The forces fighting the remnants of the Islamic State group in Syria have tacit instructions on dealing with the foreigners who joined the extremist group by the thousands: Kill them on the battlefield.
As they made their last stand in the northern Syrian city of Raqqa, an estimated 300 extremists holed up in and around a sports stadium and a hospital argued among themselves about whether to surrender, according to Kurdish commanders leading the forces that closed in.
The final days were brutal 75 coalition airstrikes in 48 hours and a flurry of desperate IS car bombs that were easily spotted in the sliver of devastated landscape still under militant control.
No government publicly expressed concern about the fate of its citizens who left and joined the Islamic State fighters plotting attacks at home and abroad.
In France, which has suffered repeated violence claimed by the Islamic State including the November 13, 2015, attacks in Paris Defence Minister Florence Parly was among the few to say it aloud.
“If the jihadis perish in this fight, I would say that’s for the best,” Parly told Europe 1 radio last week.
Those were the orders, according to the US.
“Our mission is to make sure that any foreign fighter who is here, who joined ISIS from a foreign country and came into Syria, they will die here in Syria,” said Brett McGurk, the top US envoy for the anti-IS coalition, in an interview with Dubai-based Al-Aan television.
“So if they’re in Raqqa, they’re going to die in Raqqa,” he said.
The coalition has given names and photos to the Kurdish fighters to identify the foreign jihadis, who are seen as a threat back home and a burden on their justice systems, according to a commander with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces.
The commander said his U.S.-backed fighters are checking for wanted men among the dead or the few foreigners among the captured.
An official with the powerful YPG, the backbone of the SDF that also runs the local security and intelligence branches, said foreigners who decided to fight until the end will be “eliminated.”
