A large group of Australian Islamic State brides and their children are on their way back to Australia after they left a Syrian camp late on Monday for the capital, Damascus.
As the Australian government insisted it had done nothing to help facilitate their departure, Syrian sources said they would travel from there to Beirut, and then home to Australia.
The Kurdish local authorities who control the camp revealed late on Monday that 11 Australian families, comprising 34 women and children, had left the camp for the Syrian capital. An earlier statement said 24 Australians had departed.
They have been living in one or another internment camp in north-eastern Syria since March 2019, when the so-called Islamic caliphate fell. They were approaching their seventh anniversary in the camps.
A local journalist working for this masthead said some Australians had been left behind.
The camp’s director, Hakamia Ibrahim, confirmed the Australians would move from Damascus to Beirut, where they would approach the Australian embassy to seek passports home.
In a statement, a spokesman for Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the Australian government “is not and will not repatriate people from Syria”.
However, the government has previously taken the position that if any citizen gets themselves to an Australian embassy, the government is legally obliged to issue them with a passport.
“Our security agencies have been monitoring – and continue to monitor – the situation in Syria to ensure they are prepared for any Australians seeking to return to Australia,” the spokesman said.
“People in this cohort need to know that if they have committed a crime and if they return to Australia they will be met with the full force of the law. The safety of Australians and the protection of Australia’s national interests remain the overriding priority.”
Under both the Coalition and Labor, the government has long refused to repatriate the bulk of the families, saying it was too dangerous to send Australian public servants to the region.
The women and children are the remnants of dozens of families who travelled to Syria and Iraq during the rule of Islamic State. They were captured after the so-called caliphate was defeated.
Since then, a number have been repatriated. In 2019, the Morrison government brought back eight orphans and one newborn baby. Then, in October 2022 – early in Anthony Albanese’s first term – four Australian women and their 13 children were brought back to Sydney under former home affairs minister Clare O’Neil, prompting a minor backlash.
None were returned to Victoria. Former secretary of the Department of Home Affairs Mike Pezzullo told an estimates committee hearing in 2022 that, “If a state government chose to say, ‘We don’t want to proceed,’ then I would have thought the Commonwealth would take that pretty seriously … they’ll give us the authority to proceed or otherwise.”
Camp director Ibrahim said more than 2000 wives and children of 40 different nationalities of former IS fighters were held in the camp after the Islamic State in Syria collapsed in March 2019.
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Michael Bachelard is a senior writer and former deputy editor and investigations editor of The Age. He has worked in Canberra, Melbourne and Jakarta, has written two books and won multiple awards for journalism, including the Gold Walkley.Connect via X or email.