The UK Private Security Boom in Syria under Al Qaeda Regime - Part 1

Part one of an investigation into the potential for British mercenaries to gain a foothold in Syria under the control of Al Qaeda

First published by UK Column

When it comes to the world of Private Military Companies (PMC) or Private Military and Security Companies (PMSC), public perception has been conditioned to think of the Russian Wagner Group, formerly led by the maverick Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin. Western commentators like Jack Margolin point out that: "During Wagner’s assault on Bakhmut, Prigozhin declared the need for the Russian military to learn from what made Wagner effective. A year after his death, Russian military leadership have in many ways accomplished exactly that, taming the diffuse and agile elements of the Wagner Group to deploy them to lethal effect".

However, it may surprise some to know that the predominant trend by governments to benefit from PMCs is actually spearheaded by four countries, making up 70% of the PMC market globally. These countries are the United States, the United Kingdom, China, and South Africa, and they host the majority of PMCs operating in almost every country in the world for a diverse range of clients, assuming responsibilities for critical state and security functions.

Some argue that Russia, while having a relatively small PMSC sector, has potentially used its contractors for combat more than other countries. There is evidence that this is a cleaner use of PMCs than the US/UK’s clandestine, covert use of the PMC skill set for a multitude of hybrid war strategies that offer plausible deniability and distance from the potential for war crimes and international law transgressions committed by these shadowy groups who assume the role of paid scapegoat when exposed.

The market for PMCs is a rapidly expanding one. Today, more than 150 private military companies exist and offer their services in around 50 countries. The size of the industry is quickly evolving; by 2020, $223 billion worth of services were sold, an amount estimated to double by 2030. This is a war for profit that is thinly disguised as ‘modern diplomacy’.

As pointed out in this Modern Diplomacy article on PMCs:

Nonetheless, the legality of their actions becomes a subject of scrutiny when they operate in regions beyond their home country. Some of these companies are no strangers to violating international humanitarian and human rights laws, as long as they meet the needs of their clients so they can get paid.

For example, in 2004 muslim prisoners from Abu Ghraib prison in the hands of personnel from the United States’ contractor CACI International were brutally tortured; soldiers even took pictures with the detainees making fun of them. Despite that, CACI International received no punishment, asked the accusers for a refund due to legal expenses, and continued to carry out contracts with the U.S. worth 23 million dollars.

In 2008, War on Want published a chilling report: ‘Getting Away with Murder: the Need for Action on UK Private Military and Security Companies’. From that report:

Killings and human rights abuses by private armies in Iraq have dominated the headlines in recent months. There are currently tens of thousands of mercenaries working for private military and security companies (PMSCs) outside legal or democratic control. Both the US and Iraqi governments have begun to take action to control these mercenary armies. Yet the UK government has failed to act, despite UK companies being some of the biggest players in the industry.

During Parliamentary questions in 2021, Baroness Tonge posed a question to the Foreign Development and Commonwealth Office: "Q: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether UK citizens are permitted (1) to act as mercenaries, and (2) to train with foreign militaries; and if so, (a) under what legislative or other framework such activity is permitted, and (b) in what countries they permit such activity".

It was Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon who responded. It is worth nothing that Lord Ahmad has been a long-term supporter of regime change in Syria and defender of the use of the opaque Conflict Security and Stability Fund to support so-called ‘moderate’ armed groups fighting alongside Al Qaeda rebrands and affiliates in Syria since 2011.

A: We draw a clear distinction between mercenaries and private security companies (PSCs). We promote high standards for PSCs internationally through voluntary regulation [emphasis added] of the sector and played a leading role in the drafting of the International Code of Conduct for Private Security Service Providers (2010), which sets out principles for security providers, and related standards, governance, and oversight mechanisms, and the launch of its oversight mechanism to monitor compliance with the Code, the International Code of Conduct Association (ICoCA) (2013).

Members of UK Armed Forces regularly undertake training and engage in exercises with a wide range of international partners in that professional capacity, where this best supports the development of UK military capability, contributes to the development of international defence relationships and supports wider government objectives [emphasis added].

Britain is the world centre for private military contractors, and it's almost impossible to find out what they're up to. This was the title of a 2018 article in Open Democracy: ‘Welcome to the Murky World of Mercenaries and Floating Armouries’. Britain has led this privatisation of modern warfare:

Some of their biggest clients are governments; since 2004, the British state has spent approximately £50 million annually on mercenary companies. The total worth of the global private military and security industry has been estimated to stand somewhere between £69 billion and £275 billion.

