The APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria
Is the government failing in its duty towards former members of Islamic State?
Introduction
Recently ITV News announced that the “UK government is giving IS a 'propaganda gift' by not repatriating women like Shamima Begum, report says”. That conclusion was from the report of the inquiry by the All Party Parliamentary Group on Trafficked Britons in Syria. The APPG was set up in April 2021 and includes the likes of Emily Thornberry, Shadow Attorney General, and Tom Tugendhat, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, amongst its members. It is intended to examine the issue of the 20 or so British families detained in North East Syria for their links to Islamic State. The secretariat function is provided by the charity Reprieve, which is focused on opposing the death penalty and human rights in counter-terrorism. The report was produced after three separate days of oral evidence sessions from eight experts and an unknown number of anonymous family members of the detained; as well as written evidence from ten groups or individuals, mostly charities.
Who are the groups involved?
The groups involved are Child Rights International Network, The Soufan Center, Save the Children, Human Rights Watch, Rights and Security International, the Institute of Race Relations, and CAGE. The charity Reprieve provided the secretariat.
Reprieve’s recent accounts reveal that around 55% of their income come from grants and donations, including large sums from government bodies such as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office £121,000) and the German Federal Foreign Office (£89,000); but the majority of their funding comes from foundations, including the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Open Society Institute, Bertha Foundation, and the Sigrid Rausing Trust. They explain in their annual report that they have been supporting the families of detainees legally, calling them “clients”, and lobbying MPs to achieve this. They also say their work resulted in an opinion piece in The Guardian by Maya Foa and “regular appearances on national news programmes such as BBC Breakfast” (p.23).
Rights and Security International used to be known as British Irish Rights Watch but between 2012 and 2014 they shifted to covering human rights across Britain and then in 2020 to human rights in a “national security context” anywhere in the world. Their news page makes it clear that this is uniformly anti-British: they are very concerned with the actions of British security forces in Northern Ireland but distinctly less with the actions of Republican terrorists. Their widened mandate is mostly used to attack British counter-terrorism, such as this criticism of Prevent which cites a Guardian article which is reliant on a report by the defunct and dubious think tank Claystone. Amongst their trustees is Miqaad Versi of the Muslim Council of Britain’s Centre for Media Monitoring.
Although the charity’s primary focus is supposed to be promoting human rights “with particular reference to the conflict in Northern Ireland”, their news page shows that this is no longer the case, with only three of the nine most recent stories referencing Northern Ireland. This sort of charity over-reach demonstrates how weak the Charity Commission’s regulatory power is. In 2020 they also published a report on detention in North East Syria, calling it “Europe’s Guantanamo”, a lurid comparison when you consider that the USA used extraordinary rendition to get people to Guantanamo, whilst the detainees in Syria are there because they travelled there themselves. Among their funders are the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, Open Society Foundations, Ireland Funds America, and the Oak Foundation. From an income of £396,426, only £1,308 comes from small donations, with the rest coming from grants, even including £11,000 from Harvard University.
The Institute of Race Relations has previously been covered on SW1 Forum. Suffice to say, they too have few small donations and also rely on foundations like the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust and the Open Society Foundations. Similarly, CAGE was heavily reliant on funding from Rowntree until the Charity Commission ordered them to stop after a CAGE employee called an Islamic State executioner a “beautiful young man”.
The other charities involved are larger. Child Rights International Network is funded amongst other by the Oak Foundation, Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust, and Open Society Foundations. They appear to have no small donations at all and their only non-grant income was some interest on their bank account (p.12). Save the Children does receive over £1 million in donations but it’s only a small part of their total £876 million income, the majority of which is provided by the United Nations or government, with the British Department for International Development providing over £21 million. In a similar fashion, Human Rights Watch does receive £255,000 in small donations but most of the rest of their £1.9 million income comes from grants, of which £800,000 is from the People’s Postcode Lottery. The other funders aren’t mentioned but on their website they cite the Oak Foundation as a partner.
Therefore although there are nine different groups involved, five do or have received Rowntree funding, four from Open Society, and three from the Oak Foundation.
