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In brief
- Shamima Begum made international headlines after travelling to Syria to join IS in February 2015.
- She is still there in a situation “worse than a prison sentence”.
In 2015, Shamima Begum departed the United Kingdom to align herself with the self-declared Islamic State (IS), leading the British government to revoke her citizenship, effectively leaving her stateless.
Since the fall of IS in 2019, Begum has found herself in a legal quandary. She is currently detained at Syria’s al-Roj camp, where 34 Australians, including 11 women often labeled as ‘ISIS brides’ and 23 children, are also held. These individuals, suspected of having ties to IS fighters, remain in the camp after a recent unsuccessful attempt to return to Australia.
In contrast to Begum, the Australian government has not stripped these individuals of their citizenship, as doing so would contravene international laws if it resulted in statelessness. While some Australians have been repatriated from Syrian camps with explicit government support, others have returned without such assistance.
Nonetheless, the Australian government maintains it has not aided this particular group, yet there are voices urging it to revoke their passports. The government also possesses the authority to issue temporary exclusion orders, a measure that could potentially prevent Australian citizens from coming back indefinitely. To date, one individual from this group has been subjected to such an order.
The key distinction between Begum’s situation and that of the Australians revolves around the contentious issue of citizenship.
Who is Shamima Begum?
Born in London, raised and educated in the multicultural neighbourhood of Bethnal Green, Begum was a British citizen of Bangladeshi descent.
She made international headlines after travelling to Syria to join IS in February 2015.
The girl, who was just 15 years old at the time, flew from London to Türkiye with her two school friends, Amira Abase and Kadiza Sultana, and was smuggled across the Syrian border with an IS-linked network. Just 10 days after their arrival, Begum was married to Dutch-born Yago Riedijk, a Muslim convert and IS fighter.
At the time, the self-proclaimed caliphate was at the height of its powers and occupied a territory roughly the size of Victoria with some 12 million people under its control.
Reports differ over what Begum did there, with some claiming she joined the brutal “morality police” and enforced strict discipline amongst the population. A fellow school friend, however, who joined IS before Begum, described her as a “shy misfit” who stayed at home under the command of her husband.
During her time in Syria, Begum gave birth to three children, all of whom died. Her youngest child, Jarrah, was born in the al-Hol refugee camp and died of pneumonia in al-Roj.
Jarrah’s birth was what motivated her to seek a return to the UK, she claimed in a tell-all interview from al-Hol in 2019. The story sparked national debate over whether she should be allowed to come back and, not long after, then-British home secretary Sajid Javid stripped Begum of her citizenship.
“If you have supported terrorist organisations abroad I will not hesitate to prevent your return”, Javid said.
The UK government has said Begum is a Bangladeshi citizen by descent, as her parents were born there, and that stripping her of her British citizenship would not make her stateless.
The government of Bangladesh, however, rejected such a claim.
“Bangladesh asserts that Ms Shamima Begum is not a Bangladeshi citizen. She is a British citizen by birth and has never applied for dual nationality with Bangladesh,” Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said in a statement in 2019.
“It may also be mentioned that she never visited Bangladesh in the past despite her parental lineage. So, there is no question of her being allowed to enter into Bangladesh,” it added.
In addition, Bangladeshi foreign minister Abdul Momen reiterated that year that Begum would face the death penalty if she entered the country, owing to its “zero tolerance” policy toward terrorism.
Begum has made several legal appeals over the stripping of her citizenship — all of which have failed — and has spent the past seven years in al-Roj.
In a BBC podcast she was the focus of in 2023, she mentioned living in a dusty tent, unable to leave, with an “indefinitely” similar future ahead of her.
“This is, I feel like worse than a prison sentence because at least with prison sentences you know that there will be an end, but here you don’t know if there’s going to be an end.”
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