Secrets of ISIS attack on Guweiran prison

On Thursday evening, January, 20, 2022, the terrorist organization of ISIS launched an attack on Guweiran prison in Hasakah city to seize the prison and release the detainees. The terrorists took control of the prison and some of the surrounding buildings, detained civilians and some prison guards, and killed a number of SDF fighters, but the SDF managed to contain the attack and encircle the terrorists. This attack is the first of its kind since the defeat of the organization militarily.

Despite the success of SDF intelligence earlier in arresting a cell that was preparing to launch an attack on the prison, it seems that ISIS was working on several directions to make this operation successful, with intelligence support from some parties, to release ISIS members and their leaders from prison and revive the organization in the city of Hasakah.

Guweiran prison is characterized as the largest prison that includes ISIS detainees, so the organization carried out a major attack on the prison, as if the organization wanted to send a message to the world that it is able to carry out qualitative operations, and a message to its members that the organization will not abandon them and therefore it is possible that Hawl camp is among the targets of ISIS in the future. Hasakah is also considered a strategic location for the organization. On the one hand, there is the security square of the Syrian regime, which constitutes a haven for terrorists, and on the other, its proximity to the areas of the Turkish occupation like Sere Kaniye (Ras al-Ain), where terrorist organizations such as Ahrar al-Sharqiya are located, which can supply the organization with members and equipment if the operation is successful and extends to the rest of the city’s neighborhoods. ISIS ability to assemble its members in the Guweiran neighborhood of Hasakah with their weapons away from the intelligence of the SDF and the Global Coalition. There must be parties that provided them with logistical and military support and enabled them to assemble themselves and launch the attack. According to some sources and SDF media, a group of the organization’s members came from the security square in Hasakah, and others from the Turkish occupation areas in Sere Kaniye. This means that the regime and Turkey have a hand in this process, especially since there is a cooperation between the Turkish intelligence and that of the regime to strike the stability of the region and distort the image of the SDF, embarrass the US and force it to withdraw and hand over the file of the Syrian crisis and the fight against terrorism to Russia and Turkey. It is not excluded that this operation is the result of a meeting between Turkish intelligence and the regime in the Jordanian city of Aqaba, as there was a security meeting between the two parties according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

As for the statements made about that operation, the regime, instead of focusing on its fears of terrorists escaping from prison and providing assistance to the SDF, focused on distorting the image of the SDF and the Coalition and accusing them without any evidence of war crimes. Russia has also stated that it fears the destruction of the region’s infrastructure, forgetting the war crimes committed by their war machine over a decade and the destruction of the Syrian infrastructure. As for Turkey, it is considered the first supporter of the terrorist organization ISIS and terrorist groups in the region. In a suspicious step, the Turkish forces gave orders to the loyal factions in Idlib to prepare their elements in an effort to transfer them to Turkey in conjunction with ISIS attacks in Hasakah, and intensified their bombing of the Autonomous Administration areas, in addition to the regime’s statement to expel US forces from the region through the so-called popular resistance.

Despite the success of the SDF in thwarting the terrorist attack, this operation is evidence of the organization’s ability to return and threaten international peace and security again, unless the parties or states sponsoring terrorist organizations are put to an end, and the tasks of the Global Coalition in combating terrorism be expanded to include all terrorist organizations in Syria’s north where it is under the Turkish occupation, and repatriate all those detained by the SDF to their countries.