The Daily - Trapped in Syria, Part 1: A Father’s Fight

Episode Date: October 21, 2019

Since the fall of the Islamic State, many of the group’s fighters and their families have been held in prison camps controlled by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces. Parents around the world have been trying to get their children and grandchildren out of the camps and back to their home countries. Now, the fate of those detainees has become an urgent question after President Trump’s abrupt recall of American troops from the Syrian border. We follow one father as he fights to get his daughter, a former ISIS bride, and her children back to Australia.Guest: Livia Albeck-Ripka, a reporter for The Times in Melbourne, Australia, spoke to Kamalle Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam is trapped in Syria with her three children. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Background coverage: “There will be ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish people from Syria, and the American administration will be responsible for it,” said Mazlum Kobani, a Kurdish military commander, when asked about a full American withdrawal from northern Syria.President Trump is now said to be considering leaving a few hundred troops in eastern Syria to defend against an ISIS resurgence.

Kamal, have you gotten in touch with Mariam in the last 24 hours or so, or have you heard from her recently? I got a message from her. I got a message from Mariam. I wasn't able to speak to her. Can you read the message to us? It's actually two messages. If Australia doesn't save, I think the Aussies here right now, we're slaves and we're screwed and i think i'm going to die that's the two messages she received overnight from her that can't be an easy text to receive as a father no it's not.

Yeah, it's the fear of the unknown and the fear of not knowing, but they are more petrified of the Syrians taking over than of anything else, and that's their worst-case scenario. ISIS cells and Syrian regime are the two biggest threats, and they seem to be becoming realised as the days progress. And do you think that Mariam's fears are... Justified? Yeah, absolutely, I think her fears are justified. Absolutely they are. If the Syrians come in, absolutely they are.

Over the past few months, I've been getting to know a group of families in Australia who have been organising, providing solace to one another because they're members of this strange club of people whose daughters and mothers and sisters are the family members of ISIS fighters. The person who I've gotten to know the best is Kamal Dabusi. I wanted to be an engaged father. I wanted her to grow up with people around her that loved her

and that she could find solace with, that she could find friendships with. That's really the expectations that I'd had. I never had the expectations that in my hand was going to be a future doctor or chemist or engineer. That wasn't in my thoughts. It was really just making her a happy, well-rounded child and hopeful that she can achieve whatever she wanted to achieve. And I tried. In the months since the United States defeated ISIS in Syria, ISIS militants and their family members have been held in prison camps controlled by the U.S. Allied Kurdish forces.

And in that time, parents around the world have been trying to get their daughters and grandchildren back to their home countries. But in the two weeks since President Trump abruptly recalled U.S. troops from the Syrian border, the fate of these women and children has become an urgent and unknown question. The Kurdish forces that had been

guarding the camps have turned to defending themselves from the Turkish military coming across the border, and their new allies in Syria are now poised to take control of the camps. Today on The Daily, my colleague Livia Albek-Ribka follows one father as he fights to get his daughter home. It's Monday, October 21st. Livia, tell me about Miriam. Miriam was Kamal's first child. She was born in 1991. He describes her as this really...

She was a stubborn little thing. Stubborn, lively toddler, and she kind of ran rings around her parents. She had a great wonder for the world. She always wanted to go out exploring. She always wanted to go out and visit. She always wanted to go out and see. Even just down to the local shop to get something was an adventure for her. And she'd walk out and she'd be the first to be dressed right away to go. And she'd love to go out and see whatever she could see with the world.

And she was determined. And they were lovely. You didn't want a child sitting in a corner and just say yes or no. So you wanted to go out and explore and test the boundaries and figure out the world and she was all of that and more. She took up every space in our life, if I could put it that way. She's really boisterous, strong-willed and from pretty early on she starts to express to Kamal that she really wants a little brother or sister.

on, she starts to express to Kamal that she really wants a little brother or sister. It's kind of like from the very beginning, she knows that she wants to have a big family. So Kamal and his wife have a little girl, Mariam's sister. They kind of adored each other. They just had this wonderful sibling relationship. So this very much sounds like the kind of childhood that Kamal was hoping for Mariam. It was, but it didn't last. Kamal's marriage wasn't working out. Eventually, the two separate and they split up the girls. Mariam is about 12, 13 at this time. She's really upset about the split, but a decision is made.

