Nick Kaldas, a former NSW Police deputy commissioner, said the situation in the war-torn nation was far too precarious to extract the Australian families of Islamic State fighters from the al-Hawl camp.

"I think it's almost impossible to do at the moment," he told ABC radio on Monday.

Mr Kaldas, a security consultant and senior fellow at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said one major factor was the number of "fingers in the pie".

Turkish, Kurdish, Syrian and Russian forces are all engaged in the conflict after the United States pulled its troops out earlier this month.

"You really couldn't even predict who was in charge of what area in some of these places at the moment," Mr Kaldas said.

He talked down the idea of paying the Russians to extract Australian children and commended the hardline approach to repatriations adopted by European nations.

"I have to agree with the government's position of not risking Australian lives to bring them out," Mr Kaldas said.

"Regrettably, that's just the reality. If there's a war going on somewhere, you don't send public servants in to extract our people.

"It simply places more lives at risk, causes more problems, and there is a possibility that someone who we send in there in an ill-advised effort may actually get kidnapped or killed themselves."

There are 20 Australian women and 46 children held at al-Hawl.

Mr Kaldas said there would be more of a chance of gaining access to the Australians if they made their way to Iraq.

The women and children could then undergo background and security checks.

"But Syria at the moment is almost a no-go zone," Mr Kaldas said.

Australian Associated Press