US-backed Syrian fighters on Friday said they were resolved to press on with their campaign against ISIL’s last pocket in eastern Syria, denying reports they are engaged in negotiations.

Nearly a week ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia allied with the United States, started an offensive to expel Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) from the village of Baghouz, the only area still under its control in Deir Az Zor province.

SDF forces have since pinned down hardline fighters to a narrow area there, according to Kurdish officials and local activists. But snipers, bad weather, and landmines are hampering the SDF push.

A few hundred ISIL members are now boxed into an area of about one-square kilometre.

“No negotiations are under way to give the remnant terrorists a safe passage,” Mustapha Bali, a SDF spokesman, told German news agency dpa. “They have no other choice than surrendering or fighting until the end.”

US President Donald Trump said on Friday the battle to wipe out ISIL was nearly complete.

“We have a lot of great announcements having to do with Syria and our success with the eradication of the caliphate and that’ll be announced over the next 24 hours – and many other things,” Trump told reporters.

Another SDF official said engineering teams were carrying out a major de-mining operation. “Since we started the offensive, our aim has been to end the presence of this terrorist group,” said Adnan Afrin, an SDF field commander.

“This operation, the rainy weather, as well as civilians – some of them are families of the Daesh fighters – are factors slowing down our progress,” said Afrin, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.

He estimated about 1,000 civilians, including women and children, are still in the area, adding fighters were hiding among them and using them as human shields.

“We do not want to cause a massacre against civilians in the last pocket,” he said.

ISIL still has thousands of fighters and sleeper cells scattered across several countries, but the speck of terrain is all that’s left of the group’s self-declared “caliphate”, which in 2014 spanned an area the size of Britain and administered millions of people.

Successive offensives in Iraq and Syria have shattered the proto-state, which lost its key cities one after the other and has since late 2017 been confined to its traditional power base in the Euphrates valley.</s>Clambering up dirt berms, clutching babies and blankets, the latest refugees of the Islamic State could well be the last.

Inside the nearby enclave they fled are perhaps no more than 500 people – nearly all of them fighters who are refusing to leave a two square kilometre corner of eastern Syria that is all that remains of the group’s so-called caliphate.

US-backed Syrian forces launch attack on final Isis stronghold Read more

The women and children who escaped the eastern Syrian town of Baghuz on Tuesday were not supposed to be there. Weeks of bombing and an exodus that had largely accounted for the pre-war population of 9,000 had given the besieging Kurdish-led forces a clear run at the holdouts in the ruins – or so they thought.

After three days of intensive bombardment, more people emerged than the attackers had thought possible, slowly making their way to collection points adjoining the battlefield. They included women from France, Russia and Tajikistan, as well as families from Iraq and nearby Syrian towns and cities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Women and children arriving at a collection point for Isis families fleeing the battleground of Baghuz in eastern Syria. Photograph: Achilleas Zavallis/The Guardian

As the utopian promise of Isis has become a bloody, shrinking dystopia, Baghuz has been a collection point for fighters and their families from across the lands the group once controlled.

“There are more women and children of Isis left inside than we expected before starting the operation on Saturday,” said Adnan Afrini, a commander from the Kurdish unit, known as the SDF. “We are receiving hundreds of Isis families and their children every day.”

Crammed into a forsaken enclave on the banks of the Euphrates river, the remnants of Isis and their supporters have nowhere to run. And those that have not left by now are unlikely to do so in the coming week, in which Kurdish forces expect Baghuz to be cleared of the extremists.

“We are facing severe fighting because the area that we are surrounding is very small,” said Afrini. “It is very dense with fighters, and they are among their most extreme and experienced soldiers. They use suicide bombers in their counterattacks and tunnels. There is no sign of surrender. The fighters left inside are the most extremist and ideologically driven militants.”

Hamada Hussein, 50, from Qaim, was one of the new exiles. On a field littered with food rations and water bottles, she said she had walked for four hours to safety, and would now accept whatever fate had in store for her. “There is nothing left inside Baghuz,” she said. “We could only eat once a day. There are some women and children left inside who can’t get out because of clashes. The town is all destroyed, and bullets are flying through the sky like rain.”

