Mariam Dabboussy | |
---|---|
Born | 1992 (age 30–31) |
Nationality | Australian |
Known for | lived in Daesh controlled Syria |
Mariam Dabboussy is an Australian woman who lived in Daesh controlled Syria. [1] [2]
Dabboussy told The New York Times that she never planned to enter Daesh territory. [3] She said she travelled to Turkey, with her husband, on what he said was an expedition to help relatives of his escape Syria. But she claimed she was the victim of a trick, and that, once they were within walking distance of the border he pulled a gun and forced her into Syria, at gunpoint.
The Australian television series Four Corners devoted an episode to Dabboussy. [2] Dabboussy raised her veil during her television interview, an act she said could trigger retaliation from the most devout occupants of the al-Hawl refugee camp. [4] She told reporters that her brother in law, Mohammed, convinced or coerced at least a dozen Australians into Daesh territory. [5] Reporters who compared those images with her wedding photos, described her face as "wizened".
Her father's efforts to convince the Australian government to repatriate her have received worldwide attention. [1] [2] [6] [7] [8] He assured the Australian public that his granddaughter, and the other Australian refugees, had all agreed to be subject to a control order, when they were repatriated. [9] Her father told Radio New Zealand that Australian security officials were well aware she had been duped into entering Daesh territory, as he wasn't aware she was in Daesh territory, and they told him she had been duped. [10]
Dabboussy married in 2011, and lived with her husband's family after she became pregnant in 2014. [4] She attributed her husband Khaled's ploy to trick her into Syria to his elder brother Mohammed. She had given birth to her first child, prior to her arrival in Syria, and was pregnant with a second child. Her husband was killed within three months of her arrival, and prior to the birth of her second child. By 2019 she had given birth to a third child.
Turkey's involvement in the Syrian civil war began diplomatically and later escalated militarily. Initially, Turkey condemned the Syrian government at the outbreak of civil unrest in Syria during the spring of 2011; the Turkish government's involvement gradually evolved into military assistance for the Free Syrian Army in July 2011, border clashes in 2012, and direct military interventions in 2016–17, in 2018, in 2019, 2020, and in 2022. The military operations have resulted in the Turkish occupation of northern Syria since August 2016.
The Bethnal Green trio are Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana, three British girls who attended the Bethnal Green Academy in London before leaving home in February 2015 to join the Islamic State. According to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, they were among an estimated 550 women and girls from Western countries who had travelled to join IS—part of what some have called "a jihadi, girl-power subculture", the so-called Brides of ISIL. The events were adapted into the Swedish TV series Caliphate.
Al-Hawl, also spelled al-Hole, al-Hol, al-Hool and al-Houl, is a town in eastern al-Hasakah Governorate, northeastern Syria, under control of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria. It is the administrative center of the Al-Hawl Subdistrict consisting of 22 municipalities. At the 2004 census, the town had a population of 3,409. Al-Hawl is the site of the Al-Hawl refugee camp.
The Turkey–Islamic State conflict refers to a series of attacks and clashes between the state of Turkey and the Islamic State (ISIS), most of which is part of the spillover of the Syrian Civil War. Turkey joined the War against the Islamic State in 2016, after the Islamic State attacks in Turkey. The Turkish Armed Forces' Operation Euphrates Shield was partly aimed against the Islamic State and partly against the SDF. Part of the Turkish occupied zone in northern Syria, around Jarabulus and al-Bab, was taken from the Islamic State.
Alan Kurdi, initially reported as Aylan Kurdi, was a two-year-old Syrian boy of Kurdish ethnic background whose image made global headlines after he drowned on 2 September 2015 in the Mediterranean Sea along with his mother and brother. Alan and his family were Syrian refugees trying to reach Europe from Turkey amid the European refugee crisis. Photographs of his body were taken by Turkish journalist Nilüfer Demir and quickly went viral, prompting international responses. Since the Kurdi family had reportedly been trying to reach Canada, his death and the wider refugee crisis became an issue in the 2015 Canadian federal election.
Khaled Sharrouf was a Jihadist who in 2013 travelled to Syrian territory to fight in the Syrian Civil War on the side of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. Born in Sydney, Australia, in 2017 he was the first Australian dual-national to have his Australian citizenship revoked under anti-terror legislation passed in 2015. In 2014, he posted an image to the Internet showing his seven-year-old son holding the severed head of a Syrian soldier, an act that was widely condemned.
The Eastern Syria insurgency is an armed insurgency being waged by remnants of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and both pro and anti-Syrian government Arab nationalist insurgents, against the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (AANES), its military, and their allies in the US-led Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF–OIR) coalition.
The Battle of Baghuz Fawqani was an offensive by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), assisted by Combined Joint Task Force – Operation Inherent Resolve (CJTF-OIR) coalition airstrikes, artillery, and special forces personnel, that began on 9 February 2019 as part of the Deir ez-Zor campaign of the Syrian Civil War. The battle—which was composed of a series of ground assaults—took place in and around the Syrian town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani in the Middle Euphrates River Valley near the Iraq–Syria border, and was the territorial last stand of the Islamic State (IS) in eastern Syria.