Despite the size of this mercenary industry, the entire sector is marked by secrecy. Men trained in the arts of subterfuge and counter-intelligence dominate this sphere, and the result is an industry that operates from the shadows.

The conclusions drawn in the article, which is co-written by the Executive Director of Action on Armed Violence (AOAV), Dr. Iain Overton, are disturbing. In 2018, AOAV had investigated 235 UK-based, internationally-operating PMSCs. These “profit-seeking entities” are trusted with governmental security projects, while themselves being subject to a perilously weak system of “self-regulation” [emphasis added].

There is a growing inclination by the British State to outsource Government tasks to these PMSCs. As AOAV points out, given the lack of scrutiny of private military and security companies, private contractors may enable governments to get tasks done that avoid the scrutiny that comes with national force deployment:

Even though the foreign office argues that UK-employed private military and security companies are just conducting defensive operations, and hence not qualified as ‘mercenaries’, the lack of transparency that pervades the industry offers little in the way of assurances or reasons to trust this statement. Until Britain’s mercenary industry shows greater transparency and oversight, Action On Armed Violence calls on the British government to take its declared human rights ambitions seriously. It must stop deploying private military and security companies to countries that have major human rights concerns.

It appears that British Government oversight in 2021 had not improved greatly despite the warnings clearly stated by Overton in 2018: the reliance on the perilously weak system of “voluntary regulation” is still in place, as Lord Ahmad stated in his response to Baroness Tonge.

In July 2023 The Standard published an article called ‘How London Became Home to Some of the World’s Largest Private Security Firms’. It said, “Nestled between London’s members’ clubs, tailors and car dealerships lie some of the world’s biggest private armies”.

Overton’s warnings have, apparently, still not been heeded by the British State. A joint statement provided to ES Magazine by the Ministry of Defence and the Home Office says: “The Security Industry Authority (SIA) is responsible for the regulation of the private security industry in the UK ... [it] has no role in relation to the provision of security services overseas”.

With a private security market now pivoting towards digital and cyber surveillance, there is a need for PMSCs to provide protection of data from a cyberattack. A market that could be even more lucrative for the PMSCs that are able to respond to such demand.

However, Overton warns that, in this case, "transparency would wane further still": "We’ll see more of the Cambridge Analytica-style approach, digital intelligence services, and more surveillance-type work. That’s probably where the real money is... it obviously works hugely in the shadows [...] this is a world of disinformation and misinformation [emphasis added] warfare".

In March 2022, BBC News Washington admitted that private military firms see demand in Ukraine. The BBC also reported in 2023 that then-Home Secretary Suella Braverman wanted to designate Russia’s Wagner Group as a terrorist organisation. Ms. Braverman said Wagner fighters "are terrorists, plain and simple," and a "threat to global security". Will the UK FCDO apply the same standards to UK PMSCs operating outside international law and human rights conventions in foreign countries?

A quote from the BBC article on the proliferation of PMSCs operating in Ukraine points out:

‘If you have the skillset to be a private contractor, you have the skillset to be a mercenary. There's no bright line between the two’, said Sean McFate, an-ex US paratrooper.

The proliferation of PMCs may lead to as much ‘chaos and mayhem’ as good, he warned. ‘Mercenaries historically elongate conflict for profit’ [emphasis added], he added. ‘It could get to a point in the mid-century where super-rich people have private armies, and I don't know how that looks’.

The Emerging PMSC Market in Al Qaeda-controlled Syria Led by Emerald Solutions

Recent articles in Intelligence Online and Alestiklal have pinpointed a Dubai-based PMSC operating in Syria with the approval of the Al Qaeda Junta that took power after the fall of Damascus and the exit of former President Bashar Al Assad, now given humanitarian asylum in Russia.

The self-proclaimed, unelected President of the Junta is now known as Ahmed Al Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammed Al Jolani — with a history of ISIS membership, a co-founder of Al Qaeda in Syria (Nusra Front), and then creator of the Hayat Tahrir Al Sham brand (HTS) to distance Jolani’s Western-Turkish-backed political aspirations from the Al Qaeda label. HTS is currently conducting ethnic cleansing operations in Syria, targeting Syrian minorities including Alawites Christians, Shia and Sunni Muslims who do not adhere to the Takfiri ideology and who are protecting fellow Syrians from the HTS terrorist purges across Syria.

