Latest / The Front / The Bluey-obsessed Australian ISIS kids stuck in Syria

Transcript

The Bluey-obsessed Australian ISIS kids stuck in Syria · The Front

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: It's Thursday, February twenty six, twenty twenty six. Donald Trump
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: is doubling down on tariffs despite a loss in the
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court. He's declared tariffs will substantially replace
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: income taxes and won't need to be approved by Congress.
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: The President used his State of the Union address to
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: defend his economic performance and declare America would always welcome
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: immigrants who arrived legally. Victorian Premier Decina Allen is working
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: on a plan to supercharge Victoria's anti corruption watchdog as
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: it deals with the scandal engulfing the Construction, Forestry, Mining
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: and Energy Union CFMU. The oppositioner and minor parties are
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: trying to force through legislative amendments toughening the powers of
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: the independent Broad Based Anti Corruption Commission IBACK, and now
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: the premiers working on a plan to get the government's
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: own reforms in place first. That's inexclusive Live now at
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot au. Little kids desperate to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: come home to the land of bluey and blue skies.
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Today we're hearing the voices of Australian children in northern
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: Syria's Al Rouge Camp, the so called isis Brides, a
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: group of thirty four women and children left behind in
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: the detritus of Islamic States failed Caliphate, have Australian passports
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: and are trying to leave the camp and make their
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: way back to New South Wales, where they're likely to settle.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: Today we go inside the camp and speak to Asia
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: Pacific correspondent Amanda Hodge about the wicked problem confronting authorities
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: on two sides of the world. Amanda Hodge is The
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Australian's Asia specific correspondent and she's been reporting on the
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: case of thirty four Australian women and children who are
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: desperately trying to get home. Amanda, They're a long way
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: away in northern Syria. This is a really hard story
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: to cover. You cover a huge patch, but right now
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: you're in Australia. How are you doing this reporting?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: We contacted a really great journalist on the ground in
• 2:22
  Speaker 2: northeast Syria and he's been helping us out. It took
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: a number of days to get permission to get into
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Roche camp, but he managed to do that overnight.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: My name is Muhana Hassan. I'm working for the Australian
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: in new spaper. Are you are you?
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah? So he's taken some video for us of the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: scenes in that camp. The thirty four women and children
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: who thought that they were already out, they left the
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: camp once got turned back. Now they're there. What are
• 2:49
  Speaker 1: we seeing in this video and what are they telling us?
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: We're seeing a pretty wretched internment camp, very sort of
• 2:54
  Speaker 2: ramshackle tense, very basic kind of wash stations or bikes
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and cars for kids. The women, most of them are
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: wearing full face burkers. I gather that's as much for
• 3:08
  Speaker 2: their own security as anything, given there are elements in
• 3:12
  Speaker 2: the camp that remain extremist, but the women themselves and
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: the kids, there's almost a cognitive dissonance really because when
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: you hear them speaking, they're just these little Aussies, you know,
• 3:23
  Speaker 2: the kids in sort of bright pink parkers and puddies
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: talking about bluey and bingo and wanting to see the ocean. Yeah,
• 3:33
  Speaker 2: it really cuts through, right. I Mean you can hear
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: all of the debate in Canberra, but kids have a
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: way of cutting through the bullshit, don't they really do?
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and they're obviously desperate to just have normal lives
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: like any children would be. Visus Leilah speaking to our
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: reporter Muhammed has Son along with her mother Zenab Ahmed,
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I kind of.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: Live for another for another thousand weeks.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: You know where were you born there?
• 4:04
  Speaker 4: I was born in here, which is I hate again?
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: You were born in the camp, so you've never seen outside? No,
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: but I just saw a.
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: See the way when you drove water, I saw a
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: donkey and what I saw a horse? I saw a
• 4:20
  Speaker 4: pain for the first time. Yeah, yeah, and I saw
• 4:23
  Speaker 4: a baby cow. Nobody's right. I started, I'm drinking water.
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: I saw some milk coming out.
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: Of the good with someone milking the goat.
• 4:34
  Speaker 4: I can't yeah, I just didn't see.
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: It might be hard for Australians to get a sense
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: of what these camps are actually like. There are two
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: huge detention camps in northern Syria, al Haul and Alurge
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: and as Islamic state kind of retreated in the late
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: twenty tens. This is in territory controlled by the Kurds,
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: not controlled at the moment by the Syrian government, and
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: of course Syria is itself in massive upheaval. The camps
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: are closing though soon.
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: What's going on there?
