US's McGurk, Kurdistan presidency speak against transfer of ISIS militants to Iraqi border

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Officials from the United States and Kurdistan Region presidencies have separately spoken out against reports of hundreds of ISIS militants being transferred from the Syria-Lebanon border area to the northeastern Syrian-Iraqi border.

“News agencies have published that according to a suspicious agreement, large numbers of terrorists have been transported from Lebanon to the Iraqi border. Bringing this force from Lebanon to east Syria and Iraqi borders raises doubts,” Dr. Omed Sabah, the spokesperson for the Kurdistan Region presidency, wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

The Kurdistan Region Security Council also expressed their “concerns about this action and consider it suspicious” in a statement on Tuesday night.

The Kurdistan presidency is concerned that the joint efforts by the Kurdish Peshmerga and Iraqi security forces over the past three years will be all for naught.

“We will be seriously observing this and looking into this. We take this to be a repetition of the scenario that was implemented in 2014, bringing mayhem to Iraq and the region,” read the statement from Kurdistan presidency. 

“We hereby declare that the Peshmerga forces of Kurdistan will have complete coordination and cooperation with the Iraqi army to counter any possibilities or developments.”

The US-led international coalition has backed Kurdish and Iraqi forces. Brett McGurk, the US Special Presidential Envoy to the international coalition to defeat ISIS, who just returned from a two-week jaunt across the Middle East including Iraq, the Kurdistan Region, and Syria, offered the US stance. 

“Irreconcilable ISIS terrorists should be killed on the battlefield and not bused across Syria to the Iraqi border without Iraq’s consent. Our coalition will help ensure that these terrorists can never enter Iraq or escape from what remains of their dwindling ‘caliphate’ ” McGurk wrote in a series of tweets on Wednesday.

ISIS agreed to a ceasefire on two fronts on the Lebanon-Syria border region with the Lebanese army on one front and Hezbollah and the Syrian army on the other, ending a week-long confrontation. 

The ceasefire took effect on Sunday and saw a convoy of 308 militants with small arms and 331 civilians leave the border area under Syrian army escort. 

They are being relocated to Al Bukamal on the Iraq-Syria border in eastern Deir ez-Zor province, part of the middle Euphrates River valley, home to the largest concentration of ISIS militants in Iraq and Syria.