Syria: ISIS now feared to be militarily ‘on the upswing’ with the closure of Al-Hol camp

The number of residents at the infamous Al-Hol camp in Syria has gone from “about 24,000 earlier this year to the low thousands at most.” The Islamic State (ISIS) camp was long known to be home to an army of ISIS jihadists in the waiting.

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) managed the camp for years, but since Syria’s jihadist President Ahmed al-Sharaa’s government launched his offensive against  the SDF, more than 23,000 ISIS-linked prisoners have escaped. Most of them are brides of ISIS jihadis; many of their children went through jihad training as “Cubs of the Caliphate.”

According to NBC News: “SDF spokesperson Farhad Shami told Kurdish news website Rudaw that around ‘1,500 ISIS militants — including both foreign and Syrian nationals — had been released’ by Damascus-affiliated armed groups from Shaddadi prison in southern Hasaka as well following fighting there.”

Al-Sharaa also signed a constitutional declaration last year that mandates the Syrian president must be Muslim, and it established the supremacy of Islamic jurisprudence, that is, the Sharia.

The Islamic State will indeed seek to exploit all of Syria’s fault lines. This includes its leader, al-Sharaa. Although al-Sharaa joined a coalition battle against ISIS, he’s a known al-Qaeda jihadist himself, a deceiver and chameleon. Al-Sharaa (aka Abu Muhammad al-Jolani) worked with ISIS founder Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi to establish the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda in 2011-2012. He used initial funding from the group that became ISIS. But then he betrayed al-Baghdadi and swore allegiance to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

So now, minorities must face the threat of not only the jihadist al-Sharaa government persecuting them, but of ISIS jihadis as well. Israel will also be under heightened threat.

“How the Islamic State seeks to exploit Syria’s fault lines,” by Paul Iddon, New Arab, March 4, 2026:

The fall of the SDF and mass escapes from Al-Hol have emboldened the Islamic State, and even in its diminished position, the extremist group remains dangerous

Islamic State (IS) remnants in Syria appear emboldened by recent events. Syrian interim President Ahmed Al-Sharaa’s government offensive against the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has strategically weakened that longtime adversary, and thousands of IS affiliates escaped detention.

On top of this, the US is withdrawing its remaining troops imminently. Analysts believe that IS remains too weak to mount any resurgence, overthrow al-Sharaa’s government, or conquer territory, as it infamously did in the mid-2010s.

Nevertheless, even in its present diminished state, IS remains dangerous.

Hollow speech

IS spokesman Abu Hudhayfa Al Ansari released a new recording on 22 February. Syria, he said, has entered a “new chapter” of struggle. He charged that Damascus under al-Sharaa is “subservient” to Washington and accused him of being “beholden to the devils of Turks and the West”.

IS claimed responsibility for recent attacks targeting government forces, including in the city of Raqqa, the former de facto capital city of its self-styled caliphate.

“I don’t think the Abu Hudhayfa speech – in tone or substance – marks much of a departure for the Islamic State’s Syria strategy,” Kyle Orton, an independent Middle East analyst, told The New Arab.

“The spokesman hit themes – Al-Sharaa as a contemptible, faithless renegade and puppet of the West; his government an impious affront to Muslims; the need for relentless attritional warfare to bring it down – that have been standard in Al-Naba for quite some time,” Orton said. Al-Naba is IS’s propaganda newspaper.

“IS appears on the upswing militarily in Syria; by implication, their strategy is working,” Orton added. “But the rhetoric accompanying IS’s conduct has more of a stay-the-course feel to it than any sense of triumphalism for now.”

Aron Lund, a fellow with Century International and a senior analyst at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, also doesn’t think much of Abu Hudhayfa’s speech….