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09-06-2026
By SJA Jafri + Agencies
MELBOURNE: 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.
Three of the women were swiftly arrested. The fourth was left to confront a frenzied media scrum alone, small children in tow, with the knowledge she could be next.
Australia has been eyeing their potential return with trepidation for years.
It has been resisting pressure to claim dozens of its citizens, families’ members of men who fought for the so-called Islamic State (IS). They have been languishing in highly-guarded camps since the group lost its territorial control in Syria after a years-long military campaign by the US-led coalition and local allies.
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 but as the country wallows in the fallout of its worst terrorist attack, a mass shooting allegedly inspired by IS at a Jewish event in Bondi Beach in December which left 15 dead sentiment towards them has hardened.
The prime minister has repeatedly said he has nothing but contempt for the group: “If you make your bed, you have to lie in it,” has been Anthony Albanese’s mantra but amid increasingly volatile conditions, advocates say the predicament of the Australians still stuck in Syria is growing more dangerous and the need to get them home more desperate.
“The government want us to forget about them… (but) the quicker they come to Australia, the safer it is for all of Australia and for themselves,” Sydney doctor Jamal Rifi told media in an interview earlier this year, after an earlier bid to return by Australian IS families failed.
The two camps where the families of IS fighters were channeled when the “caliphate” fell have long been described as a ticking time bomb, rife with violence, incubators for radicalization and an ever-growing humanitarian crisis.
The largest, Al-Hol, was shut down in February after Syrian forces of the new government reclaimed the country, while the future of the remaining Al-Roj camp, in the country’s north-east Kurdish region, is uncertain.
There are about 2,000 people in Al-Roj, from dozens of countries which refuse to take them back including Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship after travelling to Syria as a 15-year-old and marrying an IS fighter.
Until last month, it was also the home of Janai Safar, 32, who landed in Sydney with her nine-year-old son on Thursday night, and has since been charged with terrorism offences.
The former nursing student told The Australian newspaper back in 2019 that she didn’t regret travelling to join IS, but “didn’t train or kill anyone”.
Arriving in Melbourne at the same time was 33-year-old Zahra Ahmed, who spent years in the camp alongside her younger sister Zeinab, 31, and her 54-year-old mother Kawsar Abbas.
They say they were trapped in Syria after travelling there for a family wedding, not realizing the groom had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group though authorities suspect the patriarch of the family had been funneling cash to them.
“I didn’t make this bed,” Zahra told the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 2024.
“We are now forced to suffer for the decisions that other people, other male influencers have made on our behalf and now they’re all gone and we are left to suffer with our kids.”
Her mother and sister have been charged with crimes against humanity related to slavery.