Shamima Begum is a British-born woman who entered Syria to join the terror group Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) at the age of 15. She was a student at Bethnal Green Academy in London when she and two schoolmates travelled to Syria in February 2015 and became known as the Bethnal Green trio. Begum's journey was facilitated by an ISIL smuggler who was providing information to Canadian intelligence. She married a fellow ISIL member 10 days after her arrival and had three children who all died young. The Daily Telegraph reported that Begum had developed a reputation as an enforcer amongst other members of ISIL and had tried to recruit other young women to join the group.
Hoda Muthana is a U.S.-born Yemeni woman who emigrated from the United States to Syria to join ISIS in November 2014. She surrendered in January 2019 to coalition forces fighting ISIS in Syria and has been denied access back to the United States after a U.S. court ruling rejected her claim to American citizenship. When she was born, her father was a Yemeni diplomat, making her ineligible for American citizenship by birth.
Beginning in 2012, dozens of girls and women traveled to Iraq and Syria to join the Islamic State (IS), becoming brides of Islamic State fighters. While some traveled willingly, others were brought to Iraq and Syria as minors by their parents or family or forcefully.
Zehra Duman is an Australian-born Turkish woman who traveled to Daesh territory where she married a jihadi fighter. Born in Melbourne, Duman is reported to have been a friend of Tara Nettleton and Khaled Sharrouf, who travelled from Australia to Daesh territory, with their five children, in 2014. Duman's online recruiting activities have been the subject of scholarly attention.
Kimberly Gwen Polman is a dual Canadian-U.S. citizen, who travelled to Daesh occupied territory in 2015, and married an Islamic militant she had befriended online. In 2019, after she surrendered to forces allied to the United States, Polman told reporters she deeply regretted her actions.
Sharmeena Begum is one of the jihadi brides. She left the United Kingdom to join the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in December 2014. Two months later, in February 2015, school friends Amira Abase, Shamima Begum, and Kadiza Sultana joined her in occupied Syria. Begum is one of the youngest British teenagers to join ISIL.
Lisa Smith is a former Irish soldier who converted to Islam and later travelled to Syria during the Syrian Civil War to join the militant group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) during the Syrian Civil War. Born in Dundalk, she was a member of the Irish Army before transferring to the Irish Air Corps in 2011, but quit following her conversion to Islam. In 2015, following the breakdown of her marriage, she travelled to Syria to join ISIS. In 2019, she was captured and detained by the US forces in northern Syria. She was sentenced at the Irish Special Criminal Court on 22 July 2022 to 15 months in prison following her conviction on 30 May of membership of Daesh.
The al-Hawl refugee camp is a refugee camp on the southern outskirts of the town of al-Hawl in northern Syria, close to the Syria-Iraq border, which holds individuals displaced from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. The camp is nominally controlled by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) but according to the U.S. Government, much of the camp is run by Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant who use the camp for indoctrination and recruitment purposes.
Celso Rodrigues Da Costa was born in Portugal, and travelled to the United Kingdom, where he was converted to a militant form of Islam, and travelled to Daesh occupied Syria to volunteer to be a jihadi fighter.
Muhammad Zahab was an Australian math teacher who recruited many of his relatives, friends and acquaintances to join him in Daesh occupied Syria. The Australian Broadcasting Corporation public affairs show Four Corners reported he recruited his wife, parents, his two brothers, his sister, three cousins, four in-laws, and their children.
Mariam Saab is a Lebanese-Australian journalist and television presenter. Saab is a news presenter on ABC News.
Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurashi also known as Abdul Lateef was the fourth caliph of the Islamic State and allegedly the first Syrian to serve as caliph. He took office on 30 November 2022.
'It's tough; it's scary,' he told his daughter, Mariam, during a recent phone call. Mr. Dabboussy tried to comfort her. 'We're still pushing,' he said.
While the details of many of the women's stories are unknown, some have come forward to explain themselves, including Mariam Dabboussy. She says that in late 2015, she was forced by gunpoint over the Turkish border with Syria, after traveling there in what her husband claimed was an attempt to extract a relative who was trying to escape the Islamic State.
Another looks vastly different to her Australian wedding photos. In the pictures, Mariam Dabboussy, smiles broadly, hair down to her shoulders. Now she sits head to toe in black, visibly wizened.
Mariam Dabboussy is risking her safety to reveal how her brother-in-law Muhammad Zahab delivered her and her baby into the grip of the Islamic State (IS) group.
Kamalle Dabboussy visited Parliament House in Canberra on Tuesday to ask federal politicians to intervene to rescue the stranded Australians. He said Australia could still safely liberate its citizens from the war zone.
Mariam Dabboussy's father Kamalle Dabboussy continues to lobby the government to help Australians stuck in the a Hawl refugee camp in Syria.
Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam was reportedly coerced by a relative into going to Syria, said the feeling on the ground was one of apprehension, not of Turkish control itself, but of a resistance to any Turkish offensive plunging the volatile region back into war. Any transition from Kurdish to Turkish control is unlikely to be smooth.
'The women have all agreed to be subject to control orders if they return, and the government has not accepted that offer. Instead, all we've got is police raids. That, in my view, is a heavy-handed response.'
When it comes to his daughter, he said she was coerced into that space, and that was something the authorities understood too. 'The first I knew my daughter was there was when the authorities knocked on my door and told me your daughter is in Syria and she was coerced into going there, that was the line they used.'