MACER Gifford watched as bloodied ISIS terrorists limped out of the bombed-out city of Raqqa and into the Syrian desert, broken and defeated.
After three years of brutal street fighting against unhinged jihadists across Syria and seeing his friends killed in ambushes and car bombs, the Brit soldier had finally seen the Islamic State fall to its knees.
Macer Gifford went to Syria to fight against ISIS with the Kurds
AlamyISIS terrorists wield guns in a propaganda video from Syria[/caption]
AFPSuspected ISIS terrorists sit on the floor of a prison in the northeastern city of Hasakeh[/caption]
Macer, who had quit his job as a banker in London in 2014 and left his girlfriend to travel 3,000 miles to Syria to join the fight, had finally achieved his goal – the defeat of ISIS – by 2017.
Or so he had thought.
In the stifling deserts of Syria and Iraq, the caliphate has been festering in the background – waiting for the right moment to come back stronger and deadlier than before.
Macer fears ISIS will take advantage of the security vacuum sparked by rebels toppling Bashar Assad’s brutal dictatorship after 53 years.
He warns that the civil war could continue for years – allowing ISIS to rise up and break free the 100,000 battle-hardened jihadists and their families languishing in Syrian camps amid the chaos.
The banker-turned-fighter fears the terrorists could launch a new wave of deadly terror attacks in Britain and across the world in a matter of months if ISIS is allowed to gain force and escape the camps.
Macer, not his real name, told The Sun: “If the Syria civil war continues and the Islamic State rises up, we’ll see a huge burst in terror attacks around the world.
“ISIS has made it clear that they will continue to fight and they will continue to kill until their long-term aims are realised.
“And since they are a death cult, their aim is the complete destruction of all diversity in the world, all culture and all learning.”
The Brit added: “The stakes here are enormous – there are 100,000 ISIS prisoners including their families still under captivity in Syria.
“And if they’re released, many of them – tens of thousands – could come to Britain so it’s a horrifying future if we don’t get this right.”
Among the 100,000 Islamic State prisoners in Syria are Brits including infamous ISIS bride Shamima Begum who fled the UK in 2015.
Officials have repeatedly warned that the grim detention centres – like the infamous al-Roj and al-Hol camps – are a breeding ground for radicalisation.
And Macer said jihadists could be freed from the detention centres, which are controlled by the Kurdish-dominated Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in a series of different ways and wreak havoc on the world.
The US State Department has already warned that the jihadists will use the void created by the fall of Assad’s regime in just two weeks to reconstitute again.
AFPSyrian Kurdish security forces protecting al-Hol camp where ISIS fighters are living[/caption]
AFPA Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) soldier monitors ISIS prisoners on a monitor at the prison in Hasakeh[/caption]
Not helping matters is US President Donald Trump‘s unexpected cuts to foreign aid – and that meant security and administration around the two camps was withdrawn.
There were reports of camp guards not showing up to work – and they only did when the US State Department quickly brought back their funding at the last minute.
It’s raised questions about the security of the camps and fears that an ISIS army is waiting to pounce and launch a prison escape.
Macer said: “The Islamic State could release the 100,000 terrorists – including people like Shamima Begum.
“That could happen if there is increased turmoil and violence in the country and the SDF is no longer able to protect the camps, which are a huge burden for them.
“The Islamic State could free them and give them arms, and that would be terrible.”
But Macer also pointed to how the Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) rebels, who toppled Assad‘s regime in a lightning assault in December, could make matters worse.
Getty – ContributorMacer quit his job as a banker in London to fight against ISIS in Syria[/caption]
Getty – ContributorMacer, pictured in Syria, warned that ISIS terrorists languishing in prisons across Syria could be released[/caption]
AFPMen accused of being affiliated with the Islamic State terror group sit on the floor in a prison in the northeastern Syrian city of Hasakeh[/caption]
APFamily members of suspected Islamic State group fighters walk at al-Hol camp in Syria[/caption]
AFPRelatives of suspected ISIS terrorists inside the Kurdish-run al-Hol camp in Syria[/caption]
He said the West has no idea what is running through the mind of Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, the militant leader of HTS, which was formed out of a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Macer warned: “If al-Jolani takes control of the camps, if this new government in Damascus performs in the future as they have done in the past, then there’s a real risk that they’ll let ISIS prisoners go.