What does the report say?
The report says that:
British nationals, including children, were trafficked by ISIS to and within Iraq and Syria
UK public authorities systematically failed to protect British nationals, including children, from being trafficked to Syria
The UK Government has failed to identify and protect British victims of trafficking in North East Syria (NES)
British nationals, including children and victims of trafficking, are arbitrarily and unlawfully detained in detention facilities, in conditions that are degrading and present an imminent threat to their lives and well-being
The UK Government is failing to protect British nationals from re-trafficking by ISIS
The UK Government has adopted punitive policies in relation to potential British victims of trafficking in NES
The UK’s policy violates the rights of detained children, including British children
The UK Government’s policy towards British nationals in NES jeopardises regional stability and harms national and global security
The UK Government is able to effect repatriation of its nationals from NES
The UK Government is increasingly becoming an outlier amongst its key allies, undermining the UK’s reputation as a global leader on issues of peace and security
The UK Government’s policy is fostering impunity and hindering access to justice
The UK Government’s policy concerning British nationals in NES is discriminatory
However many of these are based on dubious methods or assumptions. For instance, the report alleges that 63% of the detainees were trafficked. The source for this is a report written by Reprieve on the same subject. But that report says the evidence for this is based on “information held on file at Reprieve”. So independent assessment of the figure is impossible and it is provided on trust. Elsewhere in the report they state that they interviewed 14 different detainees of different nationalities and relatives of 29 families in detention, which means that we don’t know how many British people they spoke to and in many cases must be relying on the assessment of family members who have an obvious interest in saying their relatives were trafficked.
Furthermore, the definition of trafficking used is absurdly wide. They say that, based on the work of Professor Jayne Huckerby, who is also one of the expert witnesses to the APPG, that “the confiscation of passports [by Islamic State] could have created conditions tantamount to an involuntary stay”. So, an adult could conceivably travel to the Middle East to join Islamic State with full knowledge that they were a terrorist group but if at any point, such as during the defeat of Islamic State, their passport was taken away then they would count as trafficked.
Similarly, Professor Huckerby claims that, “ISIS traffickers often used more subtle means, such as the emotional manipulation of the victim, including through an existing or cultivated romantic relationship” and that this can “constitute an abuse of a position of vulnerability” which is relevant in assessing whether accompanying their husbands or boyfriends to join IS was a voluntary act. This strips agency from women in a way that would be considered sexist anywhere else and absolves them of any form of responsibility for their own actions.
Huckerby also claims that it is also trafficking when voluntary travel to join IS leads to an involuntary stay, such as if “a woman freely agreed to marriage, which on arrival in Syria became a situation of domestic servitude or sexual slavery”. This is an after the fact exculpation of their actions; if crooks rob a shop but the mastermind holds back all the takings for himself, we wouldn’t exonerate the other thieves.
The very public case of Shamima Begum provides an example. Although she was only 15 when she travelled to the Middle East to join Islamic State, and would therefore be considered trafficked as she was underage, when she was discovered four years later she was 19. During early interviews she said she wasn’t fazed by seeing the head of a captured fighter lying severed in a bin because he was an “enemy of Islam”, defended the executions of Western journalists because “journalists can be spies too”, and said that the Manchester Arena terror attack was “justified”. Her only criticism of Islamic State was that there was too much “oppression and corruption”. Yet despite saying these as a legally-responsible 19 year-old, she would still be classified as “trafficked” and therefore seen as a victim by the APPG report.
In contrast, the highest standards are demanded of the British government to prevent them being “trafficked”. The accusation of systematic failings largely covers the usual incompetence, including failures by public bodies to share information and not doing enough to also share information with the families of the “trafficked”.
Quoting the Institute of Race Relations, the APPG also alleges that using citizenship deprivation is “discriminatory” because it has “been used almost exclusively against Muslims, mainly of South Asian, Middle-Eastern, and African heritage” and therefore sends the message that British Muslims aren’t “real, full British citizens”. In addition, this would constitute discrimination under the Equality Act 2010 either directly, as a “person is treated less favourably than others because of a protected characteristic” or indirectly because even if it seems “neutral” it still “puts people who share a protected characteristic – including race or religion – at a particular disadvantage”.