Regime Change in Syria Was a Very British Affair

The UK Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (UK FCDO as it is now known) and MI6 agencies have played a principal role in the clandestine wars waged against successive anti-imperialist Syrian governments since Syria’s independence from the French Mandate in 1946.

In 2013 French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas told reporters that Britain had planned to trigger and armed insurgence in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business - I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria”.

The UK FCDO and Intelligence agencies provided the primary creativity and investment in a media, PR, and NGO complex that would manage narratives designed to facilitate regime change and ultimately destabilise the sovereign nation of Syria. In 2020, a mass document leak exposed the extent to which the UK FCDO was involved in planting narratives on Syria via a cluster of UK/US-funded intelligence cut-outs, trained Syrian opposition representatives, and so-called citizen journalists; stories picked up by the likes of the BBC and Qatar’s Al Jazeera. Journalist Ian Cobain exposed the UK FCDO role in a media campaign to whitewash the terrorist armed groups, for The Guardian in 2016.

Further leaked files show that such opaque UK FCDO operations also boosted the image of now-President Jolani.

These narratives included the alleged chemical weapons use by the Syrian Government against their own citizens in Ghouta 2013, Khan Sheikhoun 2017, and Douma 2018. These are the three main alleged attacks that underpinned the criminalisation of former President Assad, the Syrian Government, and armed forces, manufacturing public consent for regime change in Syria.

The flagship of the UKFCO regime change strategy were the MI6-midwived White Helmets, established in Turkey and Jordan in 2013 by former British Military Intelligence operative James Le Mesurier, who was awarded an Order of the British Empire Medal (OBE) for his efforts. The White Helmets were instrumental in the staging of the chemical weapons hoaxes. They were allegedly unarmed, but were regularly caught carrying weapons, and were embedded exclusively with the Al Qaeda-affiliated groups in the areas they occupied and besieged.

The White Helmets also were only able to produce spurious evidence against the Syrian Government that the West and Israel wanted to topple. Despite being embedded with the Al Qaeda-dominated terrorist forces that occupied Syria from 2011 onwards, they never reported on a single atrocity committed by the terrorist gangs against the Syrian people. As former CIA analyst Philip Giraldi wrote in 2018:

Perhaps the most serious charge against the White Helmets consists of the evidence that they actively participated in the atrocities, to include torture and murder, carried out by their al-Nusra hosts. There have been numerous photos [Editor’s Note: this post has been deleted] of the White Helmets operating directly with armed terrorists and also celebrating over the bodies of execution victims and murdered Iraqi soldiers. The group has an excellent working relationship with a number of jihadi affiliates and is regarded by them as fellow ‘mujahideen’ and ‘soldiers of the revolution’.

From the Article on Emerald in Intelligence Online

In March, Emerald Solutions’ Instagram channel posted a video detailing their establishment in Syria: “Emerald Syria Limited is now officially licensed and fully compliant to support media, film, documentaries, commercial projects, reconstruction, oil & gas, and NGOs in Syria [emphasis added]. Ready to partner with you for success!”

Emerald Solutions Group told Intelligence Online that it currently supplied its “clients” with villas in Damascus secured by “local forces”, meaning Jolani’s militia comprising foreign and Syrian Takfiri mercenaries and groups. Emerald also claims that their operatives entered Damascus on the day the city fell in December 2024.

Allegedly, this was to protect international media organisations reporting on the events, but it must raise the following questions:

Were Emerald working in collaboration with HTS prior to the fall of Damascus? Were Emerald already working in Idlib prior to the HTS initial attack on Aleppo? Did Emerald take prior part in the logistics, strategic planning, preparation, fighting, and training of HTS? Is this why Emerald were given the green light so quickly by Jolani’s regime? To what extent are the UK FCDO aware of the role of Emerald in Syria? Is the UK FCDO, in any way, funding Emerald directly or via intermediaries to protect UK foreign policy interests in Syria post-regime change? Why is Emerald not highlighting the atrocities being committed by the Jolani-led Takfiri groups that are carrying out horrific massacres of Syrians in the coastal areas and further inland?

