To Whom It May Concern: e, the undersigned, have devoted decades to the fight against terrorism. We have lost colleagues and friends. We have borne witness to the violent rise of al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ISIS. We have studied the conditions that brought those groups into being and allowed them to grow in strength. Today, 18 years since 9/11, we see some of the same conditions arising once again in Syria and Iraq, and we will not be silent while history repeats itself.
ISIS may have been defeated on the battlefield; but thousands of Western fighters and their families remain in detention in Syria and Iraq. We do not expect terrorists to attract much sympathy. But the majority of detainees are not terrorists; they are children. At the largest detention camp, al-Hol in northeastern Syria, around two-thirds of the approximately 70,000 detainees are under the age of twelve. The Red Cross describes conditions there as “apocalyptic.” Children routinely die of malnutrition and hypothermia. Education, medical care, and trauma counseling are practically non-existent. Extremist indoctrination is rife. Most detainees at al-Hol are from Iraq and Syria, but some are from Western countries. Western governments, for the most part, have refused to take their nationals back. Some have revoked their citizenship. Others have called for an international tribunal based in Iraq, which amounts to another means of avoiding the tough, but necessary, responsibility of dealing with their own citizens. Their trepidation is understandable; by blocking the return of people they regard as dangerous, these states believe that they are protecting their citizens at home.
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