By Deborah Snow
“We are left in the dark and brushed under the carpet like we aren’t living, breathing human beings ... Every day is a living hell; every day is just a struggle to stay alive.”
These are the words of one of 12 Australian women their country has chosen to forget. Together with their 22 children, the group remains confined in the bleak desert environment of the al-Roj detention camp in north-east Syria, where they were moved four years ago after initial internment in another camp, al-Hol. Kept under guard for five years, they’ve been waiting for a call that never comes – a call that would bring them home.
Through retired lawyer Robert van Aalst, two of the women – who can’t be identified under court orders – have sent messages to the Herald and The Age describing the deteriorating conditions in al-Roj, which was set up by Kurdish authorities to house the families of slain and defeated Islamic State fighters.
Some of the women and children in the foreign annex of the al-Hol camp in Syria in 2019.Credit: Kate Geraghty
Their pleas come in advance of a last-ditch effort by Save the Children Australia (STCA) to persuade the High Court to review the women and children’s situation in a hearing scheduled for September 23.
“Everyone is sick, from the youngest Australian (aged 5) to the oldest (aged 56),” writes one of the women, detailing a long list of the ailments afflicting the group. They document their daily struggles to procure fresh food, enough clean drinking water and medicines for themselves and their children.
The tents offer little respite from temperatures that can reach 50 degrees or more in summer and biting cold in winter. There is constant fear boys will be removed once camp authorities decide they are old enough to be separated from their mothers and siblings. “My [younger son] bites his fingernails till his skin bleeds and has night terrors because of it,” writes one.
“[His older brother] is constantly anxious and refuses to play outside far away from me, always worried something bad is going to happen.”
Al-Roj refugee camp in north-east Syria.
Fumes from nearby oil fields exacerbate the conditions of those with lung disease. The women fear sending their kids to the camp school because of “radical influences” and constant uncertainty about their position. They teach their children themselves, using basic curriculum materials sent by family members and supporters in Australia. They report periodic gunshots around the camp (usually signalling attempts by someone to escape) and increased drone activity. Worst of all is the loss of hope.
“We were told we were all going home,” says one. “But over the last two years, we haven’t been given any explanation as to why we were left behind when the others are now healing and moving on with life. This is just a form of indefinite torture.”
Those “others” are two smaller cohorts of Australian women and children who’ve been safely repatriated from the camps: the first, a group of orphans who returned in late 2019 under the Morrison government; the second, comprising four women and 13 children, returning under the Albanese government in October 2022.
Labor in opposition signalled its acceptance of a moral imperative to bring all the remaining women and children home, and in October 2022, Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek called for a compassionate approach, saying “some of the women, some of the mothers, were taken there as little more than children themselves and married off to Islamic State fighters, some of them tricked, some of them forced to go there”.
But the political will to tackle the remaining cohort has seemingly evaporated. This is despite a call from US Secretary of State Antony Blinken as recently as May this year calling on countries who still have citizens in the camps to get them home.
That leaves the women in what Save The Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler calls “relentless limbo”.
Fearful of opening another front in the national security wars, Labor looks likely to sit on its hands until after the election. It clings to faint hopes of reclaiming the seat of Fowler in western Sydney, held by independent Dai Le, who was one of the strongest objectors to the repatriation of the group of women and children who returned in October 2022.
At the time, she cited the concerns of her Christian Assyrian constituents, many of whom, she said, had fled persecution and “unspeakable atrocities” inflicted by Islamic State. Contacted last week, her position had not much changed. While she understood the need to “show compassion and support to these women and children”, she said her Assyrian community remained concerned that the families might have been “indoctrinated”.
More than 30 Australian women and children, who are relatives of former Islamic State fighters, are stranded at al-Roj refugee camp in northern Syria.Credit: Save the Children
Recently appointed Home Affairs and Immigration Minister Tony Burke last week deflected questions about the al-Roj women and children to his department.
In a statement, the department said it “remained concerned about the remaining Australian-linked women and children in the internally displaced persons camps [in north-east Syria]”, but the government’s ability to provide consular assistance to the group was “severely limited due to the extremely dangerous security situation and because we do not have an embassy or consulate in Syria”.
These reasons – described by Tinkler as “red herrings” – overlook the Americans’ offer of assistance and ignore the fact that the lack of an embassy or consulate in Syria was never an obstacle in the previous two extractions.
The department has also asserted it would be “inappropriate” to comment further because the matter was now “before the court” – a reference to the High Court hearing this month, though so far, that court has only agreed to hear oral submissions on whether it should take up the case.
In earlier hearings in the Federal Court, Save the Children sought to force the Commonwealth to take responsibility for the cohort still in the camp by way of a writ of habeas corpus. That bid failed on technical grounds. But significantly, the judges highlighted the fact the two earlier repatriations had proceeded smoothly, with maximum co-operation from Kurdish authorities.
Former US ambassador Peter Galbraith also testified in the case, stating in an affidavit that he’d made more than 20 trips to north-east Syria himself, personally helping to extract several women and 29 children.
Political willpower
The Federal Court made clear the return of the women and children was a matter of government willpower, stating, “if the Commonwealth has the political will to bring the ... women and children back to Australia, on the evidence before the court it would be a relatively straightforward exercise”.
Anticipating that some, perhaps many, Australians will view their return as a security risk, the women have repeatedly pledged to comply with any control orders authorities here might see fit to impose. ASIO would not comment this week on the remaining cohort in al-Roj, but in 2022, ASIO boss Mike Burgess said, “return of all those individuals would not materially change the national terrorism threat level”.
‘Our children want to go to school, make friends and go to a park that’s not caged in by a fence … we feel abandonment, and it’s the worst feeling in the world.’
Al-Roj detainee
Tinkler says security agencies generally believe the best thing is to bring the women and the children back, to monitor, support and integrate them back into society rather than leave them in a region that’s “very volatile and where potentially they are prone to more radical belief systems”.
“These are Australian kids who have experienced immense trauma and suffering but are left to languish there,” he says. “What I find difficult to comprehend is that the Australian government could end their suffering right now by bringing them home. But our political leaders are choosing not to act”.
While the Federal Court generally describes the women in the Syrian camps as “wives (voluntary or involuntary) of ISIS fighters”, the two who’ve been in contact with this masthead say each in the group has a different story, and they’re “victims of war, suffering for decisions other people have made on our behalf. Nobody knows how we are barely holding on; nobody knows what each and every one of us have been through”.
A number of Sydney’s Islamic community leaders and organisations have strongly backed the return of the women and children, among them Dr Jamal Rifi, Gamel Kheir from the Lebanese Muslim Association, and Kamalle Dabboussy, whose own daughter and several grandchildren were expatriated from north-east Syria in 2022.
Robert van Aalst, acting as pro bono interlocutor for the women, says, “Even murderers eventually get parole. These women haven’t committed a single crime, and their children are innocents. You don’t jail people because of the sins of their fathers.” As well as the larger group held at al-Roj, it’s understood a smaller group of three Australian women and five children are even further off the radar, still languishing in al-Hol camp.
“Our families and communities in Australia are waiting with their arms wide open to love and support us ... Our children want to go to school, make friends and go to a park that’s not caged in by a fence and soldiers”, the women write. “We feel abandonment, and it’s the worst feeling in the world”.
Start the day with a summary of the day’s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter.