How temporary refugee camps became defacto prisons for Islamic State’s unwanted

‘This is not a holiday camp, it’s not a refugee camp, it’s not a place where the basic needs of human beings are met in any way.’

Al-Roj camp, where Australian women and children linked to Islamic State members are being held in northeastern Syria. Picture: Ellen Whinnett/The Australian

The secure detention camps holding families linked to Islamic State in northeast Syria were originally designed to house refugees, but have morphed into prison camps in which more than 60,000 women and children are being held indefinitely.

The main camps, al-Roj and al-Hol, were established in the early 1990s to provide temporary shelter for refugees fleeing across the border to escape conflict in Iraq.

Twenty years on, they have become de facto prisons, holding tens of thousands of people who have no legal status in conditions the UN has described as meeting the definition of “torture”.

Around 60,000 people, including several Australian women and children, are in the al-Hol camp, near the restive city of Hasakah in northeast Syria.

Australian children Mariam, 3, and Abdul Rahman, 4, in al-Roj camp in northeastern Syria. Neither know life outside it. Picture: Ellen Whinnett/The Australian

About 60 Australian women and children were moved two years ago from al-Hol to al-Roj, a safer but more heavily guarded camp in a remote area of Syria close to the Iraqi border.

The camps were rapidly expanded after the March 2019 fall of Islamic State’s last redoubt in ­Baghouz, when tens of thousands of fighters, members and their families surrendered to Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces and were taken into custody.

The Kurdish Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria is not officially recognised but controls and runs the Kurdish area of northeast Syria as a de facto government, and was an ally in the Global Anti-ISIS Coalition.

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Pressure is mounting on the PM to repatriate Australian women and children held in camps for Islamic State families in Syria, amid fears their indefinite detention is leading to a national security disaster.

While al-Roj, which mostly houses foreign citizens, is under control of the Kurdish forces and is relatively safe, the SDF controls only the perimeter of the al-Hol camp, whose occupants are mainly Syrian and Iraqi and are controlled by Islamic State members inside the camp.

Islamic State runs the schools, and its morality police prowl the three square kilometres of tents inside its perimeter.

Murders occur almost every week in the camp. Two women were killed in the week when The Weekend Australian was in Syria, including one woman who was ­beheaded.

The UN Special Rapporteur on Counter Terrorism and Human Rights, Fionnuala Ni Aolain, told The Weekend Australian there were serious concerns about the detention of the women and children in the camps.

“The history of these camps is long but originally al-Hol was established as a bona-fide refugee camp during hostilities … but is has long since ceased to be anything close to a bona-fide refugee camp or place of humanitarian shelter,’’ Professor Ni Aolain said.

“The UN experts, including my office … have defined it as a place of mass, systematic, arbitrary detention in which the conditions meet the threshold for torture – inhuman and degrading treatment under international law.

“This is not a holiday camp, it’s not a refugee camp, it’s not a place where the basic needs of human beings including Australian children and women are being met in any way.’’

Professor Ni Aolain said her ­office and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child had examined the legal status of al-Roj, where most of the Australians are now held, and “similarly found it is a place of arbitrary detention, that the conditions meet the same threshold (of) inhuman treatment under international law’’.

“Bear in mind, in none of these settings … there’s no exit, there’s no legal process,’’ she said.

“No one has decided that anyone including the youngest children have committed any offence under national or international law. There’s no access to education. Health provision is limited. There’s no meaningful way for people to live dignified lives in these places.”