“And they’ll talk about there being no evidence, they can’t try them and they’ve already done their time – they’ll come up with excuses for the West.”
The ideology of hate and evil still exists in Syria and Iraq. It just fled to the desert, weaker but more aggressive and just as ambitious as it ever was.
Macer Gifford
He claimed that the HTS and Free Syrian Army (FSA), a group which helped the rebels topple Assad, had previously helped release ISIS jihadists from camps and “allowed them to go missing”.
The former public schoolboy said: “If that happens to these camps, that’s 100,000 battle-hardened ISIS fighters potentially being released by either the new government or some violent faction in the future.”
Macer added: “So making sure that we support local people that are holding these people, make sure they have the resources to hold them, and then eventually put them on trial, spares us this huge risk that they could be released and come to Europe.”
Sheer hell battles
The Brit is well versed on the horrors that ISIS can unleash after spending three years fighting them in brutal battles across Syria.
It all culminated with six months of sheer hell fighting in the streets of Raqqa in 2017, with hundreds of Macer’s comrades dying on a weekly basis.
He would watch with horror as ISIS terrorists would use babies as human shields, massacre civilians waving white flags in surrender and blow up his Kurdish comrades in car bombings.
He still remembers the “smell of death” hovering over the city and constant sound of bullets cracking through the air followed by the piercing cries of grief.
It was a far cry from where Macer had grown up in rural Cambridgeshire with his parents and two brothers or central London where he later worked as a currency trader.
But Macer knew he needed to fight after watching Jihadi John behead his kneeling victims and ISIS jihadists burning hostages alive in cages.
AFPMacer went to Syria after seeing this infamous picture of Jihadi John on television[/caption]
AlamyFighters of the People’s Protection Units, a mainly-Kurdish militia in Syria, fire towards ISIS militants[/caption]
AP:Associated PressDamaged buildings in Raqqa two days after Syrian Democratic Forces ousted ISIS[/caption]
After six months of brutal street-to-street fighting in Raqqa, the city was finally liberated in October 2017 and Macer watched the terrorists limp out of the city, broken and destroyed.
For Macer, watching ISIS surrender in Raqqa was the end of the war for him.
But he warned that the fight is not over.
Macer said: “The Islamic State was militarily defeated in Raqqa and Mosul by the Kurdish-dominated SDF and by the Americans and British.
“But they didn’t destroy the ideology.
“The ideology of hate and evil still exists in Syria and Iraq. It just fled to the desert, weaker but more aggressive and just as ambitious as it ever was.
“They are waiting for the crisis to get worse, because where there is a crisis, you will find the isms that we despise and that cause so much misery in this world.”
And if the West doesn’t act now in supporting the locals and SDF in securing the ISIS camps – it could come back to haunt us, Macer warned.
COMMENT: Shamima said severed heads didn’t faze her – she deserves no home in UK
By Tom Tugendhat MP, former Minister of State for Security
IN 2015, Shamima Begum left her friends, her family and her future in East London and boarded a plane to Turkey.
Her final destination was Syria, and her intention to join ISIS, a jihadi death cult.
Over the next few years, ISIS raped and murdered their way across the Middle East.
As their barbaric wave of extremism and beheadings spread, Shamima chose to remain a part of it. She chose to stay.
Begum may have started a child. But she became a criminal. And she chose to remain with ISIS until they had been driven back, and lost all of their Middle Eastern territories in 2019.
When a reporter finally found her in a Syrian refugee camp, she told him that she ‘didn’t regret coming here’.
She described how the first severed head she had seen didn’t faze her at all, as it belonged to an ‘enemy of Islam’, before telling the reporter that she wanted to return to the UK.
Thankfully, that never happened. Then Home Secretary Sajid Javid made good on the decision she had made in 2015, and every year of the fighting since, by stripping her of her British citizenship and blocking her return.
He said at the time that he would not hesitate to remove someone’s nationality if it was the only option left to him to protect those living in the UK.
It was the right call then. It would be the right call now.
READ MORE HERE
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