Tens of thousands of junior “Cubs of the Caliphate” could be poised to be the next generation of ISIS fanatics unless something can be done to save them, it has been warned.
Mervan Kamishlo, a Syrian Democratic Forces commander who smashed the caliphate with his comrades, gave the chilling assessment as he also warned of fleeing jihadis forming dangerous sleeper cells.
Despite the jihadi's military defeat by Kurdish-led forces, fighters are still plotting revenge on countries such as Britain and remain under the command of feared Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
Speaking about the fate of the children who grew up in the caliphate, he warned that tens of thousands who are in refugee camps have had their minds "poisoned".
He said: They witnessed beheadings, torture, murder, men hanging in the street, women beaten, killed because their hair is showing, and war.
“ Daesh showed the world how dangerous they are.
“These children need lots of psychological, specialist treatment to help them, or they will be a danger to the world in years to come. Like a ticking bomb. It is a tragedy but it is also a big fear.”
The Mirror has been in northern Syria for the past 10 days, where more than a dozen Kurdish troops have been slaughtered by IS fifth columnists while we were there.
Everywhere, soldiers and locals fear al-Baghdadi’s sleepers – especially in Raqqa, which was taken from IS in 2017 but has been rocked by terrorist bombs recently.
Chillingly, Syrian Democratic Forces commanders, allies of a western anti-IS coalition, warned Britain faces more attacks, inspired by the resurgent jihadi menace.
As we learned in our exclusive prison interview with jailed “Beatles” jihadi Alexanda Kotey, Kurdish military chiefs stressed the most violent fighters were Brits who were killed, are in prison or may even be back in the UK.
Commander Kamishlo warned: “There are still thousands of sleepers here.
“When we succeeded militarily they disappeared.”
Asked if they and al-Baghdadi could inspire attacks in Britain he replied: “Absolutely 100% they could. They are alive and they have a command structure. They still think they are a state.
"Their sleeper network is a mafia. They will come back. Al-Baghdadi is smart militarily. He and his commanders are clever mentally.
“We believe he is in Syria and able to communicate with his commanders.
“This presents a global threat to everyone not just here but in the West too. This is not over.
“But the most dangerous of the fighters were not locals Arab fighters, they were Europeans, yes the British. I fought against them.
"They were most dangerous. Clever, well educated and that they gave up so much back home shows commitment.
Some were big Daesh commanders. They were smart and that mixed with terrorism makes them dangerous.”
Kamishlo believes all of the 800 British fighters who came here are either dead, jailed or have fled elsewhere, possibly back to Europe.
In seven years of fighting jihadists in Syria, the Kurdish YPG – which formed the Syrian Democratic Forces – lost 12,000 troops with 20,000 injured.
Syria’s complex, multi-sided war began in 2011 with Bashar al-Assad’s regime brutally trying to quell an unarmed uprising after the Middle East’s Arab Spring. It became an armed rebellion, which split into groups, before IS migrated from neighbouring Iraq.
Half of Syria’s population has been unhoused, 5.6 million are refugees, half a million have died – including many women and children – and IS has been driven underground.
The group’s former Raqqa HQ, which the SDF took four months to overrun, is still riddled with IS cells.
The final battle for Baghouz, its last sliver of land, left tens of thousands of IS brides and children in secure SDF refugee camps in northern Syria.
The army wants to secure Rojava, where IS made its last stand, and stop the sleeper cells.
Everywhere locals whisper fears about the cells – fuelled further by the raging crop fires, the worst in years, sweeping through Syria. One local said: “Sleeper cells are starting the fires. It is terrifying if it is true but nobody knows.
“A village could burn at night killing everyone. These fires have claimed lives already.”
The remote SDF Shahin outpost, 20 miles into the scorched desert outside Hasakah took Kurds seven months to take from IS. It is now home to a counter-terror unit fighting the sleeper cells.
Commander Heval Demhat Brosk, 29, said: “It was a tough battle to take the base from them but we know Islamic State are still out there.”
As we watched troops training for counter-terror missions in baking 45C heat, another soldier called Khartab, 28, added: “I fought Islamic State in Baghouz. It’s hard to describe fighting for 24 hours a day. We will fight as long as we are alive.”
At its peak, the IS caliphate held 34,000 square miles of territory from West Syria to East Iraq and ruled more than eight million people.
It generated a war chest of billions of dollars from extortion, kidnapping, bank robberies, stealing and selling antiquities and oil theft.
IS was the biggest and richest terror group in modern history.
Millions have been squirrelled away and even banked in unscrupulous financial establishments and al-Baghdadi and his henchmen still have access to vast funds.
IS also had an army of 30,000 fighters, almost a third the size of the British army. In almost a decade, from a tiny al-Qaeda splinter group it became a monster-sized death cult.
But it also had medics, teachers, financial clerks and all of the administration personnel of a growing society. And it had influence over a network of collaborators from Iraq to Syria and into Europe via Turkey.
IS may well have been defeated in its heartlands, but Western intelligence agencies still have a huge battle on their hands to contain the terrorists hell bent on revenge.
