‘Balance is possible’ to repatriate Australian ISIS brides, say security experts

Security experts believe ‘balance is possible’ to repatriate Australia ISIS brides as children languished in camps with injuries, including one eight-year-old girl with shrapnel wounds.

Al-Roj refugee camp in northern Syria. Picture: Save the Children Australia

Security experts believe “balance is possible” to ensure ISIS brides and their children stuck in Syrian detention camps can be reintegrated into Australia alongside law-enforcement monitoring and deradicalisation programs.

The Australian can also reveal that the young daughter of one mother remains in the Al Roj detention camp with shrapnel wounds to the head, hip and feet, unable to receive proper medical care.

At least 10 Australian women remain in the camps with about 30 children. The comments follow a plea from a young mother on Friday and renewed calls by advocates for the group to be returned home.

X-rays of the daughter show three distinct shrapnel wounds, which the child sustained when a car the pair was travelling in was hit by an Apache strike.

Save the Children Australia and Muslim community leaders have pressured Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke to bring the group home, although it is unlikely to happen before the next federal election as he attempts to balance community expectations on visas for Palestinians and security concerns.

A shrapnel scar on the hip of the mother’s eight-year-old daughter.

Former army officer Rodger Shanahan, author of Islamic State in Australia, called the issue “politically delicate” but a “balance was possible” to bring the cohort home. “The government is sensitive to opening itself to criticism from the opposition that it is soft on security, and there is little public sympathy for those who travelled to Syria to join a terrorist group that targeted Australians – the issue won’t be revisited during this term of government,” he said.

Dr Shanahan said “silence” surrounding the 2022 repatriation and integration efforts could point to its success, but added that only one of the four women returnees was charged and sentenced.

“The government is (aware of criticism) that returnees may not be sufficiently punished unless the cases against them … tendered in court are sufficiently strong,” he said, adding that the children were innocents and should be returned to be “introduced or reintegrated” into Australia.

“There is a legitimate concern that the children should be repatriated so that their deradicalisation and reintegration programs can start as quickly as possible … the women should be dealt with according to the law.”

The mother and daughter have been in the camps for about six years, and the child requires an operation and significant medical attention for her shrapnel wounds, which is not possible inside Al Roj.

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s law enforcement and strategic policing head John Coyne said repatriation was a more complex situation than government outsiders realised. “The government does have an obligation to bring them home … but sometimes people don’t understand the complexity of getting people back and managing them in a way that doesn’t present a threat to the community.”

Mr Coyne said Australia had no jurisdiction in the area and any operation would require “significant co-ordination” of governmental arms; security risks would be a significant factor for the government to mitigate but it had the domestic tools to address that.

“In an Australian jurisdiction you have extensive access to counter-violent extremism programs, psychological support, law and intelligence organisations with a range of powers, including continuous detention orders,” he said. “If we leave people in these locations, they’re going to be in a lawless zone and could become heavily radicalised.”