She's going to go and live with Kamal. And at first it's tough. Then when she passed a certain age and she started to understand things a bit better, we became very close. They have Sunday morning pancakes together and they become closer and closer. They tell each other everything. have Sunday morning pancakes together and they become closer and closer. They kind of, they tell each other everything.

And we became, she became a very close friend, not only my daughter, but a close friend. I've heard you call her your best friend. Yes, she was my best friend growing up. She had, by virtue of the fact we were in the same house, she had my secrets and I had her secrets and she knew that. One day, Mariam meets a boy. His name is Khaled and she's only 16, so it takes a little while for Kamal to get to know this guy, but he likes him. He says...

I did, I very much liked him. He was sweet, he was gentle. He was a little bit undisciplined in what he was doing in life. He actually reminded me of myself a fair bit. I quite liked him. He seemed to have the temperament for her as well. Khaled also has this really big, stable family that it's clear Mariam is drawn to. His family had been a bit more traditional and conservative than I was. But they're a little more strict and conservative than Kamal's practice of Islam which is more philosophical, more based on his interpretation of what he thinks the laws mean rather than ritualistically practicing them. But he says these people are really good people. He likes them. So eventually,

Mariam comes to Kamal and she is barely 18. She tells him she wants to marry Khaled. I didn't have an objection to him i have objection to their age kamal says no way she kind of accepts it and she asks him again and again and again and finally kamal relinquishes he says okay who am i to stand in the way of this she wanted a family family and she wanted children and that's really what her want was. So I just made sure that that was her choice and that she was being bullied into it, basically. That's what I was really making sure with her

and that was her choice. And, yeah, that was the next phase of her life, and I was very happy for her. I had hoped that she'd remained close to me, but circumstances were that she wasn't going to stay close to me that long after that. After Mariam marries Khaled, she moves in with him to a little granny flat at the back of his parents' home. They eventually have a baby. And Kamal starts noticing Mariam changing.

It's nothing extreme at first. It just seems to him that they're adopting the views of Khaled's family, becoming a little more conservative, praying more often, but it's when Mariam puts on the scarf. Which in itself is not a bad thing. It's just she decides with the scarf. Up until that stage, no one in my family wears a scarf. So it was a change.

Dad, he has questions. And I didn't take the first answer she gave to me. I pushed and pushed to the point I was satisfied. What was that first answer? I know she said I did it myself. No one's told me to do this. And I just, again, prodded and prodded and tried to make her see that sometimes there could be suggestion made

and you're not realised that you're put into that corner. And she felt, no, that she was quite, she felt that she was making the decision herself. And eventually he accepted it because he believes it's her choice. Then they all go on this extended family trip. It's really fun and exciting. Khaled's never been overseas before. He and Mariam have this new baby girl and they go to Malaysia

and then they go to Dubai. He was fun-loving. He was out and about. We were Dubai. And he was fun loving. He was out and about. We were exploring. We did a desert safari, two together. It's all really good. But Kamal does notice Khaled drawing a little bit away from him. And he tries to talk to him.

He says that Khaled, who he calls Kay, was doing all these extra prayers. He says that Khaled, who he calls Kay, was doing all these extra prayers. Kamal kind of questions it, but Kay won't engage with him. There's this block. And so I thought to myself, OK, I need to do a bit more work on this one gently rather than trying to, you know, two ways to break a stone. You know, either the sledgehammer, break it, or a drop of water slowly to break it open. I want to take the drop of water approach slowly to break it open and see if I can get some conversations and start challenging some of those thoughts.

So Kamal has to get back to Australia for work. He leaves his daughter and his son-in-law in Dubai and they go on to Lebanon and they're supposed to go on from there to Greece and then come home to Australia. But while they're in Lebanon, Khaled suggests a trip to Turkey. Kamal doesn't really read too much into this. Turkey's a beautiful country, a beautiful place to visit. But then communication started to dissipate. And then it kind of goes quiet for a couple of weeks. And then there's a knock on his door.

It was the police. They told him, your daughter is in Syria. Oh, I was in disbelief. I said, no, that couldn't be the case. I was just in disbelief. I just didn't believe it to be true. Kamal really starts to worry. He starts trying to call his contacts.

