The terror threat to Britain will grow if Kurdish-led forces have to abandon camps in Syria holding Shamima Begum and other Islamic State extremists, an ex-MI6 chief is warning.
Sir Alex Younger stressed ensuring this did not happen would be a key part of UK policy as Syria appears to be falling back into a major civil war as rebels seized control of swathes of land from Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, with backing from the US which has some 900 troops still in the wartorn country, control part of its north east.
But Sir Alex warned of a “power vacuum” in the region if the West withdraws, with concerns that president-elect Donald Trump will pull US troops out of Syria.
“There is a key operational issue for the UK which is going to be driving a lot of our policy which is that the SDF, the Kurdish group, are holding many, many ISIS prisoners and their families who were taken after the end of the caliphate,” the former head of MI6, who is known as “C”, told BBC radio.
Pressed whether it was people like Shamima Begum, he added: “Exactly, and the camps represent a hotbed of radicalisation and haven’t been sorted out.
“If the SDF were to go off the job, our security situation here would worsen.
“So, I’m sure a big part of our policy is just making sure at least the eastern part of Syria remains stable.”
Begum, who went to Syria as a schoolgirl to join Islamic State, is believed to be still living in the al-Roj detention camp in the country’s north east.
She is effectively stateless as her British passport was removed.
Begum left London in 2015 aged 15 and travelled with two other school friends from Bethnal Green to Syria, where she married an IS fighter and gave birth to three children, all of whom died as infants.
The British government took away Begum’s citizenship on national security grounds in 2019, shortly after she was found in a detention camp in Syria.
Begum, now 25, argued the decision was unlawful, in part because British officials failed to properly consider whether she was a victim of trafficking, an argument that was rejected by a specialist tribunal in February 2023 and then the Court of Appeal.
Syrian and Russian air forces were striking rebel-held positions in Aleppo’s eastern countryside, killing and wounding dozens of insurgents, according to a statement from the Syrian Prime Minister’s office on Monday.
The attacks by Assad forces and allies came after a coalition of rebel groups, led by hardline Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, gained control of the northern city of Aleppo and other territory.
Sir Alex was in charge of MI6 from 2014 to 2020, a period which saw the rise of Islamic State and the Syrian civil war escalate.
The former spy boss stressed the “merciless brutality” of the Assad regime, including use of chemical weapons on his own people and welcomed “any setback” to it.
“So, no I do not want him back in charge of Aleppo,” he added.
“Equally, you cannot pretend that a hardline Islamist group, albeit one that is trying to moderate its image, represents a great future either.”
Many other groups are competing for influence in Syria, he added.
“It seems to me it’s more likely that we are seeing a reignition of the civil war and the conflict in all its dimensions,” he stressed.
