Preventing ISIS’ Rising Resurgence After Syria’s Power Shift
Introduction
In January 2026, U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) confirmed that it began transferring detainees from Syria to Iraq, starting with 150 high‑risk prisoners from Hasakah and potentially involving up to 7,000 individuals overall. Many challenges threaten this process.
The abrupt handover of Islamic State (ISIS) detention facilities and internally displaced persons (IDP) camps in northeast Syria to Syrian transitional government forces has significantly weakened local security structures. At the same time, mounting political pressure on Kurdish partners in Iraq and Syria has created the most acute risk window for an ISIS resurgence since the group’s territorial collapse in 2019. This shift came as Syrian government forces unexpectedly took control of facilities previously guarded by the Kurdish‑led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), including the massive Al-Hol displacement camp, as reported by France24 and the Associated Press.
This article outlines the present situation in Syria and Iraq, the emerging risks that could enable ISIS to rebuild, and recommendations for action: fortify the detention architecture, accelerate repatriations, and anchor these measures in a functional Kurdish autonomy arrangement in Syria, akin in logic to the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI).
Image 1: Kurdish-SDF forces processing Syrian refugees fleeing ISIS.
The State of ISIS: Cells, Custody, and Camps
Despite its territorial defeat, ISIS remains a potent terrorist network across Syria and Iraq. The UN’s Twenty-first report of the Secretary-General from 2025 noted that the group maintains up to roughly 3,000 fighters across the two countries, demonstrating adaptability despite counterterrorism pressure. Similarly, U.S. Central Command assessments in 2024 recorded a significant increase in ISIS attacks compared to 2023, indicating attempted reconstitution efforts.
According to Al-Monitor, the SDF’s sudden withdrawals in early 2026 triggered uncertainty in over a dozen detention sites holding more than 10,000 former ISIS fighters and thousands of affiliated women and children.
In the same window, Middle East Eye documented disturbances and escape attempts in facilities like Al-Hol and Al-Shaddadi during handover periods, with detainees exploiting brief windows when guards pulled back. The RAND Corporation identified weak physical infrastructure, limited staffing, and overcrowding as key factors that enabled breakouts, recommending reinforced perimeters and expanded guard capacity. Such critical weaknesses raised alarms in the recent U.S. State Department – Interagency Detainee Report: lack of SDF security over roughly 8,400–8,950 ISIS detainees plus tens of thousands more in Al-Hol and Roj collectively represent a potential “ISIS army in waiting,” should greater systemic disruptions occur.
Accelerated Iraqi repatriation of prisoners has steadily reduced the population of Al-Hol and Roj to below 30,000. But the process remains slow. Repatriations for Syrians and third country nationals only accommodate a few hundred departures at a time, despite political agreements intended to facilitate more returns. The result is a smaller yet still dangerous radicalization environment.
The Kurdish Factor: Pressure on Syrian Kurds and Structural Disputes with Baghdad
In Syria, the Kurdish-led Autonomous Administration (AANES) and the SDF remain essential for prisoner detention management and counter-ISIS operations. Yet internal and external pressures divert AANES and SDF from these critical missions. Turkish-backed forces recently advanced into Kurdish areas following the fall of the Assad regime, creating uncertainty over the future of Kurdish self-administration and diverting Kurdish forces away from ISIS security operations.
While the SDF has entered a transition framework with the new Syrian government to handover these detention facilities, it is the very difficulties involved in these handovers which have resulted in security breaches at Al-Hol and Al-Shaddadi. In Iraq, the KRI remains comparatively stable and capable, yet persistent disputes with the federal government have limited its effectiveness and repeatedly hindered unified counter-ISIS operations. The UK Parliament’s 2025 briefing highlights longstanding disagreements over budget transfers, oil exports, and security coordination, all of which continue to obstruct coordinated security efforts. UNAMI reporting similar notes that Baghdad and Erbil tensions slow security sector reform and complicate joint operational planning. These unresolved disputes create exactly the kind of fragmented security environment ISIS seeks to exploit.
Image 2: Presidential Meeting between American, Iraqi, and Kurdish leaders, 2015.
At the same time, ISIS continues to exploit desert corridors and security vacuums. PRIF highlights that thousands of fighters remain capable of using prisonbreak risks and camp radicalization to regenerate manpower. The Syrian Observer notes that ISIS operations have intensified specifically in zones where security integration remains incomplete. According to Shafaq News, ISIS cells are also active across the Badia into Iraq’s Hamrin range, exploiting terrain and thinly stretched security lines. Together, these developments demonstrate that ISIS does not need major breakthroughs, but only recurring gaps in detention, camp management, and territorial security to rebuild operational capacity break risks and camp radicalization to regenerate strength.