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: One of the camps has pretty much already closed, and
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: that's our whole camp, and we're not exactly sure what's
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: happened to all of those people. There were hundreds of
• 5:17
  Speaker 2: people that streamed out of there in recent weeks. Some
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: of them were taken by ISIS soldiers, some of them
• 5:25
  Speaker 2: went into a camp in Aleppo. But the Syrian government
• 5:29
  Speaker 2: has made it pretty clear it doesn't want to be
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: responsible for these people in the long term. The Kurds
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: also don't want to be responsible for them in the
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: long term. They have their own issues to deal with.
• 5:40
  Speaker 2: They're still about two and a half twenty three hundred
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: or so people in the Rojes camp, but the Kurdish
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: authorities made clear this week that they were accelerating the
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: closure of that camp, and that leaves these eleven families
• 5:56
  Speaker 2: and countless other foreign families in complete limbo. They don't
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: know what they're going to do next. But these eleven women,
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: they have Australian passports.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Do we think that they physically have those passports now
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: or is it still the case as seemed to be
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: indicated last week. But they've got to get themselves to
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: an Australian embassy in order to be issued their passports.
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: That's not what we've been told. The camp manager told
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: us overnight that they have the passports. A Syrian kurd
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: foreign Ministry official told us last week that they had
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: the passports. We understand from the Sydney doctor that's been
• 6:32
  Speaker 2: helping them, Jamal Riffi, that they have the passports. So
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: it seems like, regardless of the rhetoric in Canberra that
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: we're taking a hard line, we're not going to do
• 6:41
  Speaker 2: anything about helping them come back. The ultimate government in
• 6:45
  Speaker 2: primata is to issue passports. And if, as it seems
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: to be the case, they've bent a few rules custody
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: protocols to get these passports to the women and kids,
• 6:58
  Speaker 2: then they're sending pretty mixed me messages if they're saying
• 7:01
  Speaker 2: one thing in Parliament and on the other hand they've
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: allowed these passports to travel all the way from presumably
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: Beirut to get to northeast Syria.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Is the plan, as far as you can tell Amanda,
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: for them to still do what they tried to do
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: last time, which is get themselves by road to Damascus
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: and then try and get out from there.
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: I think that's their only option. The Iraqi government is
• 7:25
  Speaker 2: not interested in helping former Isis brides for pretty obvious reasons.
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: The Syrian government feels that its hands are tied from
• 7:34
  Speaker 2: the sounds of it, because the rhetoric coming out of
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: Australia is we don't want these people back. At the
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: same time, they have passports, so it's entirely in the
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: hands of the Syrians really whether they let these women
• 7:46
  Speaker 2: and children into Damascus airport and out of the country,
• 7:50
  Speaker 2: because the Kurds have already said they're happy for them
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: to go.
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: This is not a problem unique to Australia. For the
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: past decade and more Western governments have been dealing with
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: their own citizens who decided to go into a war
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: zone for a number of reasons. Of course, there were
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: fighters who had been radicalized, maybe on social media, who
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: decided they wanted to go and fight for Isis. There
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: were naughty teenage girls for want of a better description,
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: who thought that this would be a big.
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: Adventure for them.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And there were children as well who were taken thereby,
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: for example, their fathers, and then married to jihades who
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: lived there. Now, of course, anyone who was a wife
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: is a widow or her former husband is in prison
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: in Syria. What do we know about who these women
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: actually are? The eleven women in this group.
• 8:36
  Speaker 2: Well, we know that one of them is subject to
• 8:38
  Speaker 2: a temporary exclusion order. But in general, from what the
• 8:41
  Speaker 2: camp manager told us overnight, they're well behaved. There's no
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: extremists in this group, she says, there are two extremists
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: in another camp. And I mean, look, it's not just
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: the girls either that although they are a very big risk,
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: you know, especially as they get a bit older. In
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: these camps, it's boys that reach the age of twelve
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: or thirteen, because the standard protocol here is that when
• 9:05
  Speaker 2: they get to that age, they get sent to male
• 9:08
  Speaker 2: adult prisons, regardless of whether they had any involvement in
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: the Isis Caliphate, which of course you couldn't have as
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: a twelve or a thirteen year old kid who's been
• 9:18
  Speaker 2: in a camp for the past five years. But you know,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: there are a number of those children now who are
• 9:23
  Speaker 2: at that age and are basically living on borrow time.
• 9:27
  Speaker 2: At any stage they could be taken and put into
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: an adult prison, like another Australian boy, Yusuf was, and
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: he's we don't know where he is.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: Everyone who's got any skin in the game on this,
• 9:40
  Speaker 2: whether it's national security experts or child protection officers, say
• 9:44
  Speaker 2: the same thing, which is the solution is the same
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: whether you're dealing with the national security problem or child protection.
