Tristan Redman

What we've got here is we've got a question of honor and loyalty, right? And America is a society that recognizes the value of military might and so on and so forth. And I think there's a sense that the Kurds fought for us and we shouldn't abandon them amongst some Republican lawmakers and so on and so forth. What does this actually mean for the security and the governance of the camps on the grounds? And does it mean that ISIS has the potential to restrengthen?

In terms of the security situation around ISIS, since the fall of President Assad in December of 2024, ISIS was able to move around the country much more freely. Before that, they'd very much been confined to certain areas. The American special forces would go in on these targeted missions or drop bombs. But after the fall, they started moving about the country. And since then, there have been attacks. And from these prisons that we're talking about, there have also been escapes.

Yksi asia, jota Amerikassa on tehty hyvin viimeisenä, on se, että on tehty poliisi menemään Syyliin ja yrittäen poistaa joitain näitä jäseniä tiettyihin asioihin ja saada heitä itse asiassa rahalliseen paikkaan Irakissa, koska he tuntevat, että muuttaminen heitä Irakissa on turvallisempaa kuin jätettävä heitä Syyliin.

Josh, I feel like I now have a clear sense of the dynamic in the camps and the security situation. But I want us to zoom out a bit to the state of ISIS more broadly outside the camps. The United States has maintained a minimal troop presence on the ground in Syria. And in December, there was news of an ambush on U.S. forces. What exactly happened?

Ja Donald Trump had an extraordinarily strong response to that. We hit the ISIS thugs in Syria who were trying to regroup after their decimation by the Trump administration five years ago. We hit them hard.

I ordered a massive strike on the terrorists that killed our three great patriots last week. In that response that the Trump administration had to the ambush in December, we have seen a number of strikes. I'm just going to pull this up here, but it seems like whenever the strikes are conducted, we'll get a notification from U.S. Central Command. This one says that more than 100 ISIS infrastructure targets were hit.

And that has me wondering, well, what exactly is an ISIS infrastructure target? Especially if there's no geographic site, what are they referring to?

Mitä he suosittelevat, kun sanotaan, että se on yleensä kivu tai kivu jossain metsässä, jossa voisi olla vahvistuskasheja tai ihmisiä, jotka pysyvät. Monet niistä tavoitteista ovat todennäköisiä, mutta myös nyt ja sitten, kun olin Syyassa, ihmiset joutuivat minulle, miten Amerikassa on tullut toinen kivu.

What the US did in those strikes is, you know, they essentially used a mallet to try to degrade this group. They did a very targeted strike campaign, but over a vast area. And within that you are hitting these sort of very small hidden sites in an attempt to degrade ISIS, as well as targeting their leadership as well.

What has been consistent is the US has gone in and tried to target anyone who is senior leadership of ISIS to continue to degrade the group. And it's that old cliche of cut off the head and the body will die. And by maintaining that, it has been extraordinarily hard for ISIS to get back to anywhere near where it was. But that leads me to my central question, which is, does ISIS remain a real threat in Syria? And if not in Syria, does it remain a real threat in some other capacity?

So if you imagine the current picture of ISIS looks something like this. It breaks down into a number of issues. There is an insurgency that has to be contained, and that's contained largely through airstrikes and targeted killings of its leadership. There are tens of thousands of prisoners from when that group had its so-called state, where there is no coherent strategy of what to do with them. And then there is the group's

I think this is the thing to think about. It's like while the so-called state is gone, there isn't a physical nation that people can go and join anymore, the group's ability to inflict harm isn't.

It causes a lot of issues on the continent of Africa. It causes issues in Afghanistan. It inspires attacks around the world. Not at the scale it once did, but that threat is still there. And I think herein lies the problem. While the caliphate is gone...

These small issues remain. But if these issues aren't dealt with, they can become a much bigger pain for the world to deal with. On that note, thank you so much for your time, Josh. You're welcome. It's lovely to be here.

Kiitos, että katsoitte.

And we here at The Global Story, we really love hearing from you all. So if you have any suggestions, ideas, questions for us, you can email us at theglobalstory at bbc.com. Today's show was produced by Sam Chantarasek and Lucy Paul. It was mixed by Travis Evans, and our senior news editor is Chyna Collins. I'm Asma Khalid, and that's it for The Global Story. Thanks as always for tuning in, and we'll talk to you again tomorrow.