassan al-Sharif said France's restoration of its nationals confirms that "The countries of Europe are able to resettle them in their countries of origin and dismantle the camps in northeastern Syria, where children are a frequent target of recruitment by ISIS cells."

"These children are smuggled out of the camps and received by ISIS cells, with the aim of reviving the idea of the so-called caliphate cubs that the group worked on before it fell," he said to Al-Estiklal.

"The restoration of France to women and children and its retreat from the previous policy of integrating them into French society undermines a lie that they have previously promoted that they are unable to qualify because they pose a real threat to the security of their society," he said.

A researcher at the Center for Middle East Studies of Sweden's Lund University, Orwa Ajjoub, identified for Al-Estiklal the imperatives of the change in Macron's administration towards detainees in Syria.

"Paris's move to recover its citizens from the families and children of ISIS is part of European efforts initiated by Sweden with children and women who were in the Camps of SDF," Ajjoub said.

"After winning a new mandate, Macron can make real efforts to bring French citizens back from Syria without fear of the implications for his popularity ahead of the presidential election," the researcher added.

"Decision makers in France, like others in other European countries, understand the importance of the issue, but working on it requires a great deal of effort, specifically to convince the politically right-wing public, which believes that these people are dangerous to their society," Ajjoub said.