What should Australia do with the children of Islamic State?

Al-Hawl camp, Syria: The teenage daughter of Khaled Sharrouf, Australia’s most infamous terrorist, has pleaded with Australia to bring her and her young siblings home, saying she is worried about her pregnant sister’s health in the vast, mud-caked camp in Syria where they are living.

Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age from al-Hawl camp, 16-year-old Hoda Sharrouf also says she forgives her father and mother, Tara Nettleton, for dragging her to Syria along with her four siblings when she was just 11 years old.

It is the first time any of the Sharrouf children have spoken publicly about their five years living in the so-called "caliphate" of Islamic State.

She was one of three young Australian women interviewed this week, all having fled the village of Baghouz, IS’s last redoubt in Syria. Shayma Assaad, from the NSW central coast, is the wife of IS member Mohammed Noor Masri. She and Kirsty Rosse-Emile from Melbourne are both pregnant, and both pleading with the Morrison government to bring them home. All are Australian citizens.

Two of them were taken by their parents to a war zone when they should have been in high school, and a third went as a teenager with her much older husband. They are now paying the price for these decisions by their families.

A woman washes clothes in front of her tent at the fence line of the Foreign section of al-Hawl camp in Syria.Credit: Kate Geraghty

The camp where these women and their children are now living houses 73,000 people, including 50,000 children. It is filthy, and dangerous. Unrest in recent days prompted guards to fire warning shots, and the muddy ground is littered with human excrement. Sixty children have died here and in neighbouring camps since December. Thirty-one people died in the last week alone.

The Australian women say they do not have enough to eat.

British IS bride Shamima Begum lost her newborn son in another Syrian camp last month. It sparked a serious debate in her country about what to do with the wives and children of IS.

The stories of these young women of IS, and their children, will likely prompt a similar debate in Australia.

Hoda Sharrouf: I forgive them

The Sharrouf family shot to global infamy in 2014 when Hoda’s father, former Sydney man Khaled Sharrouf, posted a picture of his son, Abdullah, holding up a severed head in IS’s capital, al-Raqqa.

Khaled Sharrouf was killed in an airstrike in August 2017, along with his other two sons, Abdullah and Zarqawi. His wife, convert Tara Nettleton, died of illness in 2015, leaving Hoda, 16, her older sister Zaynab, 17, and younger brother Hamzeh, 8, as residents of the Islamic State.

Now Hoda says all she craves is normality.

"I want to see my brother grow up as a normal kid," she says from inside her tent on the edge of the al-Hawl camp. "I want to see my nieces with a happy life with good treatment. I want to see my sister give birth safely.

Khaled Sharrouf and his sons on social media in 2014.

"What about the children? What about the people that didn’t want to come here? What about the people that are stuck here and never wanted to be here in the first place? They don’t deserve this kind of treatment.

"We’re Australians too. Australia needs to do something about it. They need to step up."

Ms Sharrouf herself was injured in the siege on al-Raqqa, suffering nerve damage to her ankle.

"My foot doesn’t work any more … I want to get treatment for that so that I have hope of my leg working again."

Hoda says the food people had managed to scrounge during the battle at Baghouz, Islamic State’s final stronghold, had made them sick.

"People told us that we have infections in our stomachs now and we need proper treatment for it and there’s no proper treatment here. So for pregnant women it’s even worse," she says. "None of the women are [getting obstetric care] here."

The children’s grandmother, Karen Nettleton, has visited the al-Hawl camp and is trying to persuade Kurdish authorities in north-eastern Syria to help return the children to Australia.

But Abdulkarim Omar, the head of foreign affairs for the Kurdish administration, has told the Herald and Age that, without the co-operation of the Australian government, including a direct handover to Australian officials – something the Morrison government is reluctant to do – the women and children will not be allowed to leave.

The Self Administration of North-East Syria’s Co-Chairman of Foreign Affairs, Dr Abdulkarim Omar.Credit: Kate Geraghty

"When the Australian government contacts us, we will give those kids to them and any other women and kids that they request," Dr Omar said.

Ms Sharrouf says her older sister Zaynab is seven months pregnant and in a bad way.

"[Zaynab] is very sick," Ms Sharrouf says. "A lot of the pregnant women here are sick because there’s no treatment here.

"She’s become very skinny – skinnier than I’ve ever seen her. Sometimes she can barely get off her bed. I’m scared for her as well because she’s falling into depression. She needs her family next to her."

Zaynab, Hoda, Abdullah (deceased), Humzeh and Zarqawi (deceased) as children.

Zaynab’s father married her off to his best friend, fellow jihadist Mohammed Elomar, when she was just 13. She already has two children: Ayesha, 3, and Fatima, 2. She reportedly has a second husband.

Hoda Sharrouf admits that "I feel upset about it sometimes" when she thinks of her parents dragging her to war-torn Syria when she was 11 years old.

"But that was my parents’ choice and I forgive them for it," she says.

"I forgive them for it."

Shayma Assaad: sins of the father

Shayma Assaad is also pregnant and worried. She was just 15 when she travelled to Syria with her parents. Her mother is now in the camp with her, and her father in prison.

Shayma quickly met and married Mohammed Noor Masri, the former Sydney tradesman turned IS recruit whom the Herald and Age interviewed in a Kurdish prison some distance from the camp.

"Carol", the mother of Mohammed Noor Masri, with a picture of him as a child.Credit: Louise Kennerley

Now 19, Ms Assaad already has three young sons and, in similar terms to her husband’s, she is also begging to be brought home.

