Iraqi security and terrorism analyst Hisham al-Hashimi told Al-Monitor in an interview in Baghdad that he did not expect the battle on the Iraqi side of the border to be difficult.
He added that many of those who collaborated in some capacity with IS would likely be “reintegrated into the community,” and that “the only IS members who will not be pardoned are the fighters, commanders and members of IS media.”
“In reality, in Ninevah [the province in which Mosul is located], the Iraqi government didn’t hold those involved in IS administration and logistics responsible” for IS crimes, he said. “Only if they pledged allegiance and used weapons, or were media workers who filmed battles and produced propaganda” are they being held responsible.
A former fisherman originally from Anah, who spent over a year in the town after IS took control of it, told Al-Monitor that many in the town had effectively welcomed the arrival of IS. He fled after he was taken across the border and tortured for several months in a prison in the Syrian city of Abu Kamal on accusations of selling cigarettes.
The man fled after being granted leave from IS offices to visit his wife’s family in Hit, which was also occupied by IS at the time. He then paid a smuggler to get him to Baghdad.
Iraqi security forces and local forces retook Anah on Sept. 21.
Hashimi added that there are “at least 8,000 fighters in Wilayat al-Furat,” the IS administrative district spanning both sides of the Iraqi-Syrian border, and there are “fighters and equipment similar to what they had in Mosul.” However, the reports of IS fighters fleeing to Iraq across the Deir ez-Zor desert after being evacuated from western Syria as part of an agreement with the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah, which fights alongside the Syrian regime, were inaccurate.
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