He starts trying to find Mariam and he can't. And a month goes by before he does. Some text messages, some phone calls start to come in from Mariam. She says, I'm safe. She doesn't tell her father where she is. And she says, don't do anything stupid. I really refused for it to be true until Mariam had said to me, saying,

no, Dad, I thought you might have realised what had happened to me and I don't want you to do anything risky to yourself, just stay put, basically, is what she said to me. And so that was actually the real moment that I knew that's where she was. She was with ISIS. We'll be right back. Livia, this would have been 2015, so the year after ISIS declared the caliphate and started to call on Muslims around the world to join them there.

In these early days, what's Kamal's understanding of Miriam's role in ISIS? Did he think that she might be a combatant? Did he think she was kind of a passive supporter who was suddenly in the midst of these true believers? I mean, what was his sense of this? He didn't know. He was sort of surviving on this drip feed of information that was coming to him via sporadic texts and calls. Sometimes he didn't even know if the text messages were from Mariam herself or she would be on a call and she'd say, dad, don't talk. I'll talk. And it was clear to him that somebody was watching her and controlling her. And so he really, he doesn't know.

But he does have doubts. In a small period of time, of course, you doubt the situation. You doubt everything that you know. You re-evaluate everything that you know. And like most people, I suppose, you go through different options in your head and different scenarios in your head and you try and figure out what's right and what's not right. Did it seem like something Mariam would be capable of doing? No, it wasn't something Mariam was capable of doing,

but to say I never thought that could be a possibility, I thought about it. There was a period of time I thought maybe she chose to go. How would that have made you feel as a father? Very disappointed. Very, very disappointed. Quite shocked, actually, knowing everything we've done together and everything we've grown up together and everything that she knew that I believed in and what I thought she believed in, I would have been really shocked. Yeah.

Once they had made initial contact, Kamal and Mariam kept talking as much as they could, given the censorship, all of the monitored communication. And it's sometime after this that Kamal learns that Khaled has been killed. And here and there, Mariam starts to suggest that she no longer wants to be there. Kamal said she would sneak away without any guards and text Kamal a few words. During one of these private moments, she told him, I was forced. And finally, she tells Kamal, she's going to make a break for it.

Because in some of the discussions that we had backwards and forwards, by text, which was later deleted, she intimated that she needed to move, which was sort of, I got from her an idea that she needed to move out of where she was. After that, Kamal didn't hear from her for 19 months. Not a word. And it was absolutely an awful time in my life. I didn't know whether she was alive or dead. I didn't know whether she made it safe.

I didn't know the condition of the kids. I went into a depression I sought medical help, I sought professional help as the days and the months passed and I had started to think towards the end of that period of time that she may have succumbed, that actually she may never be coming home. And then...

One day he goes into his bedroom and he looks at his phone. And I'm looking at my phone and there were these several messages. Baba, it's me. Dad, it's me. Dad, it's me. Call me. Call me. And I called the phone phone it was her voice and literally I collapsed just to know that she was alive and she was okay and

she could tell me what had happened to her she told me that there's another child and what happened next There's another child. And what happened next? Well, then she said to me, Dad, if it was difficult before with two kids, it's now even more difficult with three kids.

I'm not going to try and make a break for it until there's absolute safety and things are going to happen. He says she tells him it's too dangerous to try again. But by 2018, ISIS is under siege, and in the months that have passed, they're down to virtually no territory at all, and the bombing is intensifying. Mariam says her second husband is also killed, and then she's forced into a third marriage.

But that third marriage wasn't as dramatic as the second marriage, if I can put it that way. I think he wasn't a fighter by the accounts. He was working in the hospital. I was told that he was actually a bit more supportive with her. Sometime after her third husband is captured, Kamal gets advice that Mariam should surrender to Kurdish forces, who have been key allies to the US in this fight against ISIS, and who hold territory in northeastern Syria.

And then in early 2019, she contacts her father, and she lets him know she's ended up in the Al Hall camp, where the families of ISIS fighters are being held, which is where she meets the other Australian women. They begin to forge friendships with one another. They kind of connect their tents up to protect themselves from the more radicalized women who have been known to beat and even mutilate other women in the camp who they perceived to be non-believers. And then Mariam thinks to herself, hey, we should get our parents to talk to one another. So she texts her dad and says, you and the other family members need to talk to one another. You need to get us out of here.

