https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/04/15/an-australian-woman-went-syria-find-her-isis-raised-grandchildren/?utm_term=.013ee226e878



The fate of children raised by foreign fighters in the Islamic State has become an international issue following the collapse of the group’s caliphate over the past year.

Facing a slow government response to issues surrounding her family, an Australian woman decided to take matters into her own hands.

Karen Nettleton traveled to the Syrian refugee camp of al-Hawl to find three of her grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. When she finally embraced them after years apart, one of her granddaughters, Hoda Sharrouf, said that she couldn’t believe it.

“I’m pretty sure I’m dreaming,” 16-year-old Hoda said, according to footage aired on Monday, captured by an Australian television crew with ABC-TV’s Four Corners.

“You’re not dreaming. You’re not going to wake up,” Nettleton said in response.

Link to tweet

Hoda and her siblings — 17-year-old sister Zaynab Sharrouf and 8-year-old brother Humzeh Sharrouf — live with Zaynab Sharrouf’s two young daughters in the camp. They are believed to be the only surviving members of a family that fled to Syria and gained infamy in Australia.

The family was brought to Syria by Khaled Sharrouf, an Australian fighter who sparked worldwide horror in 2014 after tweeting a photograph of a young boy, apparently his son, holding a severed human head in a town controlled by the Islamic State.

“That’s my boy!” a caption on the photo said.

Khaled Sharrouf, who Australian authorities said had a history of mental illness, went to the Middle East to join the nascent Islamic State in 2013. His wife, Tara Nettleton, and their five children soon followed.