Jihadi families going ‘home’ just part of the ISIS plan

Australian women and children at the Al-Hawl camp in northeast Syria. Picture: Supplied

News that Britain is preparing to repatriate Islamic State women and children from Syria perhaps suggests we could follow suit. The women – it is reported – will be subject to “strict monitoring and surveillance”, which should allay concerns about ongoing threats.

But it’s much more than simple logistics and security monitoring.

To understand the serious ­dilemma posed by foreign fighters, we need to drill further into the practicalities of how such a regime might or might not work. But there’s another important and ­under-reported voice to listen to. Islamic State itself has a lot to say on where women and children fit into its plan for the next stage of terrorism, and how it plans to use liberal democratic systems against themselves. As Australia contemplates its next steps, we need to be fully aware of this.

Like other terrorist organisations, women play an important role in ISIS as recruiters and supporters, as well as occasionally being attackers. Thousands of women from across the world flocked to join Islamic State as part of the foreign fighter movement, thousands more providing supporting and enabling roles from outside the conflict zone.

Under Australian law, as with most other countries, undertaking a terrorist attack is only one of several acts considered terrorism – including inciting terrorism, fin­ancing, recruit­ing, planning and providing material support. This is why high-profile female Islamic State recruiters and propagandists such as Zehra Duman are of such concern. The only Australian woman to be prosecuted for terrorism to date was found guilty of terrorism financing.

But Islamic State has another special role for women, which is to be wives and mothers of fighters. Tareena Shakil, the first British woman jailed for joining ISIS, was found to have intentionally travelled to Syria to “produce the next generation of ISIS fighters”.

Right now, it is these families of the so-called caliphate, numbering in the tens of thousands, who are waiting in al-Hawl refugee camp to go on to the next stage of the fight. At least this is what the ­Islamic State leadership plans.

As the military offensive against Islamic State pushed the terrorist group into its last small enclave at Baghouz in Syria, the international community was amazed to see thousands of women and children emerge from the terrorist stronghold. Far from fleeing the terrorist group, this was the organised movement of Islamic State families out of the battlezone and into camps. Reports from al-Hawl confirm the community is run by ISIS women effect­ively as a continuation of the caliphate.

It was immediately after the battle of Baghouz that the late ­Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi chose to make his ­second video appearance. He reminded his followers to keep ­focused on the “long battle”, that territorial defeat was a temporary setback, and to take the cause on to new battlefields, enabled by the next generation.

About 60 Australian women and children remain in al-Hawl. Last week, the families and lawyers for 11 of these women offered for them to be voluntarily placed under control orders if they could come home, to provide the “highest level” of surveillance and monitoring and ensure they didn’t pose a threat. “In our view,” their legal representatives said, “this significant offer would allay any security concerns raised by government ministers as the primary reason not to repatriate these Australians immediately.” It would also be a “far more cost-effective” approach than to have them monitored ­covertly by authorities.

Sound reasonable? It’s not that simple. First, there is the matter of the legal basis of a control order. Despite the voluntary offer, control orders don’t work that way. The evidentiary case for a control order would still need to be made and met, and a court would need to find that any conditions were reasonable and necessary in relation to a demonstrated high level of threat posed by the individual. And the order itself is time-limited to one year. The Australian Federal Police has testified that the evidence to meet this threshold often means weighing up whether it’s worth revealing technical investigative capabilities to meet this short-term gain – ultimately, it argues, mounting and prosecuting a separate criminal case is always preferred over a control order.

Then there is the cost. In 2014, The Australian reported that agencies estimated the cost of maintaining surveillance on one returned foreign fighter at about $8m a year. This might mean $88m a year to monitor the 11 ISIS women who’ve made that offer. Legal costs would be in addition to this. And it might cost much more. Britain’s Independent ­National Security Legislation Monitor testified in 2011 that its similar scheme was ­estimated at about $20m to $35m a year a person.

And that’s if such surveillance resources are available. The heads of ASIO and Australia’s police ­forces have testified that counter-terrorism investigations are stretching limited capabilities and require prioritisation of existing threats among the more than 400 running counter-terrorism investigations.

This drain on resources and capabilities is part of the terrorists’ plan. Islamic State propaganda calls openly for its supporters to undertake action to drain the ­resources of its enemies. This ­includes not only the vast amounts required to prevent and respond to attacks but also soaking up ­investigative resources through surveillance and monitoring. Last year, a RAND report found that between 2004 and 2016, EU states lost about €180bn because of ­terrorist attacks. Islamic State and others take advantage of the freedom and compassion of liberal democracies and stretch the resources of our countries and international organisations.

Of course, not all these women chose to go to war or knew what to ­expect. Children born to terrorist parents or taken there by their family didn’t choose this life – but also know no other. Like child soldiers, they have been indoctri­nated to believe in this cause, and desensitised to violence. And those who are not orphans remain with their parents, who are Islamic State members.

We value human rights while working to defeat terrorism, and we need a compassionate, just way to deal with the complex issue of our citizens who chose to be part of a terrorist organisation, while also doing what we can to limit the risk of them and their children being part of a future threat.

Jacinta Carroll is a senior research fellow counter-terrorism at ANU’s National Security College.