The woman is believed to be part of a group including at least 15 Indonesians whose purported detention FMT reported last month.
According to Human Rights Watch’s terrorism and counterterrorism programme director Nadim Houry, many of them were detained along with their children.
FMT later reported a source as saying the Malaysian government was seeking confirmation from Interpol on the matter.
However, the authorities have yet to respond to FMT’s request for comments on the matter.
“Strategically, a dialogue with the Iraqi central government is more important for the Malaysian government than it is for the Kurds because Iraq is a sovereign state,” Patrick Blannin, an international security analyst and researcher at Australia’s Bond University, told FMT.
“Despite the rise and influence of non-state entities, violent and nonviolent, international relations remain a state-centric system of dialogue and interaction among sovereign states.”
When it comes to dealing with non-state actors, though, one example is the Malaysian government’s efforts to recover the black box and bodies of passengers who were shot down in the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 tragedy in 2014.
Prime Minister Najib Razak entered into an agreement with pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine, sparking an international debate over the legitimacy and repercussions of such a move.
However, Blannin said there was a difference between Malaysia’s situation with the Ukrainian and Kurdish rebels.
“Ukraine and the Russia-backed insurgency are different.
“The insurgents act on behalf of their Russian backers, so dialogue with them is in essence dialogue with Russia, a sovereign state.
“The situation with the Kurds is different, whereby no regional state will support the Kurds if they undermine the Iraqi central government.
“Stability is key: if external states increase the already tense situation between the Abadi government and the Kurds, this will destabilise Iraq at a time when stability and legitimacy is
key.”
Mission, not methods, most important
International relations expert Mohamad Abu Bakar said the most important thing for the government in such situations was to successfully achieve its goal.
“Usually, the government-to-government channel is used, but there’ll be a problem if the matter involves a non-state actor,” Mohamad, a professor formerly with Universiti Malaya, told FMT.
“A government can’t deal with just anybody because it will be seen as an act of recognising the non-state entity.
“But the success of a government in resolving an international issue is measured by its success, so the methods to achieve this are of secondary importance,” he said, adding that governments could use both “overt and covert” methods to achieve their mission.
Separated from captured IS fighters
Houry had told FMT the some 16 Indonesian and Malaysian women and their families were part of 800 foreign women and their children who were detained by US-backed Kurdish forces in northern Syria after joining the IS militant group.
German daily Die Welt earlier interviewed Houry, who had spoken with many of the women during visits to several detention camps in Kurdish-held areas in January.
“I know that there are Indonesians, at least 15 families,” Houry told FMT.
“I did not see the Malaysians, but I am told there is one family.”
Houry did not say if there were women from other Southeast Asian countries in the camps, or what had happened to the Malaysian family.
The German paper also quoted him as saying that the 800 women and their children were in four camps.
“They come from around 40 countries. There are women from Canada, France, Britain, Tunisia, Yemen, Turkey and Australia,” he said, adding that there were also 15 from Germany.
Houry said the women were given a certain amount of freedom but were not allowed to leave the camps.
They were also being held separate from the captured IS fighters, he said.