Australia refuses to repatriate citizens from Syrian camps despite US warning leaving them there ‘compounds risk to all of us’ | Australian foreign policy

Australian children held in increasingly “militarised” displacement camps in north-east Syria have been told they will be shot if they try to cross the fence line, as Australia refuses to issue passports to its citizens for repatriation.

The US offered to remove Australians from the camps on the condition that they were issued travel documents or passports; but Australia did not accept this.

“[The] The government currently has no plans to move people out of the camps,” the interior minister was quoted as telling lawyers at a meeting earlier this year.

The US government wants the camps closed and has repeatedly called on all countries to return their citizens, arguing that leaving women and children in Syrian camps makes them vulnerable to radicalization and increases the risk of a resurgence of the Islamic State.

Fewer than 40 Australians, mostly young children, are being held in two detention camps in north-east Syria. They are the wives, widows and children of dead or imprisoned Islamic State fighters.

Most of them have been held in the Roj camp near the Turkish border since 2019. The Guardian understands there are 12 Australian women and 22 to 25 Australian children on board Roj. Some of the children were born in the camp.

Australians in the camps have not been charged with any crime and do not receive arrest warrants, although they could face charges upon their return to Australia.

_{Sign up: AÜ Breaking News email}

In June, home secretary Tony Burke and government officials met at Burke’s Punchbowl election office with Mat Tinkler, chief executive of Save the Children, and Kamalle Dabboussy, a lawyer and father of a previously repatriated Australian.

Contemporaneous notes of the meeting, written by a senior public official, were submitted to Senate estimates this week.

These notes noted: “The camps are becoming more militarized, intrusive and securitized. Children are being weaponized against their mothers, meaning that if they go beyond the fences they will be shot. The scope of activities that further affect women and children is decreasing.”

Sources in the camps confirmed that women and children were warned that any unauthorized entry into the camp perimeter would be met with force. A Syrian source described the instruction as “shoot first, ask questions later.”

The official’s notes from a meeting in June say the minister was told that Kurdish forces controlling the detention camps would “allow people to leave if they gave assurances that the government would issue passports.”

“Minister [Burke] The notes stated that he responded that this was not something the government was currently considering. “The Minister indicated that there might be a way to achieve the same result without government commitments.”

The official was then asked to leave the meeting “to enable an open discussion to take place.”

In a subsequent letter to the minister in August, Dabboussy and Tinkler wrote that the US approved the offer to remove Australians from the camps and that the US was willing to “facilitate the safe and secure repatriation of foreign nationals”.

Australia undertook two successful repatriation missions – eight orphaned children in 2019 and four women and 13 children in 2022 – but has consistently said it has “no plans” to repatriate the last group still held in camps.

In October, two women and four children escaped from Al Hawl detention camp near Iraq and traveled through Syria to Lebanon, where they were issued passports at the Australian embassy. They returned to Australia on a commercial flight. It is unclear whether there are any other Australians at Al Hawl camp.

In 2024, as home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil was preparing to submit a plan to send the remaining Australians back to cabinet for approval. But although many of those still held in the Roj camp were from Victoria and wanted to return there, there were concerns within the government about any backlash to repatriation of community groups in electorally critical marginal seats in Western Sydney.

“The government will not revisit the issue before the next election,” a government source said ahead of the poll in May this year.

The repatriation plan was postponed and then ultimately abandoned.

At an earlier meeting in late 2024, home office secretary Stephanie Foster took handwritten notes that appeared to reflect perceived political sensitivities.

In a note submitted to the Senate this week and attributed to “TB”, understood to be Burke, it was written that “politics is more difficult at the end of this term”.

“I don’t see any way to navigate any sooner.”

Burke told the Guardian the minutes of the meeting confirmed the government’s position. “There was a request from Save the Children for a return operation. It was rejected. Neither return nor assistance was provided.”

Foster’s notes also note “drone attacks, fewer guards in the camps” and “concerns about how to get through the winter.”

Outbreaks of dysentery are common in Roj, and latrines are regularly backed up during the cold winter months when temperatures drop well below freezing and snow falls to the ground. Flu spreads rapidly in communities living in dilapidated tents in close proximity, especially among underdeveloped and malnourished children, and fires regularly break out in camping tents. Heating fuel is reportedly running low. An Australian child had frostbite problems in the previous winter.

Human Rights Watch defined it as follows:inhumane, degrading and life-threatening conditionsHe said it was unlawful to detain women and children in the camps indefinitely without charge or trial.

The United States, which funds most security operations in northeastern Syria through the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and has assisted dozens of repatriation missions, wants to withdraw its commitment from Syria.

Trump administration interrupted 117 million dollars in humanitarian aid from the USA Attacks on northeastern Syria this year have forced the closure of projects providing medical aid, psychological support and safe spaces for children.

The inspector general of the US Operation Inherent Resolve in Syria and Iraq reported that ISIS “continues to brainwash the public and raise people’s awareness.” infiltrate detention facilitiesOne of the ISIS attacks in Roj led to the death of a woman and a child.

US Central Command Admiral Brad Cooper, He spoke at the UN conference “As time goes by, these camps become incubators of radicalization,” he said in September.

“This problem will only get worse over time… Inaction is not an option. Every day that passes without repatriation increases the risk for all of us.”

Cooper called on “every country whose personnel have been detained or displaced in Syria to send back its citizens.”

“Repatriating vulnerable populations before they become radicalized is not just compassion, it is a decisive blow against ISIS’s ability to regenerate,” he said.