"Everybody makes mistakes in life and I reckon we deserve a chance. The young kids don’t know anything in life yet. Why don’t they deserve a second chance? They have nothing to do with it," she says.

She has had an ultrasound and been told the baby is fine, "and she told me I’m getting a little girl". But she says the medical care in the camp is poor. Her eldest son Alae had a serious chest infection but had not received enough antibiotics.

Back in Australia, Shayma’s mother-in-law "Carol" was only alerted by the story in the Herald and Age to the fact that Masri, her son, was in prison having gone to live with IS.

"It hit me like a brick," she says. "I feel shattered. My heart is broken."

Australian IS member and airconditioner serviceman Mohammed Noor Masri in a Kurdish prison.Credit: Kate Geraghty

She had not heard from Masri since 2014 and, while she’d had a "gut feeling" he might have joined the "caliphate", she was still not prepared for the reality.

"I haven't been sleeping well. I haven't been feeling well. And now I have to process this."

Carol traces her son’s path to Syria all the way back to "substantial behavioural problems" during a dysfunctional childhood in a broken home.

Masri lived with his father from the age of 12, when he went off the rails.

"He was headed for a life of crime. I could just see it unfolding before [my eyes]. I had no authority in his life."

But she says he is a kind and caring boy who "was always out mowing my lawns, cleaning the gutters".

She believes a turning point in Masri’s radicalisation was in 2011, when he lost his half-brother in a motorbike accident.

"From that time onwards, he became very strict with his religion. That's what ultimately led him to where he is now. That pushed him even further along."

But Carol is adamant her son would not harm anyone.

"This boy," she says, pointing to a school photo of her son, "he's not a killer. He's a naughty boy, but he's not a killer. I would have a tough time convincing people [of that]."

A primary school photo of Mohammed Noor Masri taken in 2000. Credit: Louise Kennerley

As Carol comes to terms with her new reality, including grandchildren, she says they "should be removed from there and brought back here".

"They didn't ask to be born there. That's a shocking state of affairs. [It’s a] sins of the father sort of scenario. I could write the cry-baby letter to the government, I guess, and get a reply back saying, ‘No we're not doing anything about it’."

Either way, this unexpected news has changed her life.

"This is a shame and a stigma that I have to live with for the rest of my days now."

Kirsty Rosse-Emile: pizza, chocolate and jihad

Rosse-Emile, 24, is the daughter of two former Christians who converted to Islam when she was nine. She grew up in a close-knit family home in south-east Melbourne and attended Muslim private school, Minaret College.

Her social media posts as a young teen showed a flirtation with the idea of jihad, along with a love of pizza, chocolate and the Fremantle Dockers AFL club.

Kirsty in her school days.Credit: Simon Schluter

A decade later, she is five months pregnant, with a two-year-old daughter, Amirah, and living in the overcrowded al-Hawl camp with 73,000 other people. She has already suffered one miscarriage, a year ago while still living under IS, and fears another.

"I’m still recovering from the traumatic experience in Baghouz with no food, with bullets shooting over your head, rockets landing right next to you," Rosse-Emile says.

"I don’t want to push myself because I don’t want to lose another child, especially now that I’m not with my husband. I don’t know if I’m going to see him again. This could be my last child."

Some non-government organisations, including Save the Children, are present in the overcrowded camp, but the medical tents are a long walk away, and have lengthy queues.

If anything happens to them it's going to be a very dark day in Australia's history.

Kirsty's mother, Emma

Save the Children’s Syria response director Sonia Khush says the situation in al-Hawl is "growing more dire by the day".

"Quite simply, the camp is no place for a child ... A lack of basic health services and hygienic conditions means there’s a growing risk of potentially life-threatening illnesses," Khush says.

"[The Australian government] should get everyone back … especially the women and children," insists Rosse-Emile.

"The men are obviously going to be a different case for them, but for the women and children like most of us, we were just housewives or doing humanitarian aid. Why don’t we get a second chance?"

She travelled to Syria five years ago after she met and married a much older Moroccan immigrant, Nabil (whose full name she does not want to reveal).

They went "to practice our Islam freely with other people that are similar to us", she says.

"She went there with a view to be happy, the view to be under Sharia Law," says Rosse-Emile's father, Guy, from his home in Melbourne, where he and his wife Emma are desperate.

Guy Rosse-Emile blames his daughter's husband Nabil, a one-time attendee of the infamous al-Furqan prayer room in Melbourne, for taking his daughter to Syria. Guy says he will never forgive him.

They say their daughter was an innocent party.

"I know Kirsty didn’t fight, she was just a housewife," Guy says.

Emma, the mother of Kirsty, wants her daughter home.Credit: Simon Schluter

On his mobile phone he has precious images of a granddaughter he’s never met. She is wearing dirty gumboots in some. In others she appears pale and distant.

He wants her home.

"[Scott] Morrison purports to be a great Christian person but is adamant he's not going to help these people. Where is the Christian ethos? ... The ethos of compassion, love and forgiveness?"

Mother Emma says Kirsty was "worried about the little girl because she’s stopped talking and playing. All she can get in the way of food for her is dry dates.

"We can't send money there or we’ll be put in jail. If I had the money I'd fly over there tomorrow and pick her up and bring her back, and if I went to jail for it I would. I'm at a crossroads."

Emma is pleading with the Australian public to have mercy.

"I want [the Australian government] to do the right thing, get the planes over there and bring these people home. It is wrong, it is immoral and it is a sin.

"And if anything happens to them it's going to be a very dark day in Australia's history."

Foreign ISIS wives and children at the fence line of the Foreign section of al-Hawl camp.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Families in limbo