Donald Trump’s paving way for Shamima Begum’s UK return – I met her, here’s why he’s right

Shamima Begum could be soon to return to the UK

Should she come back to Britain, or shouldn’t she? It’s the question that has been raging around the fate of former Bethnal Green schoolgirl-turned ISIS bride Shamima Begum ever since she and two classmates fled to Syria to join ISIS as 15-year-olds more than a decade ago. ‘She was just a child, she was groomed’, versus ‘she’s a traitor, they should throw away the key’, that’s the black-and-white reaction Begum’s case sparks whenever it’s discussed in print, on the airwaves or in taxis and pubs.

Since 2019, when she was stripped of her UK citizenship, Begum has been, depending on who you ask, a prisoner, a detainee, or even a refugee, in a camp run by the Kurdish-led Syrian Defence Force (SDF) in northeast Syria. She is one of dozens of British women, and often their stateless children, still held in camps in the region without trial or sentence for their decision to join a murderous Islamic death cult.

The children, all of whom are under 12, played no part in ISIS, which was destroyed in Iraq and Syria militarily by the allies in 2019.

Begum for her part gave birth to three children with her much-older ISIS fighter husband, Dutch-born Yago Riedijk, who was 23 when he ‘married’ the newly arrived 15-year-old schoolgirl.

All three of Begum’s babies have perished, either in the detention camp, or during the war against ISIS.

Such a horrifying detail would appear to make the now 26-year-old former mother of three not the best advert for fleeing the UK to join a terrorist group. But like the other British women and men, and their children, Begum became a problem best contained in the hinterland of northeast Syria.

She could be guarded by the Kurdish forces who once fought so bravely alongside the allies against ISIS, and who were, until December last year, largely allowed to run their part of the country as they pleased by the feckless Syrian dictator, President Bashar al-Assad sitting in power in the capital Damascus.

It was a legacy of the horrors of ISIS which could be confronted at a later date perhaps. For the British Government, a fine example of their often-used foreign policy approach of ‘wait and see’.

However, the time to confront the elephant in the room of these formerly British now stateless men, women and children looks like it is fast approaching.

Assad is gone, fleeing to Moscow with his tail between his legs, and there is a new sheriff in town in the shape of former al-Qaeda supporter President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who seized power in a military coup in December.

In an incredible show of support for the former jihadist, the ever-disruptive Donald Trump invited the Syrian leader to the White House just last week, the first time such a meeting has ever been held between the heads of the two nations.

President Trump has called al-Sharaa a “young, attractive guy” and a “fighter” and when asked about the Syrian president’s Islamist history, he has said it was “rough” before adding “I think, frankly, if you didn’t have a rough past, you wouldn’t have a chance”.

All this commendatory noise from Washington has massive implications for Begum and all the foreign ISIS detainees languishing in Syria.

Al-Sharaa wants more control over the Kurdish-run northeast of his newly-claimed country, which has bountiful oil reserves, and Trump and American big business likely want more access to the region too. “Drill baby, drill” is a favourite saying of the US president.

The northeast of Syria is a region I know well, having visited the ISIS camps there as a guest of the incredibly warm and resilient Kurdish people. The landscape is notable for three things, mountains, deserts and oil pumping stations, the latter of which in some places seem to be every quarter of a mile alongside the dusty roads.

In a rather ironic twist, it could be this black gold, which many argue was the driving force behind Western wars in Iraq during the 90s, and into the 2000s and 2010s, and which subsequently created the instability for the extremism of ISIS to thrive, that now could be the salvation for the cult’s last foreign acolytes to get home.

If American companies want oil and the new Syrian government wants to unite the country more politically, then the 30,000 or so ISIS detainees will be no obstacle.

The US State Department has already said in a recent report the United States wants to “mitigate current security and humanitarian challenges by increasing and expediting repatriation” of foreign detainees.

The Kurdish authorities have also told me they want to shut down the ISIS camps holding Begum and others, many of Begum’s foreign friends in the camp from places like Germany and the Netherlands have already been sent home.

And just this week a report by the Independent Commission on UK Counterterrorism said leaving Begum and other ex-British men, women and children in Syria as part of UK policy is “unsustainable”.

Throughout my years covering Shamima Begum’s story, having met her in person twice, my own view of whether she should be allowed to return to Britain has changed back and forth several times.

But most of the time it remains, as it is now, that she should come back to the UK.

ISIS, unlike their equivalent monsters, the Nazis, didn’t keep records of the atrocities they committed, so we may never know what crimes, other than joining the death cult, Begum ever did.

However, if losing three children, being effectively jailed for six years without trial, and losing your country, isn’t a good enough advert for not joining a terrorist group then I don’t know what is.

Begum in my view should be allowed home, and her life should be a lesson for us all.