Like many others standing in the field, Hussein said she was from outside the town, but had fled to Baghuz as war waged all around her.

Abu Ahmad al Rawi, 35, from Rawa, in Iraq was another. “We didn’t have any chance of getting out until now,” he said. “We were in Keshma before moving to Baghuz, and the war got here too.

“I moved to Syria after the advance of the Shia militias to Rawa. I didn’t have any other choice. I don’t know what will happen after this but I knew that was the only way to stay alive.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest As Isis families flee their former stronghold, Kurdish forces say they have taken in over 1,000 people in two days. Photograph: Achilleas Zavallis/Achilleas Zavallis for The Guardian

Salih Omar, a member of a local civic council, said more than 1,000 Isis family members had been received by Kurdish forces in the past two days and would be taken to nearby refugee camps. They are thought to include more foreigners than Iraqis, adding to some 10,000 non-Syrians being sheltered by local authorities in the Kurdish north.

Four days into the final stages of a fight widely billed as the last conventional battle in the four-and-a-half year war against Isis, there is little sign of a deal to allow the remaining diehards to flee to the deserts – their only possible escape route. Such an arrangement brought the fight for the city of Raqqa to a close in late 2017, with fighters and their families bussed to the central Syrian deserts, from where many disappeared.

“It was an SDF initiative and a Faustian pact,” said Shiraz Maher, director of the the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London. “They said to Isis, we’re surrounding you. We’re going to kill you all. Isis appreciate the value of a strategic retreat. It suited both sides for that deal at the time. It gave them a headline victory, and Isis the way to fight another day.”

Now, with the endgame looming, there are no signs that a similar deal will be offered in Baghuz.

Isis is known to hold foreign hostages in or near Baghuz – including the British hostage John Cantlie – whom it plans to use as bargaining chips.

As the war winds down, recovering the hostages is a high priority for the SDF. So too is marking the victory as soon as possible – the Kurds are already constructing a celebratory stage on one of their main bases.

“I’m confident that within days we’ll celebrate victory and the end of the so-called caliphate,” said Afrini.

• This article was amended on 14 February 2019. “Clamouring” in the introduction was changed to “clambering”.</s>US-backed Syrian fighters on Friday said they were resolved to press on with their campaign against ISIL's last pocket in eastern Syria, denying reports they are engaged in negotiations.

Nearly a week ago the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a Kurdish-led militia allied with the United States, started an offensive to expel Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) from the village of Baghouz, the only area still under its control in Deir Az Zor province.

SDF forces have since pinned down hardline fighters to a narrow area there, according to Kurdish officials and local activists. But snipers, bad weather, and landmines are hampering the SDF push.

A few hundred ISIL members are now boxed into an area of about one-square kilometre.

"No negotiations are under way to give the remnant terrorists a safe passage," Mustapha Bali, a SDF spokesman, told German news agency dpa. "They have no other choice than surrendering or fighting until the end."

US President Donald Trump said on Friday the battle to wipe out ISIL was nearly complete.

"We have a lot of great announcements having to do with Syria and our success with the eradication of the caliphate and that'll be announced over the next 24 hours - and many other things," Trump told reporters.

Another SDF official said engineering teams were carrying out a major de-mining operation. "Since we started the offensive, our aim has been to end the presence of this terrorist group," said Adnan Afrin, an SDF field commander.

"This operation, the rainy weather, as well as civilians - some of them are families of the Daesh fighters - are factors slowing down our progress," said Afrin, using an Arabic acronym for ISIL.

He estimated about 1,000 civilians, including women and children, are still in the area, adding fighters were hiding among them and using them as human shields.

"We do not want to cause a massacre against civilians in the last pocket," he said.

ISIL still has thousands of fighters and sleeper cells scattered across several countries, but the speck of terrain is all that's left of the group's self-declared "caliphate", which in 2014 spanned an area the size of Britain and administered millions of people.

Successive offensives in Iraq and Syria have shattered the proto-state, which lost its key cities one after the other and has since late 2017 been confined to its traditional power base in the Euphrates valley.</s>It is the moment Abu Jaber al-Shaiti has waited for more than four years. A few more hours, a few hundred metres, and he will have his revenge.

In 2014, as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, ISIS) expanded to Syria through the Iraqi border, Abu Jaber's kin in the Shaitat tribe stood up to challenge the group's designs on their oil-rich lands.

ISIL hunted down 700 to 1,000 men, shot some and beheaded others, and even filmed their slaughter to serve as a lesson for the rest.

With 90,000 members, the Shaitat tribe controlled several villages along the Syria-Iraq border. But they could not win that war. At the time ISIL was at its peak and held an area the size of Britain. Abu Jaber was forced to go on the run.

Now, the group is holed up in a one-square kilometre area in Baghouz village in eastern Syria's Deir Az Zor province.

Abu Jaber is on the other side of the frontline, commanding 1,000 of his tribesmen, trigger finger at the ready to mete out their form of justice.

ISIL's defeat is a moment of great regional and global significance. However, for the sons, nephews and cousins of the Shaitat men who were massacred, it is an intimate affair.

"I can taste our victory," Abu Jaber said. "You cannot feel the ecstasy I feel. They killed 86 of my cousins."

Abu Jaber joined the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) because he wanted to help wipe out ISIL, thereby honouring the tribal code and regaining his confiscated property.

Speaking to Al Jazeera from Baghouz, he said: "Every victory we've made is a victory for the souls of our martyrs."

The victory also has leveled towns and villages and left hundreds of civilians dead.

As the SDF swept across eastern Syria and finally into the last besieged enclave, thousands of civilians have fled to camps for displaced people. Not all have found safety.

The International Rescue Committee (IRC), which is working in the camps, told Al Jazeera that people were being forced to walk up to 30km to the screening point where the SDF assesses their links to ISIL before release.

Most of those travelling are women carrying children and unable to cope with the perilous journey to the camp.

IRC said as many as 51 people had died either en route or soon after reaching the camps.

Wendy Taeuber, IRC's director for Iraq and northeast Syria, said hundreds of people were arriving at the al-Hol camp in Hasakeh governorate every day and many more were expected, putting pressure on the already feeble aid infrastructure.

She said: "While it is impossible to estimate exact numbers it is possible that as many as 4,000 more people may still flee the remaining ISIL-controlled territory in eastern Syria."

On Tuesday, 500 more civilians fled Baghouz. At least 16 more were killed in coalition air strikes, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based monitoring group.

Laylawa Abdallah, a spokeswoman for Operation Jazeera Storm, defended the coalition and said fighting had been halted on several occasions to give a window to the civilians to get out.

"ISIS' fighters are trapped in a very small area and are holding civilians as human shields," she said. "We've opened safe corridors to free the families and transfer them into the areas we have liberated."

Abdallah added the pause in the fighting had nothing to do with negotiations over hostages ISIL may still be holding captive, as some suggested in reports.

"We haven't negotiated with Daesh [ISIL's Arabic acronym] at all on any issue. Although for sure, Daesh is holding the captives in order to hamper the operation and increase pressure on us," she said.

However, Abu Jaber said SDF and ISIL were in fact engaged in talks. He said ISIL seemed divided over what it wanted in return for freeing the captives.

"The battle stopped to negotiate for the captives, but Daesh stalled the talks and were trying to gain more time," he said. "We tried to listen to them and fulfill their demands to whatever extent we could, but the problem is that they themselves don't know what they want. Some are willing to surrender, while others are not."

Tens of Shaitat tribesmen could be among the hostages. Some Westerners, British journalist John Cantlie, and Italian priest Father Paolo Dall'Oglio are also said to be among them.

The SDF struck a deal with ISIL in Raqqa in 2017 and under the US-led coalition's watch gave safe passage to thousands of ISIL fighters with their weapons and family members.

Those fighters have spread across Syria and may have even left the country, raising the possibility they may eventually pose a threat within Syria and to the outside world. In that case, such deals would do more harm than good.

