UK faces terror threat if Kurdish-led forces abandon camps in Syria holding Shamima Begum and other ISIS extremists, ex-MI6 chief warns

Britain faces a heightened terror threat if Syrian camps holding Shamima Begum and other ISIS extremists collapse, a former head of MI6 warned today. 

Sir Alex Younger spoke out as the country’s civil war reignited in dramatic fashion after Islamist rebels seized full control of Aleppo city following a lightning offensive. 

Part of Syria’s north east remains under control of the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed up by 900 US troops. 

However, there are fears Donald Trump could pull these forces out, which would risk a ‘power vacuum’ in the region – which houses the detention camps. 

‘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’, he told the BBC.

‘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Begum, whose British citizenship was withdrawn on national security grounds in 2019, is believed to be living at the Al Roj, a filthy, brutal temporary tent city teeming with dangerous ISIS loyalists who use threats and beatings to enforce their extremist ideology.

Al Roj is a filthy, brutal temporary tent city teeming with dangerous ISIS loyalists who use threats and beatings to enforce their extremist ideology

Al Roj, where Ms Begum was moved after being found in nearby Al Hol, is home to around 2,600 detainees from 55 countries, many of them ISIS brides and their children. 

The former East London schoolgirl, who moved to Syria to join ISIS in 2015 at the age of 15, lost an appeal last year against the decision to revoke her citizenship on national security grounds at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).

In August, justices at the UK’s highest court said Begum could not appeal again after she lost a Court of Appeal bid in February.

Her lawyers are now hoping to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights. 

Syrian rebel forces launched a lightning offensive from the northwest on Wednesday, surging out of Idlib province and overwhelming woefully unprepared government troops who are said to have retreated en masse.

This weekend the rebels, spearheaded by Islamist militant organisation Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), seized full control of Aleppo city – the capital of the country’s most populous governorate – and are now marching south toward the city of Hama.

The Assad regime and its Russian allies hit back at the rebels today by launching a series of air strikes.

The air raids killed 11 civilians, including five children, according to the Observatory.

Sir Alex Younger spoke out as the country’s civil war reignited in dramatic fashion after Islamist rebels seized full control of Aleppo city following a lightning offensive

‘The strikes targeted… displaced families living on the edge of a displacement camp,’ said Hussein Ahmed Khudur, a 45-year-old teacher who sought refuge at the camp from fighting in Aleppo province.

Russia, which first intervened directly in the Syrian war in 2015, said today it continued to support Assad.

‘We of course continue to support Bashar al-Assad and we continue contacts at the appropriate levels, we are analysing the situation,’ Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told journalists.

Today, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baqaei said the Islamic republic had entered Syria at the official invitation of Assad’s government.

‘Our military advisers were present in Syria, and they are still present. The presence of advisers from the Islamic Republic of Iran in Syria is not a new thing,’ he said.

A view of a vehicle on fire in the aftermath of what the White Helmets say is a strike, in Idlib, Syria, released December 1, 2024

Part of Syria’s north east remains under control of the the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces, who are backed up by 900 US troops

Sir Alex, who led MI6 from 2014 to 2020, said the Assad regime was guilty of ‘merciless brutality’ and he welcomed ‘any setback’ to it. 

‘So, no I do not want him back in charge of Aleppo,’ he said.

‘Equally, you cannot pretend that a hardline Islamist group, albeit one that is trying to moderate its image, represents a great future either.

‘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.’