I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. But how are you going to impose that law? They don’t exactly issue membership cards.
They were a proto-state with organisational structures and command structures. I imagine there is a great deal of military intelligence on that.
In a way much of it will actually be very simple because unless they’re with the Kurds, pretty much any foreigner in Iraq or Syria that isn’t there for matters western governments sanction is going to be an part of ISIS. Apparently there are a lot of western women in the camps refusing to speak anything but Arabic even though their accents are so heavy everyone knows they’re western.
As at the end of any war where there has been a lot of displacement and movement it’s going to take some time to establish identities. And there’s going to be a lot of wrangling about who goes where.
I think a big problem is that although ISIS has lost, there’s no clear winner and many of the different parties in the war will have different ideas about who the war criminals are. For example the Kurds are very aligned with the US and Western Europe, but Turkey thinks they’re terrorists. Many groups would be unhappy if war crimes were tried without involving Assad’s troops, but as he is the closest thing to a winner that war had, and he’s backed by Russia and Iran, that won’t happen. Also the west backed many rebel groups, a war crimes tribunal might open up all sorts of murky cans of worms there.
Maybe an international agreement could be found on dealing with ISIS. Who knows. I have a feeling that there may well be, at international level, a keenness to kick over the traces and pretend it never happened.
Who knows? Will be interesting to see what happens. But I really want some semblance of normality to return for people in Syria and for their infrastructure to begin rebuilding and hopefully in Iraq too. It would be great if this could be the beginning of a bit more stability in the region.