The Kurdish-Led SDF Is Still Combating ISIS In Syria Every Day

Members of the Syrian Kurdish Asayish security forces stand guard at the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp, which holds relatives of suspected Islamic State (IS) group fighters in the northeastern Hasakeh governorate, on April 18, 2025, as the Syrian Democratic Forces mount a security campaign against IS “sleeper cells” in the camp. (Photo by DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP via Getty Images)

AFP via Getty Images

With the ongoing tectonic events in Gaza and Ukraine, it’s understandable that the Islamic State group, commonly known by its ISIS acronym, no longer dominates headlines as it did in the 2010s, when its tyrannical caliphate dominated large swathes of Iraq and Syria. However, the group still has considerable active remnants and sleeper cells in Syria, and America’s Kurdish-led ally there, the Syrian Democratic Forces, are still fighting it every day, and closely guarding captured militants that could wreak havoc if they escape.

In this past week alone, at least nine SDF fighters lost their lives in violent clashes with ISIS militants in Syria’s eastern Deir ez-Zor province.

Early Saturday, the SDF announced the death of four fighters killed by ISIS cells in the Deir ez-Zor town of Abriha, “following direct clashes that resulted in the elimination of one terrorist,” the group stated.

The attack followed a similar one on Thursday that killed five fighters and wounded one in the town of Al-Bahrah in Deir ez-Zor’s eastern countryside. The SDF swiftly launched a security operation, vowing it would “pursue the terrorist elements and eliminate them in the area.”

The incidents followed a U.S. raid that killed Omar Abdul Qader, an ISIS member who the U.S. Central Command said was “actively seeking to attack the United States,” on September 19. That same day, an ISIS attack killed one SDF member and injured two others while they were on patrol in western Deir ez-Zor.

Since the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad collapsed last December, ISIS has eagerly awaited an opportunity to rebound if the country again collapses into chaos and conflict. The group previously exploited the Syrian civil war, seizing one-third of eastern Syria and using it as a springboard to invade one-third of neighboring Iraq in June 2014, upon which it declared its caliphate.

The SDF was the foremost force, by far, in repelling the marauding and murderous caliphate in Syria. Established in 2015, the Kurdish-Arab fighting force lost at least 11,000 men and women combating and rolling back the Syrian wing of the self-styled caliphate.

With supporting U.S.-led coalition air and firepower, it routed the group from its de facto capital city, Raqqa, by October 2017, and from its last few square miles around the village of Baghouz, near the Iraqi border, in March 2019.

While the SDF completely dismantled the caliphate, ISIS militants remained, many hiding to fight another day. The SDF captured thousands along with their families, interned in either prisons, makeshift detention centers, or camps, like the infamously sprawling al-Hol.

Since then, the SDF, citing its limited resources, has urged the countries of foreign fighters to repatriate and try them. The group doesn’t have a sovereign state, so it cannot independently prosecute the militants.

By gradually repatriating foreign militants and their families, the numbers in these overpopulated camps are being reduced and, along with them, the danger of these people escaping and regrouping.

ISIS tried to do this several times, most infamously in the al-Sina prison break in Hasakah in January 2022, coordinated between inmates and external ISIS cells, which took almost two weeks for the SDF and affiliated internal security forces to suppress. That incident demonstrated the lingering dangers that ISIS could reconstitute, threaten Syria and the wider region, and potentially even organize terrorist attacks beyond it, as CENTCOM declared Qader was actively doing.

The SDF announced on September 3 that it had foiled a “mass escape attempt” by 56 ISIS suspects from al-Hol. That incident came a mere day after its announcement that it captured a senior member of ISIS in Raqqa, with support from the US-led coalition.

Furthermore, those two incidents came a week after the group launched a security sweep in which 3,000 troops captured 51 suspected militants, including ISIS cells, some allegedly planning attacks on al-Hol and al-Sina prison.

The SDF announced on September 22 that ISIS carried out a total of 153 attacks against northeast Syria’s Kurdish areas since December, when Assad fell, which it warned is “evidence of its ongoing efforts to reorganize and expand operations.”

In the same statement, the SDF recounted that it has carried out 70 operations against ISIS remnants that led to the arrest of 95 members, three of whom were leaders. Thirty SDF members and six civilians lost their lives in the process.

“ISIS remains an active and serious threat, both locally and internationally,” the SDF statement stressed. (Italics added.)

Iraq’s government organized a high-level international conference on al-Hol camp at the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly on Friday. Iraqi President Abdul Latif Jamal Rashid underlined Iraq’s leading role in repatriating its citizens from al-Hol, having returned 18,830 to date, and suggested that this approach could serve as a model for others.

According to the U.S.-led anti-ISIS coalition, al-Hol’s population peaked at 73,000 in 2019, shortly after the defeat of the caliphate. By March 2025, the number had decreased by 36,761, more than half, as repatriation efforts to their home regions in Syria or abroad accelerated.

The UN conference also highlighted lingering dangers posed by the present situation in the camps, warning that they, among other things, “threaten to turn into incubators of terrorist radicalization and future recruitment.” At the same conference, CENTCOM commander Brad Cooper recalled his visit to al-Hol in early September and the importance of concluding the repatriation effort.

“Repatriating vulnerable populations before they are radicalized is not just compassion—it is a decisive blow against ISIS’s ability to regenerate,” he said.

A combination of accelerated repatriations and continued security sweeps by the U.S.-backed SDF is essentially for preventing any potential ISIS resurgence. However, another worrying factor that could complicate or even compromise these efforts is the recent clashes between the SDF and pro-government militias.

In late August, SDF commander-in-chief Mazloum Abdi warned that conflict could return to northeast Syria after several months of quiet if peace talks with Damascus don’t succeed and the fragile ceasefire with these pro-government militias breaks down. Abdi and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa signed an agreement to integrate the SDF and northeast Syria’s political institutions into the central Syrian state on March 10. Months later, the deal remains unimplemented. Subsequent killings of Druze civilians at the hands of government-affiliated militias in July have done little to instill confidence among Syria’s Kurds, who are increasingly calling for a more decentralized and federal state.

Tensions flared on September 10 as SDF and pro-government militias clashed. The SDF invariably holds Damascus “directly responsible” for such incidents. Turkey has threatened military action if the SDF does not promptly integrate into Syria’s new army.

The Kurdish-led force remains an essential force for combating ISIS on the ground in Syria. Forcing or even overly rushing its integration into the new Syrian state security forces, which remain an unproven force to say the least, could disrupt the fragile security and stability it has diligently upheld in north and east Syria and risk, as Abdi warned, yet another conflict.

ISIS would salivate at such a disastrous outcome.