Large numbers of foreign fighters are abandoning the Islamic State group and trying to enter Turkey, with at least two British nationals and a US citizen joining an exodus that is depleting the ranks of the terror group.
Stefan Aristidou from Enfield in north London, his British wife and Kary Paul Kleman, a resident of Florida, last week surrendered to Turkish border police after more than two years in areas controlled by the Islamic State, sources have confirmed to the Guardian.
Dozens more foreigners have fled in recent weeks, most caught as they tried to cross the frontier as the Islamic State’s capacity to hold ground in Syria and Iraq collapses. Some, although it is not known how many, are thought to have evaded capture and made it across the border into Turkey.
Illustration: Mountain people
Aristidou, who is believed to be in his mid-20s, surrendered at the Kilis crossing in southern Turkey, along with his wife — said to be a British woman of Bangladeshi heritage — and Kleman, 46.
The American had arrived at the border with a Syrian wife and two Egyptian women, whose spouses had been killed in Syria or Iraq, Turkish officials said.
Aristidou said he had traveled to Syria to settle, rather than fight.
The officials said he had admitted to having been based in Raqqa and al-Bab, both of which had been Islamic State strongholds until al-Bab was recaptured by Turkish-backed Syrian opposition forces earlier this year.
He went missing in April 2015 after flying to Larnaca, Cyprus.
Neighbors told the Guardian that he had adopted Muslim dress shortly before he disappeared.
“We are in contact with the Turkish authorities following the detention of a British man on the Turkey/Syria border,” a spokeswoman for the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office said.
It is understood Turkish authorities released the British woman from custody, although she could still face charges. Prosecutors in the country are seeking between seven-and-a-half years and 15 years for the British man and the American.
The Briton could also face charges if he is extradited back to the UK. Any British citizen arrested for fighting for the Islamic State could face charges under the Terrorism Act, which carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.
‘ALL A SCAM’
Those returning from Syria or Iraq are to automatically have their cases reviewed by police to assess how much of a threat they pose and what crimes they might have committed.
According to his mother, Kleman converted to Islam following his divorce from his first wife and moved to Egypt in 2011, where he married an Egyptian woman. After that marriage collapsed, he moved to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and married his current wife, who is Syrian. They had three children and Kleman worked in information technology for a school.
Kleman’s family on Wednesday last week said that he traveled to Syria with his family in the summer of 2015 to help with humanitarian efforts.
However, his mother said that Kleman after arriving in Syria claimed to have realized that the information that led him there “was all a scam,” and his situation became confusing to his family.
They said he had been in contact with US officials in Turkey, and had planned to reach the US embassy there and return to the US.
Relatives said they alerted the FBI that he might be in danger about 18 months ago.
His sister, Brenda Cummings, said an agent told them the bureau needed to verify that Kleman had not become involved in wrongdoing, adding that she “completely agreed” with their caution.
Sources within the Islamic State have confirmed that the group’s ranks in its last redoubt in Syria have rapidly shrunk as a ground offensive has edged toward Raqqa and Tabqa in the country’s northeast, where foreign fighters had been extensively deployed over the past four years.
Officials in Turkey and Europe have said an increasing number of Islamic State operatives who joined the group since 2013 have contacted their embassies looking to return.
Other more ideologically committed members are thought to be intent on using the exodus to infiltrate Turkey and then travel onward to Europe to seek vengeance for the crumbling caliphate, raising renewed fears of strikes on the continent.
Western intelligence agencies believe that among them are prominent members of the group’s external operations arm, who joined the militant group from numerous European countries, including Britain, France and Belgium, as well as Australia.
At least 250 ideologically driven foreigners are thought to have been smuggled into Europe from late 2014 to the middle of last year, with nearly all traveling through Turkey, after crossing a now rigidly enforced border.
Turkish police claimed to have made a series of arrests earlier this year that disrupted well-established smuggling routes, some through Greece and others through Bulgaria.
However, intelligence officials in the region believe that some of those routes remain viable, despite efforts to shut them down.
“Europe has to keep its guard up,” said Shiraz Maher, deputy director of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College London. “The threat will likely become more acute in the coming months and years as the pressures on Islamic State intensify.”
“The nature of the fight against ISIS will change into an intelligence war,” Kurdistan Region Security Council Chancellor Masrour Barzani said, referring to the militant group by one of its many acronyms. “Defeating ISIS militarily deprives them of territory and prevents them attracting and recruiting foreign fighters. This in turn discourages foreign fighters from staying in the so-called Islamic State and they will eventually try to escape or surrender.”
“However, the threat foreign fighters can still pose upon returning to their countries should not be underestimated,” Barzani added.
Late last year, senior Islamic State member Neil Prakash, an Australian, was arrested just inside the Turkish border after using a smuggler to cross from Syria.
In a prosecution statement, obtained by the Guardian, Prakash admitted to having joined the militant group and fighting with the group in a Syrian Kurdish town, Kobani, where he said he was wounded.
He denied playing a broader role within the group and claimed that he had been given permission by Islamic State leaders in Raqqa to leave the organization for Idlib Governorate.
The Australian government believes Prakash to be one of the country’s most significant Islamic State members who might have been linked to its drone program and have traveled to Turkey intending to make his way to Europe.
As attacks against the group have intensified around its two main urban strongholds, Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq, the group has increasingly used drones as surveillance tools and to drop airborne bombs on advancing troops.
LOSING MOMENTUM
Armed drones have been a regular feature of the Islamic State’s defense of Tabqa, to the west of Raqqa, a battle it appears to be close to losing to US-backed Kurdish troops.
In Mosul, the Iraqi-led fight for the west of the city has stalled, with the Islamic State recapturing some districts it had lost in recent weeks. It remains entrenched in the northwest of the city and in lands between Mosul and Raqqa, from where its leadership is believed to have largely withdrawn for the nearby city of Deir al-Zour and the town of Mayadin.
Up to 30,000 foreign fighters are thought to have crossed into Syria to fight with the Islamic State. The US government has estimated that as many as 25,000 of them have since been killed.
About 850 British fighters have joined the Islamic State or other militant groups, such al-Nusra Front, and in some cases the war against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. It is believed that about half of these fighters have returned to the UK and about 200 have died.
A military defeat of the Islamic State would cripple the group’s recruitment ability, Maher said.
“Islamic State has projected a narrative of momentum and success,” he said. “Their slogan has been ‘remaining and expanding,’ and a lot of young people bought into that. As the caliphate begins to crumble, that same appeal simply isn’t there anymore. It’s potency and relevance has been diminished.”
“What you will now see is the most hardened and committed members of the group retreat to the desert as Islamic State prepares for its next phase, as an aggressive insurgency in Syria and Iraq. However, a significant proportion of its recruits from Europe and the West will lose confidence in the group and defect or surrender,” Maher said.
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