Located in the area of Syria held by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, the al-Sinaa prison, as of last week, housed some 3,500 Islamic State (IS) fighters. But in what appears to be a well-coordinated operation, the jihadist group has managed to free an as-yet-unknown number of them. Kyle Orton writes:

In the evening of January 20, Islamic State carried out its largest attack in Syria since the remnants of its statelet were swept away at Baghuz in March 2019, and early the next morning there were follow-on attacks in Iraq. The attack in Syria . . . is important because it is an attack on a prison with the most, and the most battle-hardened, IS jihadists anywhere in the world, those who stayed right to the end. As best as can be told from the conflicted and confused reports, dozens of these men are now free. Prison-breaks were a crucial way that IS, [then known as al-Qaeda in Iraq], rebuilt itself after [its setbacks] of 2007-08 to the point that it could seize a territory larger than Britain and proclaim the caliphate restored in 2014.

For IS, attacks on prisons are “low cost, high reward” operations. Such attacks provide the group with powerful propaganda material, increasing the morale of their own forces by demonstrating that they “leave no man behind,” while discrediting and demoralizing the government that is attacked by exposing its weaknesses, not only to the population that the government rules over but the world beyond. In more strictly practical terms, prison breaks restore to IS its charismatic commanders and specialists like bomb-makers—people with the skills to make IS a more effective war machine—plus, of course, the foot-soldiers.

The immediate propaganda victory for IS is against the [the Syrian Kurdish government], which has been shown to be unable to prevent IS infiltrating one of its most well-defended areas, . . . and by extension the U.S., which subordinated everything in Syria to the anti-IS campaign, and is now clearly failing even at that. This has not come from nowhere; there have been warning signs in eastern Syria for months, if not years. A serious rethink about what the U.S. mission is in Syria is rather urgent.

The United Nations estimates that IS still has 10,000 active operatives spread between Iraq and Syria; that is probably an underestimate, but as is so often the case, the statistics do not really capture reality. Even if the numbers were correct, they would not reflect IS’s effective reach through its mechanisms of social and economic coercion over populations, which do not require people to be card-carrying members of the organization.

Even if the agreement with Hamas to secure the release of some, and possibly all, of the remaining hostages—and the bodies of those no longer alive—is a prudent decision for Israel, it comes at a very high price: potentially leaving Hamas in control of Gaza and the release of vast numbers of Palestinian prisoners, many with blood on their hands. Nadav Shragai reminds us of the history of such agreements:

We cannot forget that the terrorists released in the Jibril deal during the summer of 1985 became the backbone of the first intifada, resulting in the murder of 165 Israelis. Approximately half of the terrorists released following the Oslo Accords joined Palestinian terror groups, with many participating in the second intifada that claimed 1,178 Israeli lives. Those freed in [exchange for Gilad Shalit in 2011] constructed Gaza, the world’s largest terror city, and brought about the October 7 massacre. We must ask ourselves: where will those released in the 2025 hostage deal lead us?

Taking these painful concessions into account Michael Oren argues that they might nonetheless be necessary:

From day one—October 7, 2023—Israel’s twin goals in Gaza were fundamentally irreconcilable. Israel could not, as its leaders pledged, simultaneously destroy Hamas and secure all of the hostages’ release. The terrorists who regarded the hostages as the key to their survival would hardly give them up for less than an Israeli commitment to end—and therefore lose—the war. Israelis, for their part, were torn between those who felt that they could not send their children to the army so long as hostages remained in captivity and those who held that, if Hamas wins, Israel will not have an army at all.

While 33 hostages will be released in the first stage, dozens—alive and dead—will remain in Gaza, prolonging their families’ suffering. The relatives of those killed by the Palestinian terrorists now going free will also be shattered. So, too, will the Israelis who still see soldiers dying in Gaza almost daily while Hamas rocket fire continues. What were all of Israel’s sacrifices for, they will ask. . . .

Perhaps this outcome was unavoidable from the beginning. Perhaps the deal is the only way of reconciling Israel’s mutually exclusive goals of annihilating Hamas and repatriating the hostages. Perhaps, despite Israel’s subsequent military triumph, this is the price for the failures of October 7.