Intelligence Online was unable to confirm whether or not Emerald Syria Ltd. had a local security licence, but we were able to consult the firm's certificate of incorporation in Damascus, established with a capital of 50 million Syrian pounds, or €3,500. This document was signed on 11 March by the Minister of Transitional Internal Trade Maher Khalil Hassan, who was subsequently dismissed on 29 March during a government reshuffle.

Intelligence Online inform us that the Emerald Syria and Iraq branch is run by a former member of the British Armed Forces who joined Emerald in November 2024, one month prior to the launch of the HTS attack on Aleppo and Damascus: Simon Roughton. Roughton is described as an “old hand” in the Middle East’s security field. Roughton has worked extensively with the Kurdish special forces of the Iraqi Peshmerga from 2011 to 2014 through a company called Strategic Overseas Services (SOS) well stocked with other former British military personnel. He worked in Iraq for Aegis Defence and the AKE Group. He then managed Sidar Security in Erbil, Iraq, for ten years when he also represented Tactical North LLC, a military equipment broker. (Company details were not found).

Shortly after the fall of Damascus, a story broke that a young man from Missouri, US, had allegedly been imprisoned for seven months by the former Syrian Government and was found barefoot, wandering the streets of Damascus after thousands of prisoners were released across Syria by the incoming HTS forces regardless of the crimes for which they were incarcerated.

Travis Timmerman had entered Syria illegally from Lebanon, using a smuggler to bring him in. As someone who was living in Damascus from 2019 until December 2024, I honestly find that odd. At the time, it would have been very easy to enter Syria as a tourist with many restrictions on foreign tourists eased since 2018 and the liberation of Eastern Ghouta by the Syrian Arab Army. Timmerman’s story is that he had crossed from Lebanon to Syria on foot, on a religious pilgrimage — ‘God called him to Damascus’. Did God tell him to risk arrest by entering Syria illegally? According to Timmerman, he was not ill-treated while being detained by Syrian security.

Timmerman was swiftly handed over to US military at the illegal Al Tanf base on the border with Iraq and Jordan.

According to Emerald’s Instagram page: "Our newly appointed MD for Iraq and Syria Simon Roughton then assisted, planned, Coordinated and executed the handover with the Syrian Emergency Task Force [emphasis added] (SETF) which involved transiting for many hours into a remote part of Syria and personally handing Mr Timmerman safely over to US forces".

Moaz Moustafa of SETF on the left with Travis Timmerman centre during the handover to the US military in Al Tanf.

Journalist Ivan Kesic wrote about the CIA-funded ‘task force’ that was at forefront of the US ‘regime change’ plot in Syria, the SETF, shortly after the fall of Damascus to an internationally-backed terrorist coup:

For years, the group served as the US Congress' direct link to the so-called Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other rebel factions. Its director, Mouaz Moustafa, is a Washington, DC-based activist of Syrian origin.

In 2014, further SETF activities were exposed in the documentary Red Lines, which was ironically intended to showcase the ‘democratic nature’ of the rebels.

Instead, it revealed international arms and rebel smuggling, Takfiri fanatics, looting, war crimes, and McCain, and Moustafa's central role, further exposing America's covert operations in the Arab country.

SETF were instrumental in maintaining the crippling unilateral coercive measures known as sanctions that decimated Syrian infrastructure and rendered life void of dignity and hope for the Syrian people, trying to recover from a US-UK-Turkey-Israel-EU-Qatar-Saudi Arabia allied regime change war that had been waged against the country since 2011, with Jolani heading up the terrorist proxies that are now in power.

The fact that Emerald Syria is collaborating with such an US-CIA outreach agent is another indicator of how they are perhaps pivotal to the MI6/CIA strategy for the future of Syria now that they have finally achieved the downfall of the Syrian Government and President Assad.

The Shadowy Aegis Connection — Roughton’s First Job in Private Security

Roughton was ‘Team Leader’ at Aegis Defence Services from May 2007 to June 2010. In 2016, two former child soldiers who were under 13 when they fought in Sierra Leone’s ‘civil war’ that ended in 2002, alleged that Aegis “failed to mitigate the psychological harm they suffered”. As adults, the two men were among 2,500 personnel recruited from Sierra Leone to work in Iraq by Aegis and other PMSCs for as little as $16 per day. A former senior director at Aegis defended the practice of hiring personnel from Sierra Leone, saying the company had a “duty” to recruit there because they were cheaper than Europeans.

