U.S. Forces Leave ‘High-Value’ ISIS Detainees Behind in Rushed Retreat From Syria

The American military was unable to carry out a plan to transfer about five dozen “high value” Islamic State detainees out of Kurdish-run wartime prisons before the Pentagon decided to move its forces out of northern Syria and pave the way for a Turkish-led invasion, according to two American officials.

In the same area on Sunday, hundreds of Islamic State sympathizers escaped from a low-security detention camp in the region, taking advantage of the chaos caused by the Turkish ground invasion and the accompanying strikes.

Both developments underscored the pandemonium unleashed by President Trump’s sudden decision to order American troops to evacuate part of the Syrian region bordering Turkey.

That allowed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey to order an invasion of Syrian territory controlled by a Kurdish-led militia that was at the center of American-led efforts to contain the Islamic State over the past several years.

Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace in northern Syria, and has already begun to unleash sectarian bloodshed.

It also risks enabling a resurgence of the Islamic State. The extremist group no longer controls any territory in Syria, but it still has sleeper cells and supporters across parts of the country.

ISIS has already claimed responsibility for at least two attacks since the start of the invasion, including one car bomb in a border city, Qamishli, and another on an international military base outside Hasaka, a regional capital further to the south.

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