Syria's Idlib province is home to much more than an estimated 10,000 terrorists from various groups since the number of facilitators and sympathizers, including from detention camps in the country's north, makes the figure much higher, Coordinator of the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning ISIL, Al-Qaida and Taliban (the first two banned in Russia) Edmund Fitton-Brown told Sputnik in an interview
GENOA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 08th November, 2019) Syria's Idlib province is home to much more than an estimated 10,000 terrorists from various groups since the number of facilitators and sympathizers, including from detention camps in the country's north, makes the figure much higher, Coordinator of the UN Analytical Support and Sanctions Monitoring Team concerning ISIL, Al-Qaida and Taliban (the first two banned in Russia) Edmund Fitton-Brown told Sputnik in an interview.
According to Fitton-Brown, the UN monitoring team believes that Idlib has "significantly more than 10,000 [terrorist] fighters."
"We've talked about Huras al-Din [affiliated with al-Qaeda] having about 2,000 fighters. I don't know about the ISIL numbers in the area, but I think ISIL's preparation in the area has been more with facilities and safe houses for their leaders. So I wouldn't want to put a guess on ISIL numbers in Idlib. They deliberately kept a low profile there. They don't want to try and pose a military challenge to HTS [Hayat Tahrir ash-Sham, banned in Russia], because I think they know they would lose because HTS is so much bigger and so much stronger," he continued.
The UN team coordinator noted that if one adds to this number the amount of people held in camps in northern Syria, who are a "combination of displaced camps, refugee camps, and detention facilities," the total figure "is very high indeed."
"I mean we're talking about more than 70,000 just in Al-Hawl. The other camps are much smaller than Al-Hawl, but still we're talking about a cumulative number that is pushing up towards 100,000. That's a lot of people. Of course, a lot of those children and a lot of them are women of whom some may be innocent dependents, but of course you know that's a big serious question mark over that because many of the women have been active servants of the Islamic State in one form or another," he said.
Another "big question," he went on, "the radicalization effect" in these facilities.
Asked why terrorists in Idlib have not been defeated so far, Fitton-Brown replied that those groups have a strong control over the area, which means they are very well-resourced.
"In the same way that ISIL at one point was able to tax areas under its control, HTS is able to tax the area under its control, it has money, so it does represent quite a significant military obstacle," he said.
