"We are sitting on a time bomb," the Hassakeh prison warden said during a visit two years ago.

What he meant quickly became clear: around 3,500 jihadists from "Islamic State" (IS), crammed together in overcrowded cells in a makeshift prison that used to be a vocational school, the walls can be breached, the guards are overwhelmed, located in a conflict zone that could explode at any moment can become a battle zone.

Christopher Ehrhardt

Correspondent for the Arab countries based in Beirut.

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Now this time bomb has exploded.

A major IS attack began on Thursday evening, keeping the city in the Kurdish-controlled north-east of Syria in suspense.

The American military had to rush to the aid of the overwhelmed security forces with armored personnel carriers and airstrikes.

The fighting continued on Sunday as well.

There is talk of around a hundred attackers and dozens of dead people.

And the most spectacular terrorist operation since the IS pseudo-caliphate was wiped off the map in 2019.

Memoirs of the storming of Abu Ghraib

The attack brings back disturbing memories. In July 2013, an IS predecessor organization in Iraq managed to free around 500 jihadists from the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. The action is now regarded as one of the key moments in the rise of IS, which meanwhile controlled large areas in Syria and Iraq. There was still no reliable and independent information on Sunday about the number of extremists who had been released as a result of the Hassakeh attack. In terms of the number of those who escaped, it looks as if IS has not managed a second Abu Ghraib. But the attack sends a clear message that IS is back in strength - and a new Abu Ghraib moment is looming.

Remaining cadres and fighters had retreated to remote areas and underground to strike from both Syria and Iraq.

People from the former Syrian IS bastion of Raqqa report that the number of sleeper cells in eastern Syria is "amazing".

The IS levies taxes on the oil trade there, collects protection money with threatening letters, which is disguised as a religious tax.

The organization benefits from the instability in the region.

The "Syrian Democratic Forces" that control north-east Syria are dominated by Kurdish militiamen who are loyal to the Kurdish PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and are tightly run.

But wherever militias rule, there are opportunities for bribery.

There is the confrontation with Turkey and Arab militias loyal to Ankara.

Always brazen attacks

The Assad regime is attempting to tighten its grip on Kurdish-controlled regions.

At the same time, there is resentment towards the Kurds in the Arab tribes in the province of Deir el-Zor, and IS has always been able to exploit this.

"The Hassakeh neighborhood where the prison is located is considered an anti-Kurdish hotbed," says Malik al-Abdeh, a Syrian political adviser.

"That may have helped the prison attackers infiltrate the area beforehand."

Similar mechanisms are at work in Iraq, where IS attacks have become more numerous, more sophisticated and more brazen over time. The jihadists benefit from dissatisfaction, power struggles and the weakness of the state, which has been eroded by corruption. The conflict between the Kurdish autonomous government in northern Iraq and the central government in Baghdad plays into the hands of the IS, as do the constant terrorist attacks on the American military by militias loyal to Iran. The actions of these spleens also drive young recruits into the arms of the IS, as does the dissatisfaction and lack of prospects in the poor sections of the Sunni minority.

Experts are sounding the alarm in the face of the images from Hassakeh: It would be better not to repeat mistakes from the past that promoted the rise of IS.

"We must not underestimate the patience and tenacity of the jihadists - nor the power of their ideology," says Hugo Micheron, who teaches at Princeton University in the United States.

“Jihadism is like the ebb and flow.

When the tide goes out you can't see the water, but that doesn't mean the ocean is gone," says Micheron, who describes it as "irresponsible" that European governments still haven't found a solution for the IS extremists from their countries, who are in the latently threatened Kurdish makeshift prisons.

"The Hassakeh attack must be a wake-up call."