SDF suspects there are 400 to 600 ISIL soldiers still in the tiny enclave. The debate about what to do with them is even more relevant, with current concerns the group could revive itself within months through a guerrilla insurgency in both Iraq and Syria.

SOHR estimated another 4,000 to 5,000 ISIL fighters are hiding in Syria's Badia desert, to the west of the Euphrates River.

General Joseph Votel, commander of US forces in the Middle East, said on Tuesday that ISIL still had "leaders, fighters, facilitators, resources and the profane ideology that fuels their efforts".

Nicholas Heras, Middle East Security Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Al Jazeera: "ISIS has established a large network of operatives and supporters in eastern Syria that is expects to use to renew its influence over this region."

Bassam Barabandi, a former Syrian diplomat currently based in the US, enumerated several reasons why ISIL's resurgence seems imminent.

He said all the factors that led to the formation of the group in the first place were set to return, enabling them go on another recruitment drive and enlist disaffected youth from around the world.

"ISIL's ideology, its strategy is based on a feeling of Sunni victimisation," he said. "Today ISIL has been defeated, and the day after, once US withdraws, who will fill the vacuum?"

"In Iraq, the Shias are taking over," Barabandi added. "In Syria, the Russians or the Shia militias or Iran or the Kurds are looking to replace them. Won't the Sunnis of the Shaitat ask, did we fight ISIS to be ruled by the Kurds?"

The view resonated with other Syria experts.

Joshua Landis, director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, said once the battle against ISIL was won, historical rivalries among the Arabs and Kurds would resurface.

"The Jazeera region of Syria is framed with minorities, ethnic and religious," he said. "It has always presented a difficult challenge for rulers whether Ottoman franchises or Damascene. Today the situation is even more challenging because there has been so much violence, destruction and impoverishment. And Arabs and Kurds are bound to compete and come to blows over political and economic power."

Throughout the nearly eight-year Syrian war, Arabs and Kurds have fought ISIL together. There are no guidelines or agreements on how to move forward when ISIL has left.

Abu Jaber said the Arab-dominated governorates of Raqqa and Deir Az Zor would one day be administered by Arabs such as himself.

"Of course Arabs will govern Deir Az Zor," he said. "They have paid blood to liberate it, but our Kurdish brothers will be our allies as they too have given martyrs to achieve this victory."

The post-ISIL phase will have its own set of challenges and the road to stability is a long one.

For now, the armed men of the Shaitat are holding their breath, counting the minutes before they secure their victory over the ISIL invaders. Only then can they go back home with pride restored, the Shaitat say.

"Daesh is resisting but in vain," Abu Jaber said as fighting resumed. "They are few, we are many, and we are backed by America's air power."</s>AL-HOL CAMP, Syria — The mother sobbed uncontrollably as she carried her newborn child to the manager of the muddy and windswept camp in northeast Syria. The young Syrian woman tried desperately to explain that the child was just 11 days old and had become suddenly unwell.

“This is no place to bring life into the world,” she said, holding the tiny swaddled infant up to a gas fire. The boy had turned pale, she said, and was struggling to breathe.

She had to wait awhile before she was issued a permission slip to take him to the medical point, during which time his condition, which appeared to be hypothermia, had worsened dramatically.

The look in her eyes — the only thing visible through her black abaya — suggested she knew her son was about to become a statistic.

Since December, some 25,000 people have fled the fighting in the last of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant’s (ISIL) territory in Deir Ezzor province, nearly triple what aid agencies had been prepared for.

On the weekend, the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) launched its final push to eliminate ISIL fighters holed up in the village of Baghouz, near the border with Iraq.
• As U.S.-backed troops close in on last ISIL-held village in Syria, reports say Canadian women have been detained
• ‘I came from Canada’: Toronto man allegedly fighting for ISIL captured in Syria
• The once vast ISIL ‘caliphate’ is now reduced to a pair of dusty villages in Syria

Islamic State extremists cornered in their last foothold in eastern Syria fought back with suicide car bombs, snipers and booby traps Monday, slowing Kurdish fighters’ advances.

