Peter Dutton said it was too dangerous to go to this Syrian prison camp. We went there anyway

In October 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidency, I was sitting in a felafel shop in al-Darbasiyah, a little Syrian town on the border with Turkey, with photographer Kate Geraghty. We were wondering if we were about to be swept up in a full-scale invasion by Turkish forces.

Trump had ordered American troops to withdraw from this “forever war”, and they had – at least for a time. Local Kurds pelted their tanks with potatoes as they left. The Kurds, who’d been involved in the long and bloody fight against Islamic State, felt once again thrown to the wolves by the international community.

A woman washes her clothes in the al-Hawl camp in 2019.Credit: Kate Geraghty

At that time, if you turned the wrong corner in Kurdish-dominated towns like Qamishli, you might find yourself at a Syrian regime checkpoint, and, as a journalist, in danger of a one-way trip to Damascus.

Meanwhile, a patchwork of violent militias roamed the country. Shortly before our arrival, one of those militias had pulled a pioneer female Kurdish politician and women’s rights activist, Hevrin Khalaf, from her car and brutally beaten her, then shot her dead. Then shot her body.

Islamic State cells were still launching attacks in some parts of the country. Iran, Russia and the Kurds were all angling for territory. But Turkey was threatening to sweep in. As we sat in the felafel shop, the citizens of al-Darbasiyah were preparing: putting up tarpaulins to shield themselves from drones, taking to tunnels or fleeing south.

We left the felafel shop, late, for the relative safety of a hotel in Qamishli, where with a group of other foreign media we watched as the Russian and Turkish presidents met just hours before a ceasefire was scheduled to finish. We watched on TV as the two men carved up parts of Syria to suit them.

The al-Roj camp, where the Australian women and children are now held.

As these machinations ground on, in a squalid detention camp two hours down the road, dozens of Australian women and children sat shivering in their tents. The wives and children of former Islamic State fighters, they feared for their lives as events in this unpredictable, war-torn country happened around them.

We talked our way in to see them on what they called “Australia Street”. Their guards were undermanned and on edge. Many had gone to the front line. In the camp, food was scarce and winter was closing in.

“I want to go home and to school,” nine-year-old Maysa told us shyly. “And I want to see my sisters.”

It was too dangerous, then-home affairs minister Peter Dutton said at the time, to bring them home. He did not want to risk public servants’ lives by sending them to where we had been.

The Russian deal with Turkey resulted in five years of relative calm.

In 2020, the women and children were moved to a different, safer camp, al-Roj, conveniently near Syria’s border with Iraq. Two years later, four mothers and 13 children were brought home – to a brief spasm of political pain for the Albanese government.

But Australia made no further attempt to bring its citizens home. Forty women and children still live in al-Roj.

Now, once again, Syria has exploded into violence. Militias, led by one previously affiliated with al-Qaeda, have swept away the corrupt and despotic regime of Bashar al-Assad, who has fled into the arms of his ally Russia.

Once again the Kurds are battling to secure the border of their proto-state, and American troops are bombing Islamic State positions in the south. Some Syrians have welcomed their “liberation”, but in the power vacuum left by Assad’s fall, by the weakness of Russia, Iran and Hezbollah, nobody knows who will end up controlling this country, or how they will rule.

A child at the al-Roj camp.Credit: Save the Children

Meanwhile, little Maysa has turned 14. Several of the older children are now adults. The boys who are now men are in danger of being transferred to adult prisons.

Families of people in the camp in Syria are reporting that the guards at al-Roj are again being sent to the front line, and restrictions have been placed on food, internal movement and medical supplies for the 12 remaining Australian women and 28 children.

They are terrified for what their future holds.

And once again, winter is closing in.

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