Jihadi brides and children present security challenge

Australia, like other allied nations such as the US, Germany, France, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland and Sweden, is moving to deal with the problem of extracting women and children – Australian citizens – from the camps for Islamic State families in northeast Syria. Australians will never forget the evil brutality of Islamic State and the fiendish behaviour of the Australian jihadists who joined it. For this reason, the opposition of shadow home affairs minister Karen Andrews and others to repatriating about 60 women and children from the camps is understandable. Ms Andrews says worries over radicalisation prevented her from repatriating the families when the Coalition was in government. That strategy also had risks, however.

Security is paramount. That is why the US is keen to see the camps emptied as soon as possible, fearing a fresh security crisis could arise in such a hothouse environment. As The Australian said in July, when Ellen Whinnett first reported from the camps, repatriating the women and children is a matter of national responsibility. ASIO and the Albanese government are putting the finishing touches to a plan to bring back 16 women and 42 children from the al-Roj detention camp near the Iraqi border. They have been held without charge following the fall of Islamic State in March 2019.

The women have all agreed voluntarily to submit to control orders, which is a positive sign. The families will require close monitoring, which will add to the heavy workloads of security and intelligence services. Surveillance is expensive to taxpayers. This is one reason we argued on Monday that the government would be wise to leave extraordinary powers in place to keep convicted terrorists in Australian jails after serving their sentences.

Women returning from Syria who were trafficked or coerced by their parents or husbands to travel to Islamic State are highly unlikely to face charges in Australia. They are expected to be among the first returned. The background story and circumstances of each woman, and her children, must be scrutinised carefully. Where warranted, however, women who chose to abandon Australia and repudiate the nation’s values by travelling to the proscribed area of Raqqa should not be spared the legal consequences. Save the Children Australia chief executive Mat Tinkler, who has met some of the women in the camps and supports repatriation, says some of the women “went under their own steam, but not all of them’’. Some, he says, were tricked, coerced or duped. Some left at age 15 and by 19 had four children to an Islamic State fighter.

The children, who range in age from preschoolers to older teenagers, are innocent of wrongdoing. Some were born in Australia and taken abroad when they were very young. Dozens more were born in the caliphate; five were born in detention camps. Many have never been to school. When they arrive, they will need to be introduced or reintroduced to Australian society. Regular school attendance and English lessons must be part of the government’s resettlement program. Rehabilitation will be vital.

Whinnett found in Syria that many of the women and children are sick and injured. All have been through trauma. Mr Tinkler says many children in the camps are poorly nourished and are suffering from untreated shrapnel wounds. In such an environment, mental health problems will be rife.

In Australia, much will depend on their extended families’ attitudes towards extremism and jihad. That is where surveillance and a hard-headed approach by authorities will be important to maintaining security. Australia now has the chance to assert the strength of the nation’s values by doing the decent thing by these citizens in accepting them back, with a firm hand.