No one knows exactly how many ISIL fighters are still holding out in the sliver of territory under attack, although they are estimated to be in the hundreds, most of them foreign fighters. It is also unclear if civilians are still inside, caught under heavy bombardment.

But trucks and civilians continue to flee the area, overwhelming the Kurdish-run camps where humanitarian conditions are already dire amid a cold winter and meagre resources.

Conditions are so bad that in the past two months 35 children have died from cold or malnutrition, either in or on their way to al-Hol, earning it the nickname the “Camp of Death.”

Two Canadian women were among the civilians fleeing the area.

Dura Ahmed, 28, from Toronto, was studying English and Middle Eastern studies in Canada when her husband persuaded her to travel to Syria.

“My husband came here first in 2012,” she told CNN. “He tried to convince me for two years to come, but I said no, no, I don’t want to. Then finally he said you have to come, but I was studying.”

The mother of two boys eventually travelled to the city of Raqqa.

“It was an easy life. It was a city. It was stable,” she said. “You’re there and you’re eating Pringles and Twix bars. You’re just there. You don’t feel like you’re in a war.”

Next to Ahmed was another women, a 34-year-old graphic designer from Alberta, who declined to give her name. She left for Syria also at her husband’s bidding.

“He’s like, ‘It’s obligatory for you to come here. You have no choice, and as your husband I’m telling you to come here.’ And as a Muslim wife you have to obey, even though it was really hard for me to do it,” she told CNN.

Her first husband, a Bosnian, left Canada to join ISIL as a cook, she said. After he was killed, she remarried a Canadian but he was also killed in fighting.

The woman, also a mother of two, said she did not know about ISIL before travelling to Syria.

“I’m not the kind of person who watched the news. I didn’t follow any of this kind of stuff. I used to be a graphic designer and I used to work from home and just take care of the kids. I was never interested in what was going on in the world.”

The two women, like the other refugees, are likely to end up in al-Hol, a grubby field on the edge of what was once ISIL’s self-proclaimed caliphate, now controlled by the SDF.

Some 3,100 foreign women and children are being held in al-Hol and nearby Roj camp. They have been separated from their husbands and other foreign men, who are being detained in prisons around northern Syria. The camp lacks around 2,000 tents, meaning thousands are sleeping rough in its reception area where they are exposed to rain and freezing temperatures. Without enough lavatories to accommodate the mushrooming population, children defecate out in the open.

During a visit by The Daily Telegraph this week a group of women from central Asia stood in the rain shouting in broken Arabic at the exasperated manager. “There are no more tents and we are out in the cold,” they pleaded. “You can’t just leave us like this, we’ll die out here.”

He could do little more than tell them they would have to wait until aid agencies delivered some more.

As the drizzle turned into a downpour the women pulled their black abayas up out of the sodden earth and clutched their children, whose clothes are even less suited to the inclement weather.

For locals, al-Hol is a displacement camp which they are free to leave as long as they have a sponsor on the outside and money to do so.

For foreigners, accused of being ISIL members, it is a detention centre, where they wait in limbo as their home countries decide what to do with them.

The role women played in the caliphate varied. Most were housewives, allowed out of the home only to go to the mosque or the market. Others were thought to have been involved in the recruitment and radicalization of other women online.

SDF officials say some of the women have rejected ISIL ideology but a few continue to practise fundamentalist versions of Islam in the camps, which have become increasingly lawless as they have grown in size.

“We thought we could put them (the foreigners) together with the Syrians and Iraqis and they would adapt. But some of them are very extreme and called them infidels and burned their tents,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, the camp’s head of relations.

The capture of Baghouz and nearby areas would mark the end of a devastating four-year global war to end the ISIL extremists’ territorial hold over large parts of Syria and Iraq. That in turn, would open the way for U.S. President Donald Trump to begin withdrawing U.S. troops from northern Syria.

However, U.S. officials and Trump’s own military advisers have warned that losing its territorial hold does not mean that the Islamic State group is defeated.

Assad Bechara, a Lebanese political analyst, said ISIL is an ideology, not just a military structure, and it cannot be defeated simply by reclaiming territory.

