The Australian government just threw a wrench into what should have been a straightforward humanitarian operation. Thirty-four Australian citizens, mostly women and children, were supposed to fly home from Syria this week. Instead, they’re back in a detention camp because one woman in the group allegedly has ties to ISIS.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke used something called a temporary exclusion order to block the unnamed woman from returning. It’s the first time anyone’s heard of this power being used publicly, even though the law’s been on the books since 2019. The entire group of 10 women and 23 children was turned back by Syrian authorities at Damascus due to what officials vaguely called “procedural problems.”
When Security Concerns Override Everything Else
Burke says the woman immigrated to Australia and then left for Syria sometime between 2013 and 2015. That timing matters because it’s when ISIS was at its peak, carving out territory across Syria and Iraq for its so-called caliphate. Foreign fighters were flooding into the region back then.
The minister can keep high-risk citizens out for up to two years with these orders. He won’t say if this woman has kids, but he’s made it crystal clear he blames parents for dragging their children into this mess. “These are horrific situations that have been brought on those children by actions of their parents,” Burke told ABC.
Here’s what’s interesting though. Security agencies apparently didn’t flag anyone else in the group. The other 33 Australians got the all-clear. And the law specifically prevents these orders from being used against kids under 14.
Life in Limbo at Roj Camp
The women at Roj camp aren’t talking. One of them, Zeinab Ahmad, told reporters they’d been advised by their lawyer to stay quiet. You can imagine the disappointment when they had to turn around and head back to the camp after thinking they were finally going home.
A security official at the camp named Chavrê Rojava said the families are Australian citizens of Lebanese origin. Their relatives had actually traveled to Syria to help arrange the return and brought temporary passports for everyone. But then a Syrian government official contacted them and told them to turn back.
The camp authorities say they’re not even in contact with the Australian government about this. They’ve basically left it to the families to sort out themselves, which seems like passing the buck when you’re dealing with international security issues and humanitarian concerns at the same time.
Rojava made an interesting point about not wanting a repeat of what happened at al-Hol camp. That much larger detention facility saw guards abandon their posts last month during fighting between Syrian government forces and Kurdish-led groups. Residents scattered, raising fears about ISIS regrouping.
The Political Tightrope
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese isn’t backing down. He’s been clear his government won’t lift a finger to help these people return. “These are people who chose to go overseas to align themselves with an ideology which is the caliphate, which is a brutal, reactionary ideology,” he told reporters.
It’s a tough stance that probably plays well politically. Nobody wants to be seen as soft on terrorism or bringing potential threats back home. But it also means kids who had zero choice in any of this are stuck in a detention camp in northeastern Syria.
Australia has done this before though. The government has repatriated women and children from Syrian camps twice already. Some Australians have even made it back without government help. So there’s precedent for bringing people home.
The politics here are messy. You’ve got competing concerns about national security, humanitarian obligations, and what to do about children caught in circumstances they didn’t create. Burke and Albanese keep emphasizing that parents made these choices, not the kids.
But here’s the thing. These camps have been around since ISIS lost its territory in 2019. That’s seven years of people living in limbo. Former fighters, their wives, their children, all crammed together in facilities that were never meant to be permanent. ISIS still has sleeper cells carrying out attacks in Syria and Iraq, so the security concerns aren’t theoretical.
The Syrian government now controls al-Hol and is moving remaining residents to another camp in Aleppo province. Kurdish forces still run Roj camp where these Australians are stuck. There’s a ceasefire in place for now, but Syria remains unstable.
What happens to citizens who made terrible choices a decade ago when they were young and believed in something that turned out to be monstrous, and what happens to their children who never had a choice at all, remains one of those questions no government seems eager to answer with anything but bureaucratic roadblocks and political speeches about protecting the homeland.
