After the fall of Assad in Syria, what is the threat to Europe from Isis?

What about Syria’s tens of thousands of jihadis who see its stunning victory over Assad as proof that their cause and methods are just what is needed to liberate the Middle East, even the wider world, asks Mark Almond

Four hundred years ago, Sir John Harington explained, “Treason doth never prosper. What’s the reason? If treason prosper, none dare call it treason.” Maybe, terrorism is never successful – as Western governments insist – for much the same reason.

The rebranding of Syria’s new strongman, Abu Mohammad al Jolani, from internationally outlawed terrorist to international partner, is well underway.

On Sunday, Sir John Sawers – Tony Blair’s guru in the run-up to the Iraq War, as well as MI6’s boss – led the choir of Whitehall’s most far-sighted mandarins singing the praises of Al Jolani as “the leader of a liberation movement, not a terrorist organisation”; and calling for his HTS group’s designation as a terrorist group to be reviewed.

Pat McFadden, the Cabinet Office minister, told Sky News that a review was in order in “the new situation”. Now, No 10 says the review is “proceeding quickly”.

Let’s imagine that the Islamist militant group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) and its emir have had a genuine change of heart, more than just a rebranding – and leave it to the cynics to sneer. But even if HTS is born-again, what about Syria’s tens of thousands of jihadis who see its stunning victory over the infidel Assad as proof that their cause and methods are just what is needed to liberate the Middle East, even the wider world?

Don’t forget, the dramatic expansion of the Islamic State across Syria and to the gates of Baghdad in 2014-15 also stimulated radicalised Muslims in western Europe to join Isis cells here. The attack on the Bataclan concert hall in Paris in 2015 was just their bloodiest outrage. London suffered smaller, but still deadly, rampages.

Everyone remembers Shamima Begum and other British citizens joining Isis. Begum rebranded herself as a sunglasses and T-shirt-wearing victim of Isis influencers but has been kept out of her birthplace – Britain – nonetheless.

Several thousand west European Isis camp followers have been left languishing in Syria. Many are held by the Kurdish Syrian Defence Forces, still at war with Isis holdouts in the desert. Their US allies launched 75 airstrikes on Isis targets on Sunday. More came on Monday. That monster is not dead yet.

Al Jolani himself brutally shut down his old comrades in Idlib’s Isis cells to assert his control there. If he does the same across Syria, will Isis, al-Qaeda and other “internationally-minded” jihadis stay to fight him? Or will they slip away to take their jihad to more promising places?

Western Europeans need to remember France, Belgium and Denmark sent more fighters to Syria than the UK. But other countries in the broader Middle East provided many more jihadis. It would be foolish to think returning north African jihadis will remain a “local problem”.

Western tourists should remember how Tunisia suffered mass killing at its extraordinary Bardo Museum complex in 2015 – and how British holidaymakers were slaughtered on a Mediterranean beach there in 2017.

As it happens, in April 2012, I was at Carthage Airport waiting to fly back to Turkey in the check-in queue with an excited group of young men travelling outside the country for the first time.

They weren’t tourists, but jihadists en route to Syria. Most paid me no heed and were even friendly – except for the older man shepherding them. The Tunisian police took me aside and searched me and demanded to know if I had given them any money. They clearly suspected that western agencies were facilitating the resistance to Assad and paying the jihadis’ costs.

Was that an unreasonable suspicion, given past western support for Muslim radicals from Afghanistan to the Middle East? Clearly, CIA and MI6 took an active interest in the insurgency against Assad; an ally of our strategic foe, Russia, as well as anti-Israeli militants.

Our own MI6 was deeply involved in Tunisia’s neighbour, Libya: one section cooperated with Gadafi’s regime in the early 2000s, while another went on to sponsor anti-Gaddafi fighters – including the young man who went on to bomb an Ariana Grande concert at the Manchester Arena in 2017.

The bearded and combat fatigue-wearing Al-Jolani looks like a Che Guevara for the 21st century. Guevara, of course, died in the Bolivian jungle trying to export the Cuban revolution. Al Jolani insists that he is only interested in Syria’s future – he may well want to avoid becoming a student poster too soon by antagonising the Americans, Israelis and Europeans (as Guevara and his ex-patron, al Baghdadi, provoked their own downfalls).

The restoration of the three red stars on the rebel Syrian flag, which used to decorate the United Arab Republic flag linking Syria, Egypt and Iraq after 1963, suggests old pan-Arabic or pan-Islamic ambitions have not entirely died. Some people say we should read the flag as symbolising Syria’s three main cities, Damascus, Aleppo and Deir Ezzor – but that is an unconvincing rebrand.

Syrians’ desire for a peaceful life could quash local jihadi ambitions to use their country as a safe haven. It is, after all, closer to western cities than Bin Laden’s base in Afghanistan before 2001.

That’s the real danger. In July, Al Jolani released 180 Isis fighters from Idlib’s prisons. Thousands more are free now. Some jihadis will haunt Russia and its central Asian allies – and China – as Chechens, Uzbeks and Uyghurs who fought Assad as a proxy for Putin and Xi Jinping. We may not be any safer.