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Donald Trump has thrown into doubt the security and administration of the main two detention facilities in north-east Syria that hold thousands of Islamic State fighters, the former counter-terrorism director of M16 Richard Barrett says.
The state of limbo has been caused in the short term by the US president unexpectedly suspending all USAid funding for 90 days, and by long-term uncertainty over his willingness to retain troops in Syria.
It emerged that all security and administration around al-Hol and al-Roj, the main two detention facilities, was withdrawn for the several days after funding of the camp’s humanitarian and security work was suddenly cut.
It appears funding as a stopgap has been transferred from the frozen US aid budget to the Global Coalition to Defeat Isis, a military alliance of dozens of countries including the US.
But Barrett cautioned that the mainly Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), responsible for guarding Islamic State (IS) fighters, was under long-term threat. He said it had not been able to reach an agreement with the de facto government in Damascus about any future role in the Syrian national army.
This meant IS saw an opportunity to engineer the escape of as many as 9,000 of its fighters held in north-east Syria, he said.
Barrett, speaking to the UK foreign affairs select committee, said a 2,000-strong group of IS fighters had already had a resurgence in the past 18 months, but now saw an opportunity to launch a “Breaking the Walls” campaign, similar to one they launched in Iraq. He questioned whether Trump, owing to his isolationist policies, would continue to fund US forces remaining in north-east Syria or security around the camps.
He said the SDF hoped the US Central Command (Centcom) would be allowed to stay in Syria with its 2,000 troops, but its commander, Gen Michael Curilla, had “not yet managed to come up with anything concrete, and does not know what President Trump wants”.
He predicted: “Trump will no doubt say who benefits from all this – they should pay.”
He said the sudden pause in worldwide US aid had halted all humanitarian work and some security work at the al-Hol and al-Roj prisons.
Blumont, a US aid organisation responsible for managing the al-Hol and al-Roj camps was forced to halt operations on Friday after Trump’s cuts.
It restarted work at 6am on Tuesday after receiving a 14-day waiver from the US state department, a member of the organisation’s team confirmed, but the situation remained uncertain.
The organisation provides water, food, shelter and cooking gas for thousands of people in the camps, including several Britons whose citizenship has been removed, such as Shamima Begum, and officials predicted problems if the programme was halted permanently.
Officials warned of the dangers of stopping supplies of basic needs and said hostile forces in the region could try to “step in” and take advantage.
Paul Jordan, a specialist on the camps since 2019, based at the European Institute of Peace, told the UK foreign affairs committee that Blumont was heavily dependent on US aid.
He said its withdrawal “led in the past few days to basically nothing being delivered within the camps. There was no camp administration and very little security. In terms of an immediate impact, I have never seen anything as significant as this. Everything is in limbo, everyone is waiting to see what will happen.”
Dan Dolan, the deputy executive director of Reprieve, a legal charity that works against human rights abuses, said: “This is a slow-motion crisis, years in the making, that is suddenly on fast-forward. Security experts and the Kurdish administration themselves have long warned that the detention camps in north-east Syria could collapse. Successive US governments have said the only solution is for countries to repatriate their nationals, and since the fall of Assad, the regional security situation is more volatile than ever.”
