Shamima Begum’s former lawyer believes a political resolution for British women and children detained in Syria for links to ISIS is more likely now that the camps housing them will be handed over to the Syrian government.
Tasnim Akunjee, who represented Ms Begum and her family in the UK, hopes the authorities in Damascus will negotiate with European governments to repatriate their citizens who have been detained in the camps of Al Hol and Al Roj since the defeat of ISIS in Syria in 2019.
The camps have been controlled by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces for the past 10 years, after they received US military backing to fight ISIS. But they will now be handed over to the Syrian government after a tense and fragile agreement.
“Her life and circumstances are purely politically dictated,” Mr Akunjee told The National. “They will fall within Syria proper. There will most likely be a political resolution.”
The logic of those previously in charge in Syria differed markedly from the current government led by Ahmad Al Shara. Its goals will be different to those of the SDF, which sought to manage the camps as a security responsibility as part of its bid to create a Kurdish state. “The inmates were treated as leverage by the Kurds,” Mr Akunjee said.
Clashes between the SDF and the Syrian army days after the agreement was reached led to the SDF abandoning Al Hol this week, further endangering the lives of those detained there.
The authorities in Damascus, who took over Syria after the collapse of the Assad regime, have spent the past year building bridges overseas to gain support from the US and Europe, including joining the international coalition against ISIS.
On a visit to London in November when he met UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper, Syria's Foreign Minister Assad Al Shibani said he was "working round the clock" to strengthen Syria's diplomatic relations.
With the US urging European allies to repatriate their citizens from the camps, it is likely that negotiations over the fate of the detainees and their families will ensue, Mr Akunjee added. This could involve Ms Begum and others who were stripped of their British citizenship for travelling to Syria to join ISIS in 2014.
European countries have for years refused to repatriate their detained citizens, citing security concerns, despite clear evidence of poor living conditions and human rights abuse in the camps.
The developing situation means Ms Begum’s fate will ultimately be decided by political currents, both domestically and abroad, Mr Akunjee said.
Meanwhile, UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she would “robustly defend” the decision to strip Ms Begum of her citizenship in 2019, after the Al Roj resident challenged the move at the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) late last year.
Ms Begum claims she was trafficked to Syria, as she was only 15 when she and two school friends travelled there from their homes in Bethnal Green, east London, to join ISIS and marry foreign fighters. She had three children, all of whom died in infancy.
Though the Labour government has said it will be guided by international law, there has been growing tension with the Strasbourg court’s human rights convention, particularly in cases involving asylum seekers. “Historically the UK has followed findings of the ECHR. But we live in a new paradigm,” Mr Akunjee said.
He highlighted the Labour party’s initial resistance to stripping Ms Begum of her citizenship while it was in opposition. Meanwhile Nigel Farage, leader of the right-wing party Reform has now said he believes she should come back to the UK.
Likewise, the Begum family and others in the UK were left with little option but to wait and see how the Syrian government handles their relatives’ case. “They’re waiting for decisions to be made about them,” Mr Akunjee said.
The camps also house tens of thousands of civilians who were displaced by the US-led battle against ISIS in Iraq and Syria almost a decade ago.
Human rights group Amnesty International described life there as a form of “arbitrary detention” where torture, attacks and gender-based violence were rife both from the authorities administering them and ISIS affiliates living within them.
There are concerns that new cases against the UK government could be brought by the families should their relatives in Syria be harmed or killed in the fallout between the SDF and the Syrian government in the past week.
The National spoke to stranded residents a day after Al Hol was caught in the crossfire, who said their children had spent days without food, while others had no access to their medication.
Mr Akunjee said the danger from the fallout was “entirely predictable. We warned about it years ago,” he added, describing the US agreement with the Kurds as the “Kissinger approach” in which they would be abandoned once US interests had been served.
Mr Akunjee said such claims would need to rely on evidence that the UK wielded any influence in the camps.
This was the case for Abu Zubaydah, a former Guantanamo Bay prisoner who accused British intelligence services of providing questions to his CIA interrogators. The UK government chose to settle with him this month out of court for an undisclosed sum.
In Syria, male detainees have faced frequent interrogation in the camps and detention centres, with suggestions that information is passed on to British intelligence. “It would depend on how much influence the UK is found to have had in the camps. It is likely the UK would have made some financial contributions to the camps,” he said.
Security scramble
The US and European decisions for their citizens to remain in north-east Syria, without repatriation, has prompted security concerns after it emerged suspected ISIS foreign fighters had escaped from Al Hol and other detention centres this week.
The US and Iraq were quick to respond by transferring 150 prisoners in Hasakah, Syria to an undisclosed site in Iraq, US Central Command said.
Meanwhile, allies in the US-led coalition against ISIS hope the Syrian government can work with the SDF to gather expertise on managing the detention centres.
“This is the question facing us all today: how to avoid recreating, how to prevent the resurgence of a jihadist, ISIS threat in the wake of the clashes that have taken place in recent days,” an advisor to French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday.
French officials had spoken to the Syrian government about the need for an “orderly transfer” of control in the prisons.
“We have sent messages both regarding the need for an orderly transfer, and also the expertise the SDF has acquired in this area and the need for the Syrian state to integrate this expertise in order to fully benefit from it, and to do so within the framework of co-ordinated discussions with the coalition against ISIS,” the advisor said.
Arnaud Le Gall from La France Insoumise, a left-wing party in opposition, described the issue of detained foreign fighters and their families as a “taboo” in France.
The French government has repatriated dozens of mothers with their children from camps in north-east Syria since 2022. However not all cases have been successful as highlighted by recent claims made by three French detainees, including 23-year old Hamza Benabed, who were brought to Syria by their parents when they were children and are now seeking repatriation.
“When ISIS militants flee en masse, it is our security that is at stake and that is very real,” the MP told The National. "It has been a taboo subject for years but we also see that French members of ISIS should have been repatriated to be tried in France.
“This is not just a matter of law but also a question of security. It was clear that the risk of hundreds of potentially very dangerous people fleeing was significant should the situation in north-eastern Syria deteriorate."
