Any prospect of British jihadists returning from Syria would be “a concern” and the UK is keeping “a very close eye” on the situation, a Home Office minister has said.
Dame Angela Eagle, the minister for border security and asylum, said the government is monitoring the “very fluid” situation in Syria following the toppling of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
The majority of foreign fighters detained in Syria are held in Kurdish-controlled camps in the north-east, where rebel insurgency factions do not have a presence.
Although there is no indication the security situation at those camps will change imminently, Dame Angela said British intelligence services will be “watching very, very closely”.
It is believed there are dozens of British jihadists being held captive in north-eastern Syria having been captured while fighting for the Islamic State group.
Asked about the prospect of them seeking to return to the UK, along with an influx of asylum claims from pro-Assad fighters, Dame Angela said: “Of course it’s a concern and it’s a concern that we constantly act on.”Obviously our security services will have an eye on any such things and we communicate and co-operate with our neighbours.
“The prime minister’s official spokesman said jihadists held in camps in Syria were a “key focus for the UK”.
“We are working with the US and our allies to monitor the situation on the ground,” he added.
Rebels led by the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) have been freeing detainees from prisons in the former Assad regime-held areas they now control in north-western, central and southern Syria.
But they do not currently operate in north-eastern Syria, which is mostly controlled by a Kurdish-led militia alliance supported by the United States, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF).
The SDF is holding around 10,000 fighters in 26 detention facilities, and is also holding almost 46,000 people linked to IS, most of them women and children, at the al-Hol and Roj camps.
The primary risk of jihadists breaking out of prisons in north-east Syria comes from Turkey putting so much pressure on the Syrian Kurds who are guarding them that they have to abandon them.
Given the rapidly changing situation in Syria, there is an underlying risk that IS and al-Qaeda could try and profit from the confusion and expand their area of operations in northern Syria, he added.
The Turkish government is opposed to the presence of SDF forces near its border because it considers the biggest militia in the alliance a terrorist organisation. It sees the YPG as an extension of the PKK rebel group fighting in Turkey.
Turkish-backed rebel factions fighting under the banner of the Syrian National Army (SNA) and Turkish troops have seized stretches of territory along the border from the YPG and SDF in several offensives during the civil war.
When the HTS-led rebels launched the lightning offensive that overthrew Assad, the SNA launched a separate assault on SDF-held areas north of the city of Aleppo. So far, they have pushed the SDF out of Tal Rifaat and Manbij, and Syrian Kurds fear that more of the areas they control will now come under attack.
In the days following the collapse of Assad’s government, the US carried out air strikes against IS targets in central Syria, where the group continues to have a limited presence.
Among high-profile cases of British residents who left the UK to join jihadists in Syria is Shamima Begum, who travelled from London aged 15 to support the group in 2015.
Begum had her British citizenship revoked in 2019, leaving her unable to return to the UK.
The 24-year-old, who is being held in a camp in northern Syria, lost her final UK court appeal to challenge the removal of her citizenship in August.
Asked specifically about Begum’s case, Dame Angela said:
“The courts have decided she doesn’t have a right to return as it stands. She has lawyers that are entitled to carry on making claims.”
On Monday, the UK announced it would pause decisions over ongoing asylum claims from Syrians who were seeking to flee Assad’s regime and settle in the UK.
Dame Angela said that there was “no basis on which to make a decision” on these claims as the country is “in the throes of change”.
“The vast majority of Syrians who arrived and claimed asylum in the last few years were fleeing the Assad regime, which has now collapsed and gone,” she said.
Asked about the more than 5,000 Syrians who are in the UK awaiting an asylum decision, Dame Angela told Today: “We can’t take decisions on those cases.”
She added that the UK is not planning to deport people back to Syria as the situation in the country is too “fluid”.
“Countries have to be safe and judged to be safe by our procedures before we could contemplate return,” she said.
With the future relationship between the West and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the group leading the Syrian rebel coalition, still unclear, a decision over whether the UK considers Syria a safe place to return is a complex diplomatic call.
Declaring Syria a safe country would be a process which takes time and would likely require some form of relationship with Syria’s new leadership, which is not currently in place.
The UK government has appeared to rule out granting Syrians time-limited leave to remain, which means those awaiting decisions are likely to continue being housed in expensive asylum accommodation until the situation in the Middle East becomes clearer.