Former Aegis Director James Ellery said: “So you go from the Midlands of England to Nepalese, Asians etc. and then at some point you say I’m afraid all we can afford now is Africans”.

At the time, Chi Onwurah, a Labour MP and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on Africa, said, “There’s an inherent racism in paying security guards less depending on the country they are coming from when they are facing the same risks as a guard from the UK”.

Aegis, from its establishment, received the majority of its pay cheques from the US Government between 2004 and 2008. Despite there being sketchy direct ties to the UK Government during their operations in Iraq and elsewhere, former British Army personnel were predominantly recruited.

The chairman of Aegis was none other than Conservative MP Nicholas Soames, who still acts as a member of the International Advisory Board for GardaWorld, which bought Aegis in 2015. Soames, formerly MP for Crawley and Mid Sussex, went on to become Minister of State for the Armed Forces and Shadow Secretary of State for Defence/War. This clearly demonstrates the revolving door between the UK Government and the PMSC industry.

Aegis was co-founded by former British Army Lt Col Tim Spicer in 2002. Spicer was the military ‘expert’ who combined forces with entrepreneur Jeffrey Day and former investment bankers Mark Bullough and Jeffrey Armstrong.

Spicer was no stranger to controversy in his PMSC career. His previous company Sandline was at the centre of the 1998 Arms to Africa scandal. A report found that Sandline had breached UN sanctions by sending a reported 100 tonnes of weapons to Sierra Leone during the ‘civil war’. The Arms to Africa affair happened under former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s watch.

Blair was grilled by Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown, who cited the Commons Foreign Affairs Committee report into alleged breaches of the UN arms embargo in Sierra Leone: "Whilst the Government has been playing pass the parcel with the blame over this ... the rebels, who were defeated by (British) arms have now been re-armed, apparently with the assistance of another British company".

Then there was the ‘Sandline Affair’. Peter W. Singer, author of Corporate Warriors, has stated:

“The company [Sandline] was hired to help put down a rebellion in Papua New Guinea, and the local army certainly wasn't happy to find out that a company had been brought in, paid more than their overall budget. So [the army] ... basically launched a coup”.

The coup overthrew the Papua New Guinea Government.

In 2004, members of the US Congress raised serious concerns about Washington awarding a lucrative Iraq contract to Aegis and Spicer. The congressmen requested a Pentagon enquiry into Spicer’s background. Washington-based ‘think tank’ The Brooking Institution said Spicer did not raise any red flags with the military's contract office.

The Government Accountability Office subsequently investigated Aegis and faulted the company for not performing adequate background checks on its employees. Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH), said there are yet more concerns: "In November 2005, there was an Internet video that surfaced that showed an Aegis contractor firing wildly at civilian cars on an Iraqi highway to the tune of ‘Mystery Train’ by Elvis Presley”.

Aegis also played a major role in the conflict in Basra, Iraq. The Governor of Basra hired Aegis to replace the British troops who had left. Aegis strongly participated in the attack on Basra in 2003.

Back to the issue of ‘self-regulation’: Aegis, despite their questionable history, was a founding member of the British Association of Private Security Companies (BAPSC), established in 2006. In their accompanying statement, Aegis said, “As we face changing missions, new responsibilities and increasingly complex and dangerous environments, we recognise that the need for transparency and oversight is greater than ever”.

Aegis tried to repair their damaged reputation by “working closely with the UK government to maintain good relations between the government and the PMCs”. Since then, Aegis has only published one policy paper on the regulation of the PMC industry, suggesting that their commitment to such essential regulatory practices is not high, and is apparently not being sufficiently policed by the UK Government.

End of Part One

In Part Two of this series for UK Column, I will delve deeper into the Emerald Solutions British Army staff, Intelligence-linked consultants, and publicly available sponsors. There are connections to the UK FCDO-controlled White Helmets still operating in post-Assad Syria. Their long-time chief Raed Saleh, a former Idlib-Syria mobile phone salesman, has been appointed Minister of Disaster Management and Emergency Response under the Jolani/HTS Junta. I will speculate on the potential for Emerald and other British Army-staffed PMSCs to act as outreach agents for UK FCDO policy in ‘New Syria’ that must combat Russian, Israeli, and Turkish influence on the ground to secure a UK presence in Syria and the region, now and in the future.

I will also look at the other global conflict arenas where Emerald Solutions are to be found. They include Ukraine and Lebanon.

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