{"id":24606,"date":"2026-02-24T04:43:15","date_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:43:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=24606"},"modified":"2026-02-24T04:43:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-24T04:43:15","slug":"australian-women-held-in-syrian-camps-say-they-would-accept-children-returning-home-separately-australia-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microvibenews.com\/?p=24606","title":{"rendered":"Australian women held in Syrian camps say they would accept children returning home separately | Australia news"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Australian women detained in north-east Syria over ties to Islamic State<\/a> fighters said they would accept separation from their children if it meant the children could return to Australia.<\/p>\n

Some of the 11 women held in Kurdish-controlled al-Roj camp said on Monday that they wanted the Australian government to repatriate their children at any cost, even if it meant placing children in the hands of relatives at home while they stayed behind in the camp.<\/p>\n

They said the psychological state of the 23 children, some of them as young as six, was regressing as they grew more hopeless over their years-long detention.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI have continuously asked for my children to be saved from this camp and from this continuous fear,\u201d said Zahra Ahmad, a mother of three from Melbourne who has been in Syrian detention camps since at least 2019. \u201cThey experience night terrors.<\/p>\n

\u201cOmar, my second-eldest son, bites his fingers till the tips bleed and he doesn\u2019t sleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other women in the group said they would be uncomfortable having their children taken from them and did not want to be separated.<\/p>\n

Ahmad said she had seen what she called \u201cregressive behaviour\u201d in her children, including bed-wetting by her 12-year-old son \u2013 behaviour psychologists say is linked to emotional trauma when present in adolescents.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can\u2019t cope any more and they can\u2019t understand why they\u2019re kept in this situation,\u201d she said. \u201cPlease save the children; the children are innocent in all of this and they need to feel safe and grow up in a safe and healthy environment.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur children need to heal and put this nightmare behind them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The families have been left even more desperate after an aborted repatriation attempt last week<\/a> in which the 11 women and their 23 children were briefly released from the camp by Kurdish authorities.<\/p>\n

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They tried to reach Damascus with the aim of boarding flights to Australia. The convoy was quickly turned around after the Syrian government intervened, with a Syrian official explaining that the relatives had failed to properly coordinate with the Syrian government.<\/p>\n

The Australian government has said that it opposes the repatriation of the women and children and that it will not assist in their attempted re-entry to Syria. The group of women and children are the wives and children of suspected IS fighters who travelled to Syria and have been detained since at least 2019 after the territorial defeat of the so-called IS caliphate.<\/p>\n

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The Australian government\u2019s refusal to repatriate its citizens comes despite warnings from rights groups that the arbitrary detention of the women and children violated their rights and that conditions in the squalid tent encampment were unsuitable for life<\/a>. Children, in particular, were at risk in al-Roj, the rights groups said, with tents offering little shelter from extreme temperatures and radicalised women attempting to inculcate children with extremist IS ideologies.<\/p>\n

For the children, the failed attempt to return home was hard to understand. When asked about why she thought they were returned to the camp, 11-year-old Baidaa said she didn\u2019t know, then broke down in tears.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was so happy we were leaving, but then when we turned around I was so sad and upset,\u201d she said through sobs. \u201cIt was terrible.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy do I have to be in here? I don\u2019t want to live in a tent, I don\u2019t want to be in a camp, I don\u2019t want to be in a prison.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just want to be free and live in houses and live a normal life, not like here.\u201d<\/p>\n

The issue of repatriation has grown more urgent after Damascus took control of al-Hawl camp last month, which housed 25,000 families linked to IS. The camp \u2013 which is about 100km from al-Roj but located in Syrian government-controlled territory \u2013was almost entirely emptied and virtually all 6,000 foreign women and children were smuggled out to unknown locations, something experts say poses a risk to children vulnerable to trafficking and recruitment to extremist groups.<\/p>\n

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Al-Roj\u2019s future is in question, as it remains unclear if Damascus might take control over the camp. A senior Kurdish official suggested on Sunday that al-Roj might be closed down but the head of the camp\u2019s security administration, \u00c7avre Afrin, said she was not aware of any such plans.<\/p>\n

Parents in the camp are concerned that if al-Roj is left vulnerable to smugglers like al-Hawl, their children could fall back into the hands of IS or be left at the mercy of traffickers.<\/p>\n

Australian rights organisations echoed their concerns and called for children to be brought home, even as the federal opposition called for tighter restrictions to prevent families from helping their relatives return.<\/p>\n

The child rights organisation Save the Children<\/a> has campaigned for the repatriation of Australians from the Syrian camps for seven years. Its chief executive, Mat Tinkler, told the Guardian he was \u201cvery concerned\u201d by the prospect of women relinquishing their children so that the children could be safe in Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat the global evidence base says is that, almost always, the best interest of the child is served by the child remaining with parents, with their mother in this situation,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd for this group of children, they have known only their mums in these camps for seven years: imagine that person, the only source of support and comfort and nurturing, being taken away from them, that will have a traumatic and lifelong impact.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said in \u201cdozens of meetings\u201d over years with Australian security officials, the advice to ministers was that the women and children should be repatriated together by the government.<\/p>\n

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\u201cConsistently what I have heard from national security agencies, and the advice provided by government departments, was that the safest course of action was to bring all of these people home to Australia. They won\u2019t face justice in Syria, there are no integration or de-radicalisation programs at scale, it is better for these people to have their repatriation back to Australia managed by the Australian government.\u201d<\/p>\n

Women in al-Roj have told Human Rights Watch that guards from the Asayish \u2013 the Kurdish internal security forces \u2013 have been conducting nightly raids across the camp, which involve beatings, destruction of property, verbal harassment and threats, theft and extortion. Boys are also being separated from their mothers.<\/p>\n

The deputy Middle East director at Human Rights Watch, Adam Coogle, said the increasing chaos was exposing women and children to serious risks, including trafficking, exploitation and recruitment by armed groups.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter years of terrible conditions in the camps, women and children are fleeing in fear, with nothing, and could risk further ill-treatment,\u201d he said. \u201cUnless there is evidence they have committed a crime, all residents, regardless of nationality, need to be given support to return, reintegrate, rehabilitate, and rebuild their lives.\u201d<\/p>\n