— With files from The Associated Press</s>One of three schoolgirls who left the UK to live in ISIL's so-called "caliphate" has said she wants to "come home" as she is nine months pregnant.

In an interview with The Times newspaper, heavily pregnant Shamima Begum, now 19, said she was tired of life on a battlefield and feared for her unborn child after two of her other children died.

Begum left London for Syria with two of her friends in February 2015 after ISIL, also known as ISIS, launched its blitzkrieg across large parts of Syria and Iraq, capturing territory the size of the UK.

After arriving in Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIL, the three girls were placed in a home for 'single women' before Begum was married to Dutch fighter Yago Riedijk, 12 years her senior.

"I'm not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago," Begum said, speaking from the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria.

Syrian forces backed by the US took full control of Raqqa in October 2017, prompting its fighters to flee to other parts of Syria and across the border into neighbouring Iraq.

Begum said that her two friends - Kadiza Sultana and Amira Abase had also married foreign ISIL fighters.

Sultana was reported to have died in a 2016 air raid on Raqqa. Begum said that Abase, the other schoolgirl, may still be alive.

Begum spoke fondly of her time under ISIL, saying she lived a relatively normal life despite seeing "beheaded heads" in bins and being forced to observe ISIL's strict and literalist interpretation of Islam.

"Mostly it was a normal life in Raqqa, every now and then bombing and stuff," she said, before giving a conflicting account of the so-called caliphate.

"There is so much oppression and corruption going on that I don't really think they deserve victory".

However, she added: "I don't regret coming here".

"I don't have high hopes. They are just getting smaller and smaller," she said.

Begum said her family had moved down the Euphrates valley as ISIL retreated, eventually arriving in ISIL's last remaining stronghold of Baghuz, a village in Deir Az Zor province.

But after the deaths of her one-year-old daughter and three-month-old son in recent months she "fled the caliphate," while her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters allied to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

"I was also frightened that the child I am about to give birth to would die like my other children if I stayed on so I fled the caliphate.

"Now all I want to do is come home to Britain".

Begum's sister, Reenu, pleaded for the British government to allow her to return, telling ITV News that she needed to be at home, "where she belongs".

"She's pregnant and vulnerable, and it's important we get her out of al-Hawl camp and home as soon as possible.

"We hope the British government will help us bring her home to us where she belongs."

The former head of Scotland Yard, Bernard Hogan-Howe, said in 2015 that Begum would not face terror charges if she returned - unless there was evidence she committed any specific crimes while with ISIL.

"I am relieved that she is alive and simultaneously appalled by the news that someone so young has birthed and lost children," Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer representing Begum's family told Sky News.

He added that the topic of Begum's return was "a contentious issue and stirs up very strong positions from the public", adding: "There is a very traumatised young person who will have to live through the rest of her life with the added burden of the reporting of her tragedy".

The US-backed SDF believes that some 400 to 600 ISIL fighters are holed up in Baghouz, including many hardened foreigners who are expected to fight to the death.

ISIL still retains a presence in Syria's vast Badia desert and has claimed a series of deadly attacks by sleeper cells in SDF-held areas.</s>A pregnant British teenager who fled to Syria as a schoolgirl to live in ISIL's so-called "caliphate" could be prevented from returning to the UK, the home secretary has said.

Sajid Javid told the Times: "We must remember that those who left Britain to join Daesh [ISIL] were full of hate for our country.

"My message is clear - if you have supported terrorist organisations abroad I will not hesitate to prevent your return. If you do manage to return you should be ready to be questioned, investigated and potentially prosecuted".

Shamima Begum, now 19, left London for Syria with two of her friends in February 2015 after ISIL, also known as ISIS, captured vast swaths of territory in Syria and Iraq.

After arriving in Raqqa, the de facto capital of ISIL at the time, the three girls were placed in a home for 'single women' before Begum was married to Dutch fighter Yago Riedijk, 12 years her senior.

Speaking from the al-Hawl refugee camp in north-east Syria, heavily pregnant Begum told the Times: "I'm not the same silly little 15-year-old schoolgirl who ran away from Bethnal Green four years ago".

