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In October 2019, during Donald Trump’s first presidency, I was sitting in a felafel shop in al-Darbasiyah, a little Syrian town on the border with Turkey, with photographer Kate Geraghty. We were wondering if we were about to be swept up in a full-scale invasion by Turkish forces.
Trump had ordered American troops to withdraw from this “forever war”, and they had – at least for a time. Local Kurds pelted their tanks with potatoes as they left. The Kurds, who’d been involved in the long and bloody fight against Islamic State, felt once again thrown to the wolves by the international community.
A woman washes her clothes in the al-Hawl camp in 2019.Credit: Kate Geraghty
At that time, if you turned the wrong corner in Kurdish-dominated towns like Qamishli, you might find yourself at a Syrian regime checkpoint, and, as a journalist, in danger of a one-way trip to Damascus.
Meanwhile, a patchwork of violent militias roamed the country. Shortly before our arrival, one of those militias had pulled a pioneer female Kurdish politician and women’s rights activist, Hevrin Khalaf, from her car and brutally beaten her, then shot her dead. Then shot her body.
Islamic State cells were still launching attacks in some parts of the country. Iran, Russia and the Kurds were all angling for territory. But Turkey was threatening to sweep in. As we sat in the felafel shop, the citizens of al-Darbasiyah were preparing: putting up tarpaulins to shield themselves from drones, taking to tunnels or fleeing south.
We left the felafel shop, late, for the relative safety of a hotel in Qamishli, where with a group of other foreign media we watched as the Russian and Turkish presidents met just hours before a ceasefire was scheduled to finish. We watched on TV as the two men carved up parts of Syria to suit them.
The al-Roj camp, where the Australian women and children are now held.
As these machinations ground on, in a squalid detention camp two hours down the road, dozens of Australian women and children sat shivering in their tents. The wives and children of former Islamic State fighters, they feared for their lives as events in this unpredictable, war-torn country happened around them.
We talked our way in to see them on what they called “Australia Street”. Their guards were undermanned and on edge. Many had gone to the front line. In the camp, food was scarce and winter was closing in.