the family members need to talk to one another. You need to get us out of here. So Kamal starts making contact with the family members of these women and this strange club starts to form. For so long, for years in most cases, these families have been keeping a secret that their sisters, their daughters are in Syria. And suddenly they have a forum where they can connect with one another and talk about how hard it's been and also begin to organise and discuss how they might get them out. They're having meetings, they're writing letters to politicians,

they're stressing to government that if they're to get these women and children out, now is the time to do it. The Kurds are running the camp, things are relatively stable, but the families sense that this isn't going to last for that long. And it's at this time that Kamal is also planning a trip to Syria. He thinks, well, even if he can't get his daughter out, he wants to see her. And it's also an opportunity to make contact with the Kurds and the Americans to try to figure out the logistics of what it might look like to get her and the

other women and children out. So earlier this year, he goes. He visits her in the Al-Hal camp. Whatever you heard about the camp, seeing it was different. This was summer. It was 50-degree heat that we were facing. It is 50 degrees Celsius or more than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. And you looked out and there was not a green thing in sight, not a tree, not grass.

All it was was rocks and there were these tents sitting on top of these rocks um and it really felt like a moonscape a dusty moonscape and uh and it was just so hot that just getting some water to the camp was difficult go get water and get back was difficult so describe to me this first moment that you see mariam how does she look how does she react to you um so we could see the car pull up we could see them getting out of the car we could see them running towards us um and mariam was carrying the youngest one on her hand and, uh, she, she just hugged me and, um, she was sad at, uh, you know, very excited, breathing very heavy. And I kept telling her, just, just breathe, just relax.

I'm here. But, you know, she just can't say, I can't believe you're here. I can't believe that you're here. I can't believe you made it. I can't believe you made it. Um, and she just turned around and said, I'm broken. I need my dad. I need my dad.

Um. and she just turned around and said, I'm broken, I need my dad, I need my dad. So tell me about the moment that she actually lifted the neck up off her face and you saw her. Well, she'd lifted... I'd said to her, let me see you, let me see you, and then she'd lifted the neck up off her face just privately, and I was shocked with how much weight she'd lost. I was shocked with how pale her skin was. But I couldn't show any of that, of course.

And I just saw her and then she put the cup back down. She wouldn't leave it up for very long. Mariam then takes Kamal to see the camp. But after only a few hours, he has to leave. The Australian government hasn't made up its mind what to do with Mariam and the other women and children. So he goes home, alone. so after that visit kamal returns to sydney he's driving from sydney to melbourne it's about a 10 hour drive and he's going to melbourne to meet with some family members of the women and children

he's on the road and he gets a call. It's a journalist who tells him, did you see Trump's tweet? The US has just given Turkey permission to cross the border. It dawns on Kamal in this moment that everything they had been pressing the government for for months, their worst fears could come true. That a Turkish incursion would sow instability in the region, which could ultimately cost the lives of his daughter and his grandchildren, and he knows this window to get them out is suddenly growing very, very short. So he pulls over on the side of the road, and he weeps. It's... It's shifting hour by hour.

The Syrian forces coming into that space, I don't know what it means for everyone. I really don't know what it means for everyone. So I'm going to try, sorry, even though it's three o'clock in the morning there, try and run through. Tamari, would you mind putting it on speaker? Hello?

Hello? Hello? Okay. Okay, sorry. The system's not letting me get through. So, yeah. Tomorrow, part two of Kamal's story. We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today.

Order! Order! The ayes to the right, 322. The noes to the left, 306. Parliament has rejected an agreement between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the European Union for Britain to leave the EU by the end of October, likely requiring yet another delay in the Brexit process, possibly until January. Despite skepticism of the agreement, Johnson had hoped that enough lawmakers fed up with previous delays would approve it over the weekend.

As Parliament voted, an estimated one million people demonstrated against Brexit on the streets of downtown London, arguing for a new referendum to keep Britain in the EU. And President Trump has reversed course on his decision to hold the next G7 summit of world leaders at his own resort in Florida, which both Democrats and Republicans had called an illegal act of self-dealing by the president. He was honestly surprised at the level of pushback. At the end of the day, you know, he still considers himself to be in the hospitality business.

And he saw an opportunity to take the biggest leaders from around the world, and he wanted to put on the absolute best show, the best visit that he possibly could. In a tweet over the weekend, Trump cited the criticism and said he would immediately begin searching for an alternate location. I think it's the right decision to change. We'll have to find someplace else. And my guess is we'll find someplace else that the media won't like either for another reason. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Bavaro. See you tomorrow.