After the deaths of her one-year-old daughter and three-month-old son in recent months, Begum said she "fled the caliphate," while her husband surrendered to a group of Syrian fighters allied to the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).

"I was also frightened that the child I am about to give birth to would die like my other children if I stayed on so I fled the caliphate.

"Now all I want to do is come home to Britain".

'1 5-year-old who went badly off the rails'

Begum's sister, Reenu, has pleaded for the British government to allow her to return, telling ITV News that she needed to be at home, "where she belongs".

"She's pregnant and vulnerable, and it's important we get her out of al-Hawl camp and home as soon as possible.

"We hope the British government will help us bring her home to us where she belongs."

Richard Barrett, the former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6, has described Begum as "a 15-year-old who went badly off the rails" and said she should be "given a chance" and allowed to return to the UK.

"Governments may fear a rightwing backlash against any treatment of ISIL returnees that looks like going soft on terrorism, but a strong society is one that can take the right course whatever the prevailing wind," Barrett told the Guardian newspaper.

"Like it or not, these individuals were products of our society, and it would make sense to take a good, hard look at why they turned their backs on it in such dramatic fashion.

"This can help us find ways to build the social cohesion that we increasingly need in the face of growing nativism and intolerance".

This week, the UK's parliament passed new anti-terrorism legislation meaning anyone who spent time in Syria would face arrest and up to 10 years in prison.

The new law, which received royal assent on Tuesday, toughens previous legislation that required authorities to prove returning nationals had engaged in terrorist activities while abroad.

Javid will now have the power to declare any zone outside Britain a "designated area" in order to "protect members of the public from a risk of terrorism".

Visiting such zones will now constitute a crime, with exceptions for those with a "reasonable excuse for entering, or remaining in, the designated area."

The US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) says it has arrested more than 3,200 ISIL fighters in territory it controls in northeastern Syria, with more than 900 believed to be foreign fighters.

In addition to the hundreds of men, the SDF also says it is holding more than 4,000 family members, including elderly people and young children.

The SDF took full control of Raqqa in October 2017, prompting ISIL fighters to flee to other parts of Syria and across the border into neighbouring Iraq.

Last week, the US called on European nations and other countries to repatriate and prosecute their citizens who travelled to Syria to join ISIL.

The campaign against ISIL is currently focused on Baghuz, a small, remote village in Deir Az Zor province where thousands of civilians are trapped by the armed group.</s>UNITED NATIONS - A new U.N. report to the Security Council shows that ISIL/Da’esh is still a global threat, despite the decline in the number of attacks worldwide during 2018.

Noting the recent successes against the ISIL/Da’esh and its affiliates, Vladimir Voronkov, who heads UN’s Counter-Terrorism Office, said the threat posed by returning and relocating fighters, as well as from individuals inspired by them, remains high and has a global reach.

“I would therefore emphasize (that) the recent ISIL losses should not lead to complacency at any level,” he told the 15-member Council.

“Despite the more concealed or locally embedded activities of ISIL/Da’esh cells, its central leadership retains an influence and maintains an intent to generate internationally-directed attacks and thereby still plays an important role in advancing the group’s objectives,” Under-Secretary-General Voronkov said.

“This is exacerbated by the challenge of foreign terrorist fighters who either are leaving conflict zones, or those who are returning or who are about to be released from prison. In this context, radicalization in prison settings, is seen as a particular challenge in Europe and Iraq.”

He said that so-called “frustrated travelers” were adding to the complexity of the threat, namely fighters who’d failed to reach main battlegrounds, but been diverted instead elsewhere, either by ISIL commanders or of their own volition.

The report notes that the “centre of gravity” of the organization, known in the Arab world as Da’esh, remains in Iraq and Syria, with up to 18,000 remaining in the ranks, including some 3,000 foreign fighters.

“In terms of ISIL’s financial strength, the report notes that despite some loss of revenue due to territorial setbacks, ISIL could sustain its operations through accessible reserves, in cash or investment in businesses, ranging between $50 and $300 million. ISIL cells are also reported to generate revenue through criminal activities”, explained Mr. Voronkov.

