Syria should not be a dumping ground for terrorists

Local News
With the nearly eight-year Syrian war finally coming to an end, thousands of jihadists have been detained in various prison or refugee camps.

BY OWN CORRESPONDENT

With the nearly eight-year Syrian war finally coming to an end, thousands of jihadists have been detained in various prison or refugee camps.

 Many of them are nationals from the US, Canada, Britain, France, Belgium.

They come from as many as 80 countries from where they travelled to fight in Syria to overthrow the government.

The dilemma now is what to do with members of proscribed terror groups captured in Syria who are citizens of Europe or America?

The United States government, as well as the British and French have asserted that they don’t want to take back nationals who are accused of being members of various jihadist terror groups.

US President Donald Trump has urged European states to take back up to 800 jihadists whom the Americans claim are in the custody of US-backed Kurdish militia.

Washington, though, does not want to repatriate its own jihadists from Syria.

However, the issue is this: why should Syria be burdened with the huge problem of detaining thousands of foreign jihadists and their families?

The humanitarian and legal problems of dealing with such people will run into hundreds of millions of dollars, a financial burden that war-torn Syria cannot afford.

The fact is that the vast majority of foreign jihadisTS entered Syria illegally through smuggling routes from Turkey.

It is, therefore, not the Syrian government’s responsibility to accommodate them in any kind of pre-trial process.

As per normal international protocol, foreign citizens who enter any country illegally without required immigration documents are subject to deportation back to their country of origin.

The US and European states deport illegals all the time. Why should Syria not be able to carry out such measures, especially when the illegals concerned are suspected of involvement in gross crimes?

Some commentators adopt a confused self-righteous attitude, like their own governments.

The superficial logic goes: these jihadists chose the path of terrorism, so to hell with them, let them rot in detention camps in Syria.

But, why should Western states be allowed to make Syria a dumping ground for their terrorists?

 Syria endured eight years of a criminal covert war for regime change, which was orchestrated by Washington, London and Paris.

Syria was deliberately set up as a magnet by these powers to draw in foreign jihadists to do the dirty work of regime change.

In the process of this vile scheme, Syria was plunged into murderous mayhem and national destruction.

It was only thanks to a military operation by Russia, Iran and Lebanon Hezbollah that defeated the US-led foreign conspiracy to turn Syria into a failed state.

Now when the dirty war has ended in failure for the Western powers to overthrow the Syrian government, these same Western powers are trying to wash their hands off the terrorists they contaminated the country with.

It may seem all very self-righteous for the US, Britain, France, and so on, to strip their citizens of nationality and leave them stranded in Syria.

It’s cynically offloading theirs covert guerillas to give Syria another postwar headache.

In the middle of March the US, Britain and France announced in a joint statement that they would not be contributing any financial funds to Syria for postwar reconstruction.

Some estimates reckon the country would require at least $200 billion to repair the destruction of cities, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Well, that’s rich.

These Western powers masterminded and orchestrated the war for regime change in Syria, and now they are haughtily saying they are walking away from responsibility to reconstruct the country.

They should be paying $200 billion and much more in reparations for the war crimes against Syria, not demurring about whether or not to help the country.

Similarly, the US and its allies are trying to walk from the problem of terrorists they have infiltrated Syria with.

The thousands of these militants and their families should be deported back to where they come from to face justice there.

Syria should not become a dumping ground for Western states that mobilized terrorism for their geopolitical machinations.