This Kurdish-controlled detention camp is for people with perceived or real links to IS group members.
It’s a place where Australian kids play on barren rocky ground, don’t receive proper education and are unable to leave.
"I'm trying as hard as I can to make things normal for them," Zahra told Dateline in 2024.
"But how hard can you try in a place like this?"
Originally from suburban Melbourne, the circumstances of how Zahra’s extended family came to be in Syria are contested. Some male members of her family reportedly joined the IS group, but Zahra maintains the women had no choice but to follow.
At the camp, she and her kids and 12 other Australian mothers sleep in tents next to an oilfield.