The document, the eighth report on ISIL/Da’esh – which proclaimed its so-called caliphate across northern Syria and Iraq in 2014 - was prepared on behalf of the UN Secretary-General by the Counter-Terrorism Committee Executive Directorate (CTED).

After being driven from its city strongholds of Mosul and Raqqa, intense fighting in recent months has left Da’esh defending a small enclave against US-backed fighters in eastern Syria, close to the Iraqi border. According to news reports, around 600 terrorist fighters continue to battle with coalition forces, which have labelled this the “final battle” to crush ISIL.

The UN analysis shows that Member States continue to face tremendous challenges across the world in tackling the threats posed by ISIL, with the threat level continuing to expand. This is especially true in North, West and East Africa as well as in Central Asia. Training camps have been identified in Afghanistan, and in South-East Asia, where women and youth are increasingly mobilized for terrorist operations across the region.

The head of CTED, Michele Coninsx, highlighted three of those major challenges faced by Member States:

The “destructive legacy” left in Syria and Iraq, most noticeable in the high number of families who remain internally-displaced due to the destruction of homes and infrastructure overall: She noted that “reconstruction will take many years and will require significant resources, as will restoring and reconciling communities after so many years of conflict.”The growth in the number of terrorist suspects and offenders in custody:

The risk posed by such prisoners is difficult to assess and manage.ISIL’s ability to exploit new technologies and find innovative ways to finance itself and find new recruits:

Ms. Coninsx noted for example the risks linked to anonymous technologies like blockchain and cryptocurrencies, and other internet-based ways of avoiding detection.

For several years, various parts of the UN have supported Member States in the fields of prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration (PRR) of former fighters; international judicial cooperation; countering terrorist financing; border management and law enforcement; countering terrorist narratives and engaging communities to prevent violent extremism. Specifically, explained CTED’s Executive Director Coninsx, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and UNOCT are leading a joint project to provide tailored capacity-building assistance to prison staff.

In the Lake Chad Basin, she said CTED and UNODC are working to provide Member States with technical expertise to develop comprehensive strategies to prosecute, rehabilitate and reintegrate persons associated with the Boko Haram extremist group.

Other initiatives include the development of a practical guide for requesting electronic evidence across borders, and the deployment of a specialized consultant to support Iraq in its efforts to develop a holistic and comprehensive counter-terrorism strategy. “The Secretary-General has stressed that despite recent successes against ISIL / Da’esh and its affiliates, the threat posed by returning and relocating fighters, as well as from individuals inspired by them, remains high and has a global reach,” Voronkov stressed. “I would therefore emphasize, the recent ISIL losses should not lead to complacency at any level,” he concluded.</s>The US should not abandon Kurdish and Arab allies who led the fight against Isil, British officials have said, warning a rapid withdrawal of its troops would risk a resurgence of the jihadists.

Western-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are expected to announce the territorial defeat of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil) in the coming days, after a four-and-a-half year battle against the group spanning Syria and Iraq.

Some 2,000 US special forces supporting the Kurdish-led forces will be brought home by April, after US President Donald Trump declared the fight against Isil was “99 per cent complete”.

Washington has not outlined any plans to support SDF efforts to combat Isil after their exit.</s>Shamima Begum, who ran away to Syria at the age of 15 to become a jihadi’s bride, now asks if she can come back to Britain to “live quietly”. Some will suggest that Britain should be “compassionate”, that we should forgive an impressionable young woman her errors. That is out of the question.

By any sensible definition, Ms Begum committed a terrible crime against this country and our way of life by travelling to Syria to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isil). Justice and public opinion demand that she be punished severely.

Unfortunately, we do not know what the Government’s approach will be, even if Ms Begum will face prosecution if she makes it back to the UK.
Thousands of ISIL fighters and their families flee or surrender to the Syrian Democratic Forces, pushing back ISIL control to a square mile in the last ISIL stronghold of Baghuz. It is expected that ISIL still holds several hostages, including British Journalist John Cantlie.