Fears grow that Isis fighters could escape after US aid freeze

British officials fear Islamic State fighters and their families could escape from camps and prisons in northeastern Syria after Donald Trump put a sweeping freeze on US aid across the world, The Times understands.

An internal memo circulated in the Foreign Office in recent days raised concerns that a 90-day moratorium on payments to Kurdish guards could lead to some individuals managing to break free.

US funding to the Kurdish-run Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the group in charge of the camps and prisons, was immediately cut after the president issued an executive order on Friday for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review.

Some guards stopped turning up for work, it was claimed, and organisations providing food and water had to halt their activities.

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It was unclear whether British government concerns were raised with the US administration after the executive order. However, on Monday the State Department issued a waiver that enabled the suspended contracts of staff manning the Isis camps to be renewed for two weeks.

Aid workers at al-Hol camp, the largest holding members of Isis and their families in northeastern Syria, told The Times that it was unclear as to whether their salaries would be paid after that.
“There’s chaos and confusion and it’s really not good for the security situation,” they said.

There are about 20 British women, 10 British men and 35 children held in Kurdish-controlled areas in northeastern Syria after the collapse of Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate in 2019. Women and children are held in two guarded camps, al-Hol and al-Roj. The men are held in prisons.

A Kurdish female soldier stands guard at the al-Hol camp in Syria.

A guard at the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp which holds women and children

DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Tasnime Akunjee, the lawyer for the family of Shamima Begum, who left the country as a teenager to join Islamic State in Syria, told The Times: “If the funding collapses there is no food or services at all. There will be no guards there.

“They [the Kurds] won’t execute these people, they will just release them. So you will have tens of thousands of people released from these camps going into the hinterland, which was entirely predictable.”

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Akunjee pointed out that the US had wanted to shut the camps down for a long time and they were becoming even more of an issue now that Bashar al-Assad, the president who fled the country in December, had gone and the Syrian Kurds were fighting Turkish-backed fighters.

The US is the leading partner in a coalition of dozens of countries combating Isis. US financial support for the SDF totals about $10 million per month. Congress last year designated $150 million in aid for Syria for 2025, largely to the SDF.

UK aid money also goes to the camps, although it is unclear how much and where it goes.

Suspected Islamic State prisoners in a Syrian prison cell.

Thousands of Islamic State militants are being held in Syrian prisons

FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

A member of Blumont, a not-for-profit international development organisation, said that they had received the two-week waiver on Monday, which had allowed them to “restart critical activities in the camp”. They are providing humanitarian assistance such as water to the camps. They said the team were back at the two camps at 6am on Tuesday.

On Monday Charles Lister, the director of the countering terrorism and extremism programme at the Middle East Institute, a Washington-based think tank, said the salaries paid to many prison and camp guards had been affected by Trump’s decision to halt aid projects worldwide.

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“Trump’s global aid freeze has cut the salaries paid to many of the prison and camp guards … Many are no longer turning up for work,” he wrote on X on Monday.

He was referring to those guards responsible for securing 9,500 Islamic State militants and 40,000 women and children living in northeast Syria.

The Times could not independently verify the claims from the ground, however, an inside source said the Foreign Office was watching the events unfolding in the region.

US military convoy in Qamishli, Syria.

US forces patrol in Qamishli in support of the Syrian Democratic Forces. US financial support for the SDF comes to about $10 million per month

DELIL SOULEIMAN/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

One source linked to Syria projects said they understood that one of the private companies providing security and services such as water to the two camps had “stopped providing some of the services they normally provide”.

Although they had been granted an extension to their work on Monday there was “no certainty about how they will provide these services. If the US withdraws its funding completely that creates a massive problem,” the source said on Tuesday.

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Gregory Meeks, a Democratic representative from New York and ranking member of the House foreign affairs committee, warned: “Trump’s aid freeze is already endangering our security and that of our allies and partners.”

Reprieve is a human rights charity operating in the camps. Its deputy executive director, Dan Dolan, said it was a “slow-motion crisis, years in the making, that is suddenly on fast forward”.

He said: “Security experts and the Kurdish administration themselves have long warned that the detention camps in northeast Syria could collapse.

UK should take back Isis members in Syria, says Trump’s terror chief

“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.

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“It is very likely that the already desperate situation of this handful of British families, abandoned by the UK and imprisoned without charge, is going to get even worse. The government must bring them home, as a matter of urgency.”

There is precedent for the escape of British Isis members during chaotic periods. In 2019 Tooba Gondal, a woman who lived in London before leaving for Syria in 2015, managed to make it out of the camps to Turkey during an offensive on a nearby area.

Some 900 American troops are deployed alongside Kurdish-led forces to keep Islamic State from re-establishing itself in the country. British special forces are also understood to be deployed there.

A Foreign Office spokeswoman said: “The UK is working with allies, including the US, to prevent instability in Syria, including in the northeast. We will not hesitate to take action to protect UK national security and respond to potential threats. We do not comment on leaks.”

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