That citizenship deprivation isn’t racially motivated is obvious due to the case of Jack Letts, who is white but lost his citizenship after joining Islamic State. That Muslims are more at risk is down to the disproportionate scale of Islamist terrorism compared to others and because most British Muslims are usually immigrants or of immigrant heritage and are therefore likelier to have dual-nationality or access to citizenship by descent. This demonstrates how easy the Equality Act 2010 is to abuse and how it tries to impose an impossible ideological vision on reality.
Meanwhile, the report alleges that Britain’s refusal to repatriate means that “trust of the UK’s suitability as a security partner has been eroded considerably” as a result, especially with the USA, and that “currently ISIS are using al Hol [detention camp] as propaganda almost daily” which makes British attempts to counter Islamic State’s narrative “worth naught”. The APPG adds that they are “gravely concerned” that “the UK…is undermining international cooperation on this issue”.
However, no attempt to measure the supposed erosion of trust in Britain’s role as a security partner is made and as the USA and Britain remain close allies, it seems this is the sort of thing which is considered to be ‘not a good look’ in professional circles but which has a limited impact. Similarly, Islamic State’s propaganda and its impact are left unquantified. It also ignores whether reacting to Islamic State propaganda is always appropriate. For example, Islamic State regularly cite the West’s support for LGBT+ rights in their propaganda but it seems unlikely that anyone would say that countering Islamic State’s narrative therefore requires withdrawing this support.
The APPG also cites Lord McDonald QC saying that the “UK justice system is well equipped to undertake prosecutions, and the failure by the UK Government to take this option risks damaging public confidence in the justice system”. Should the QC have checked, he would have discovered that in 2019 the British government had to admit that of the 360 members of Islamic State who had returned to Britain at that point, only 40 had been prosecuted. It is not impossible but glib remarks about public confidence ignore the issues so far and the risks of repatriating but failing to prosecute former members of Islamic State.
These are only a few of the issues with the report. Remarkably, considering how much emotion the debate over repatriation has seen, not a single contrary view is cited nor are any expert witnesses or groups quoted to offer caution or discuss the alternatives.
Comment
The APPG on Trafficked Britons in Syria demonstrates how easy it is for charities to lobby MPs. A charity having already published a report on the issue is put in charge of the secretariat. A small group of charities, many of whom have previously published similar reports, are collated to provide evidence. Unsurprisingly it leads to a report which reiterates all of their arguments but under a Parliamentary banner and with the approval of MPs. No opposing voices are included, testimony is presented without any attempt to verify whether it is accurate, and the shared funding links between many of the charities aren’t discussed.
Large foundations, many reliant on the fortunes of long-dead founders, meanwhile are able to fund a variety of groups who all share their views, leading to a variety of voices who all say the same thing, giving a false impression of consensus and support. Most of the charities involved in the report are more reliant on grant funding than on small donations, meaning that they are more representative of these elite interests than of grassroots communities. That doesn’t mean they are directed, only that foundations can use funding to amplify the charities they approve of, distorting the debate.
The report itself is highly flawed, not least in its attempt to present the detainees in North East purely as having been “trafficked”, based on figures which are undisclosed and a methodology which is absurdly generous. In many cases this absolves detainees of personal responsibility for their actions, in leaving Britain for a violent terrorist state which the United Nations has said engaged in genocide. Instead they criticise Britain, even calling for an inquiry into “the impact of UK counter-terrorism policy on Black, Brown and Muslim communities” based on a spurious claim of discrimination.
The APPG includes Emily Thornberry, who as Shadow Attorney General would in a future Labour government be heavily involved in repatriation, and Tom Tugendhat, the Conservative Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee who, in contrast to his forgiving views on Islamist terrorists, recently suggested that all Russians - not just those with links to the government - should be collectively punished by being expelled from Britain over the War in Ukraine; that they put their names to this suggests issues with their judgement which may well be present elsewhere.