• 9:50
  Speaker 2: If you bring them home, then you can deradicalize the kids,
• 9:54
  Speaker 2: you can wrap them in services that they need to
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: move on with their lives, and you can throw the
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: book at any of the mothers who are found to
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: have committed crimes or are seen to be at risk.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: And all eleven of them have already voluntarily said they
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: will submit to terrorist orders, which can be anything from
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: everything including ankle bracelets, restrictions on internet use, where they
• 10:19
  Speaker 2: can live, who they can talk to. It would seem
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: to me and all the national security experts I've spoken to,
• 10:25
  Speaker 2: that that is the best way of controlling this situation,
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: rather than just kicking a can down a dead end road,
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: because the security situation is crumbling in Syria. If you
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: let this get to the point where those camps close,
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: then what happens to these women? How do you control
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: where they go next? They have live Australian passports.
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: There's an option for the Albaneze government kind of at
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: any point to just cauterize these to say we're going
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: to wear a bit of heat, We're going to let
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: them come home. It would seem from what New South
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Wales Premier Christmian is saying that there are very active
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: preparations for them to be moving back into Australian suburbs.
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: Why do you think the government just hasn't bitten that
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: bullet yet.
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: Timing, I mean, the timing is dreadful. Australia is still
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: reeling from the worst terrorist attack on Australian soil, and
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: I mean a question in my mind is why didn't
• 11:24
  Speaker 2: they just slow walk the passports. Those passports were issued
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: in a couple of months, which, as anyone who's tried
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: to get a passport before will know, is pretty quick.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: They could have slow walked those passports for six to
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: twelve months and the timing would have been better for everyone.
• 11:41
  Speaker 2: But I guess at the same time, they're dealing with
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: the situation, like I said, that's crumbling. You know, the
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: US forces are moving out, the Kurds are preparing for
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: possible conflict, the camps are closing. The Trump administration is
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: really pushing hard for all of these people in the
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: camps to be taken home by their countries of origin,
• 12:00
  Speaker 2: and it's offered to repatriate these women and kids in
• 12:05
  Speaker 2: the past, which would seem to be the most sensible
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: and safe option for everyone, and it's hard for me
• 12:12
  Speaker 2: to understand why they haven't taken that up.
• 12:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a great point that you make about timing.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: It's also I wonder a reflection on Anthony Albanese. He's
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: kind of risk averseness and the tactical nature of his politicking.
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: You know that he.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: Thinks about political tactics rather than thinking about what the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: actual inevitable outcome is going to be, which is that
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: they just take a lot longer to get home. And
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: he still has to deal with the problem down the road.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a problem that's festering and sort of building right,
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: building in size as every day goes on. It feels
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: like Anthony Albanesi had a couple of off ramps offered
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: to him over the past sort of year or so
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: or even more, and each one of those was a
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: better option than what he ultimately decided to do, which
• 12:58
  Speaker 2: was just to keep kicking the can down the road,
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: and he's ended up with this wicked problem now that's
• 13:06
  Speaker 2: not to say there's no solution here, but what he's
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: doing is not a solution. Saying one thing to the
• 13:11
  Speaker 2: Australian public and the Australian Parliament taking this hard line,
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: I have no you know, sympathy for them. They've made
• 13:18
  Speaker 2: the beds, they should.
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: Lie in them.
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: And on the other hand, quietly issuing passports and subcontracting
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: the problem to well meaning civilians who are clearly, with
• 13:28
  Speaker 2: all due respect, not particularly up to the task.
• 13:34
  Speaker 3: What do you want to tell Australia. What do you
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: want to tell them?
• 13:40
  Speaker 4: Well, now I want to tell my family. I had
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: a lot of cousins that I.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: Used to When did you come back to the Australia.
• 13:47
  Speaker 4: What do you do You would go to the school too?
• 13:52
  Speaker 3: No, no, you're going to want to now I'm never
• 13:55
  Speaker 3: going to school. Do you want to paint?
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: Paint school and drawing ats and toys? School and I
• 14:04
  Speaker 4: can alling state?
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah?
• 14:06
  Speaker 4: Beaching singers.
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: Do you want to go to the beach? Yeah? Do
• 14:13
  Speaker 3: you want to see Bluiam Bingo? Yes? Of course we
• 14:17
  Speaker 3: love And what do you want to say to the
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: Australian government.
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: Please getring me home as fast as you can.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: M M. Amanda Hodge is The Australian's Asia Pacific correspondent.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: You can check out her journalism anytime and all are
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: reporting from the region and the world at the Australian
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: dot com dot au