By Dan Calabrese ——Bio and Archives--April 28, 2017
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Large numbers of foreign fighters and sympathizers are abandoning Islamic State and trying to enter Turkey, with at least two British nationals and a US citizen joining an exodus that is depleting the ranks of the terror group. Stefan Aristidou, from Enfield in north London, his British wife and Kary Paul Kleman, from Florida, last week surrendered to Turkish border police after more than two years in areas controlled by Isis, sources have confirmed to the Guardian. Dozens more foreigners have fled in recent weeks, most caught as they tried to cross the frontier, as Isis’s capacity to hold ground in Syria and Iraq collapses. Some – it is not known how many – are thought to have evaded capture and made it across the border into Turkey.For all the talk of ISIS forming a caliphate to overrun the Middle East, it's not a nation state. It has no real laws. It's not like it can ask Turkey to extradite these guys so they can face charges of desertion. I suppose ISIS could try to hunt them down and burn them alive or something along those lines, but given how quickly the caliphate is collapsing, I'd say ISIS has bigger problems to deal with. This doesn't mean we should no longer take the ISIS threat seriously. They have shown they can't capture and hold land over a long period of time, but they can still commit horrific atrocities against individuals. One potential downside of ISIS failure as a regional power could be that it would revert to more such atrocities as a way of trying to stay relevant. But we've seen these thugs in action for a few years now and we know their weaknesses. If the United States is serious at all about stopping ISIS, we know how to do it. At this point there's no excuse not to.
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