More than a decade after tens of thousands of foreign ISIS supporters arrived in Syria, some of the last foreigners appear to be leaving. A group of Australian women and children has been in the spotlight for months.
“Seven Australian women and 14 children arrived in Damascus from the notorious Roj camp in northeast Syria (Rojava), marking the departure of the last known Australian group from camps housing families linked to the Islamic State,” Rudaw Kurdish media said.
ISIS took over part of Syria and Iraq in 2014 and committed a genocide against Yazidis and other groups. Many foreigners flocked to join the group, including many women and men from the West. In some cases, these foreigners raised families in Syria.
When ISIS collapsed in 2019 after years of fighting the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, these foreigners ended up in camps. They mostly ended up in the al-Hol and Roj camps, and some 20 detention facilities.
Now, as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are integrating with the Syrian security forces, the ISIS families have mostly left eastern Syria. The Australians have proven a complex case because Australia apparently doesn’t want them back.
Australia isn’t the only country to try to keep its citizens away if they have ISIS ties. The UK and others did the same thing.
In February, the National Public Radio (NPR) reported that “Australia’s government banned an Australian citizen with alleged ties to the militant Islamic State group from returning home from a detention camp in Syria, the latest development in the case of fraught repatriation of families of IS fighters.”
Australian citizens attempting to return home despite exclusion order
That report noted that “the woman was planning to join another 33 Australians – 10 women and 23 children – and fly on Monday from Damascus, Syria, to Australia, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said Wednesday.” The group tried to leave the Roj camp, only to be sent back.
“The Australian government had acted on news that the group planned to leave Syria, Burke said. He said the woman, whom he did not identify, had been issued with a temporary exclusion order on Monday, and her lawyers had been provided with the paperwork,” NPR said.
Now they are trying to go home again.
“I just don’t know how many of them are going to arrive in Australia,” Jamal Rifi told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Friday.
Rudaw said that “he confirmed the group’s arrival in Damascus but did not say whether they would return to Australia this month. The Roj camp, located in Hasaka province, is one of the last remaining facilities in Syria housing foreign women and children linked to ISIS.”
“Nobody could stop those kids once they reach adulthood from coming back, because they are Australian citizens, and they either come now with their mothers or they come later on their own, and then into adulthood, [when it would] be even more difficult for our security and agencies to keep tabs on their behavior, ideology or action,” Rifi noted.
The report noted that in May, “four women and nine children returned to Australia after spending years in the camp. According to ABC, three of the women were arrested and charged by the Australian Federal Police upon arrival in Melbourne and Sydney.”
Sheikhmous Ahmed, a Kurdish official dealing with the camps, had said they were empty in February.
“For this purpose, coordination has taken place with the High Commissioner for Refugees regarding their transfer,” Ahmed said.
As of late February, the Roj camp housed 730 foreign families from around 42 countries, according to Kurdish authorities. The camp also held 15 Iraqi families and 11 Syrian families, with a total population of approximately 2,225 people, Rudaw added.
Rudaw had previously reported that 11 of the families had tried to go home via Lebanon but had been sent back.
According to the report, “The families, totaling 24 individuals, had left the Roj camp in Rojava but are now heading back, despite having been issued Australian passports, sources inside the camp confirmed.”
UK arrests ISIS-linked citizens
The BBC noted in May that “after years spent detained in Syria, the freedom of the Islamic State group-linked families who landed back in their homeland of Australia this week was dramatically short-lived,” as three women were arrested.
“Australia is not alone in its reluctance to help these women and children: many others, including the UK, have also been wrestling with questions of security, rehabilitation, and political responsibility,” the BBC added.
Australia’s prime minister had spoken about this issue before: “If you make your bed, you have to lie in it.”
However, the issue of the children is more complex.
The children are not at fault for their parents’ support of ISIS. In theory, the children should have the right to return to a normal life in their parents’ home country.
It remains to be seen how this will play out.
What is clear is that now eastern Syria is no longer the dumping ground for ISIS members and their families. They have left the camps and will end up somewhere else. The international community largely ignored them so long as their detention could be outsourced to the SDF.