Questions have emerged over the fate of thousands of Islamic State prisoners in northeastern Syria after government forces seized swaths of territory long controlled by Kurdish forces who had been guarding the prisons. The territory was held by the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), once a key United States ally in the fight against the Islamic State, or ISIS. And on Wednesday, US forces launched a transfer mission to move ISIS detainees from northeastern Syria to secure detention centers in Iraq. The US-led coalition fighting ISIS in Syria had long relied on the SDF to guard ISIS prisons. “Historically, the US military presence in northeastern Syria was justified primarily as a counter-ISIS partnership,” he wrote.