A Path Forward: Autonomy, Detention Hardening, and Repatriation
A sustainable path forward requires stabilizing detention systems, clarifying Kurdish security responsibilities, and reducing the population of camps that continue to fuel ISIS resilience. As Chatham House notes, the collapse of Kurdish self-administration and the rapid military gains of Syrian transitional government in early 2026 make it essential to preserve a clearly defined Kurdish security role within any new governance framework to prevent renewed vacuums in Syria’s northeast.
Policy analysis from Justice for Life similarly stresses that, in transition settings, prison systems must be modernized, legally standardized, and integrated into coherent national structures to ensure continuity and prevent security collapse. The Detention sites also require urgent reinforcement, as these same shifts have exposed gaps in oversight and increased the risk of security collapses. Repatriation of national citizens remains equally vital. More than 42,000 people—mostly women and children—continue to be held arbitrarily in Al-Hol and Roj, and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights urges states to return their nationals without delay.
Iraq’s successful repatriation of over 25,000 citizens in 2025 as a model for reducing radicalization risks and alleviating pressure on camp administration. Iraq demonstrated in 2025 that largescale returns are feasible, repatriating more than 25,000 citizens from northeast Syria and significantly reducing pressure on camp administration while lowering long term radicalization risks. Yet only a small fraction of Syrians and third-country nationals have been able to return home despite new mechanisms, leaving camp populations dangerously high as The New Humanitarian reported. An international conference on Al-Hol, supported by the UN, concluded that coordinated and accelerated repatriation is essential to prevent long-term destabilization. Without such steps, strengthening detention alone cannot address the structural drivers of ISIS resilience.
Image 3: ISIS-affiliated women and children line up for detention processing.
Identifying the Gaps and Rebuilding a Coherent Security Posture
The central failure lay in the absence of a coherent transition plan for the detention system as territorial control shifted. For years, the SDF had formed the backbone of the anti-ISIS detention architecture but mounting political and military pressures forced withdrawals from key areas faster than any synchronized handover could be arranged. The security gaps were predictable: facilities stood unguarded for critical periods, enabling ISIS detainees to escape, reorganize, and/or exploit uncertainty in custody arrangements.
At the strategic level, these disruptions eroded U.S. credibility and capabilities. Kurdish forces interpreted abrupt changes in detention responsibilities, and the lack of clear, consistent political assurances as indicative of declining support. Such ambiguity undermines trust and reduces security force partners’ willingness to assume risk in future operations. Addressing the problem requires a transparent reaffirmation of U.S. commitments, sustained support to Kurdish security actors in Syria and Iraq, and constructive engagement with Baghdad to defuse longstanding federal–regional disputes that impede unified counter-ISIS efforts.
Ultimately, the way forward rests on two reinforcing lines of effort: (1) restoring operational stability across detention and camp systems, and (2) consolidating the political partnerships that have been essential to degrading ISIS since 2014, ISIS detention.
Conclusion
ISIS has faded from much of the public mind since its “formal” collapse in 2019. Yet its threat persistently lingers, not only in lone-wolf attacks around the globe, but in the very land where thousands fought and died (and continue to) resist ISIS’ campaign of terror. Preventing an ISIS resurgence is not an abstract strategic challenge for just Syria or Iraq, but a concrete and immediate necessity for all nations.
The present issue is most clearly tied to custody, governance, and partnerships. Breakout attempts in January 2026 showed that even brief disruptions in detention control can permit ISIS cells to regenerate in ways that erase years of progress. The U.S. and its partners face a narrowing window: either consolidate gains by reinforcing the actors and structures that have proven capable of containing ISIS, or risk repeating the cycle that allowed the group to rebound after 2011.
Three Imperatives For A Path Forward:
- Secure the detention architecture, because custody, not airstrikes, remains the decisive variable in preventing ISIS from rebuilding.
- Invest in a functional Kurdish-led security framework in northeastern Syria, one that can reliably handle detention, camp management, and cross-border interdiction even as Syria undergoes political transformation.
- Reconcile the Baghdad–Erbil relationship enough to ensure coherent counter-ISIS coordination, recognizing that Iraqi federal–regional disputes can impede battlefield cooperation.
If these measures are implemented with urgency and consistency, ISIS will face shrinking opportunities and constrained mobility. If not, the region may again witness how insurgent groups thrive on political ambiguity and security fragmentation. Conventional militaries have learned all too personally that counterterrorism success is sustainable only when the partners who bear the highest risks receive stable, long-term backing. The alternative is a preventable resurgence of one of the most dangerous terrorist organizations of the 21st century at a time where the U.S. is focused on multidomain operations. Addressing this problem in its early stage may minimize cost and risk, while neglecting the issue may yield potentially disastrous consequences.
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