BACK when I hung out with spies and terrorists for a living, I’d often find myself sitting at my keyboard trying to find words to explain the abyss of immorality I’d found myself in.
My reporting centred on British intelligence operations in Northern Ireland and Iraq: collusion, black ops, the full gamut of the Dirty War playbook. The most fitting metaphor I could employ was that British intelligence turned white into black, night into day: what was good became bad, sin was a virtue, and nothing mattered save the end result. Spying is essentially a utilitarian numbers game in which morality is irrelevant; human beings are mere pieces on a chessboard.
It’s the policy of state-sanctioned murder by Britain’s security forces in Northern Ireland, however, which best exemplifies our nation’s desolate intelligence regime. Double agents would be recruited within loyalist and republican terror groups like the IRA or UDA. In order to ensure a constant stream of top-grade intelligence kept flowing to British forces, these agents were allowed to continue operating as terrorists. If a terrorist suddenly stops killing or bombing, or every operation they’re connected to fails, then they’ll become suspected of treachery, and not only will intelligence dry up, but the asset will probably be found in a country lane with a bag over their head and a bullet in the brain – after they’ve been tortured first, obviously.
Read more: Why we must not wash our hands of Northern Ireland’s Dirty War
To make matters worse, these terrorist double agents were sometimes even used as proxy assassins by the British state. Let’s say British security forces found it impossible to take out Target X in the IRA. Well, Double Agent Y in a loyalist terror group could be passed intelligence to carry out a hit on Target X. In some cases, double agents within the IRA were used to frame republican targets the British state couldn’t capture – thereby painting them as traitors and ensuring their execution. Scotland, incidentally, had its own starring role in this. The officer who ran the military intelligence outfit at the heart of these Dirty War operations was Brigadier Gordon Kerr, from Aberdeen, who’d later become Britain’s military attaché in Beijing. Who says you don’t get rewarded for doing the Queen’s dirty work, eh?
Many intelligence officers involved in this kind of activity went on to carry out operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. When I learned that rather terrible fact more than 20 years ago, my blood ran somewhat cold. If the use of proxy assassins and double agents in Northern Ireland was bad - what in God’s name would it be like in Kabul or Baghdad?
Well, today, we’ve got a flavour of what our western intelligence operations have been like in the Middle East. It’s been uncovered that Shamima Begum, the so-called Isis bride, was smuggled into Syria by a double agent working for Canadian intelligence, aged just 15. British authorities later covered up the operation.
In 2015, Begum travelled to Syria via Turkey with two schoolfriends. She was then trafficked by Mohammed Al Rasheed, who was providing information to Canadian intelligence, while people smuggling for Isis. Rasheed had trafficked human beings to Isis for eight months prior to helping Begum cross the border.
Rasheed passed intelligence on those he was smuggling to his Canadian handlers. He also gathered intelligence on Isis locations, including the homes of western Jihadists. That was the real motive for allowing a vulnerable child to fall into terrorist clutches. Fools like Begum were the means by which intelligence could be gathered. Rasheed was finally arrested in Turkey shortly after trafficking Begum.
Rasheed was recruited when he asked the Canadian embassy in Jordan for asylum. He was told he’d get asylum if he collected intelligence on Isis. After his arrest, Canada’s government informed Britain of the operation. Both Canada and Britain then appear to have covered up the entire affair.
The ghastly immorality of allowing a child to be trafficked to terrorists is bad enough. But for Britain to collude in the cover-up – leaving Begum to her fate – is surely near the very bottom of the abyss when it comes to the sins of western intelligence.
Yet matters get worse. Come 2019, Begum was in a refugee camp, asking to come home. The Home Secretary revoked her citizenship, saying she could never return. In 2020, the Court of Appeal ruled Begum should be permitted to return in order to contest the Government’s ruling. That decision was overturned by the Supreme Court – leaving Begum to rot. Would such a decision have been taken if courts knew the truth? Begum had been married while underage to an ISIS fighter. All three of her children were dead by this time.
Britain, together with Canada, New Zealand, America and Australia, operate what’s known as the "Five Eyes" intelligence alliance, where the world’s English-speaking nations share secrets. One for all and all for one, as the chaps say.
Operations by Canadian intelligence, or British, American, Australian or New Zealand intelligence, differ little as we’re all bonded together – following the same playbook, employing the same barbaric disregard for human life.
I once asked a British intelligence officer how he could justify running a double agent in the IRA codenamed Stakeknife – a man I subsequently identified as the leading republican Freddie Scappaticci. He told me that if an agent killed 100 people but saved 200 lives through the intelligence they passed, then the operation was a success. “It’s just a numbers game,” he said to me. “I know it’s hard for normal people to see it that way, though.”
The term "normal people" stuck in my head. What is the intelligence service but an extension of government – and what is government but an extension of the people? I doubt many "normal people", us, the citizens who elect our governments, condone operations which treat groomed 15-year-old schoolgirls like chips in a poker game.
Begum was a stupid child who made a stupid, deadly mistake. Yet she was exploited as part of the war on terror. Allow her home. If she committed crimes overseas, prosecute her – but ensure the Canadian and British officials who knew what was happening to Begum share the dock alongside her.
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