Authorities in two Australian states are getting ready to resettle children returning from squalid detention camps and life under Islamic State rule, while at least some of their mothers may face the kind of legal trouble that tends to put a damper on homecoming.
Four women and nine children are expected to land on Australian soil Thursday, with all but a mother and her child bound for Melbourne. Before boarding, one of the women told the ABC that Australia seemed “like paradise” after years in Syrian camps - which, given the camps' reputation, is a bar that could be cleared by a moderately clean bus station.
“We just want our children to be safe. It was like hell [in Syria] for them,” she said. Another woman noted: “One of the boys has an Australian accent, even though he’s never been to Australia.” Possibly the world’s most wholesome evidence that accents are hereditary.
The Australian Federal Police said Wednesday that some of the women would be arrested and charged upon arrival, while support would be made available for the children - because nothing says “welcome home” like a pair of handcuffs and a therapist.
Mat Tinkler, CEO of Save the Children Australia, called this exactly the scenario advocates had been pushing for since the collapse of the caliphate in 2019 left 34 Australians detained in north-east Syrian camps. “Two-thirds of this cohort that we’re talking about in Syria are children,” Tinkler told the ABC. “There’s been a lot of focus on the women and the choices they may have made but we need to focus on these children and give them a chance of resuming a normal life in Australia.”
Tinkler suggested the “temperature should be dialled right down” given that other women and children had returned before, and other Western nations had successfully reintegrated their citizens. Unconfirmed reports from Syria suggest evacuations of the camps have begun, increasing the likelihood that more Australian citizens may seek to return home - presumably without the handy welcome party.
Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke insisted the government had provided no assistance to the group, which is legally allowed to return unless a formal exclusion order is in place. Burke has issued exactly one such order, based on ASIO advice about a national security risk, but none of the returning group are affected by it.
The cohort includes children born in detention camps after the fall of Islamic State, a woman previously married to a notorious recruiter for the terror group, and others who insist they only travelled to the Middle East to perform aid work - a claim that may face some scrutiny at customs.
Eleven of them are members of the same family and are expected to settle in Melbourne; the other two, a woman and her child, are bound for Sydney. Victorian Police Commissioner Mike Bush said his officers would play a “significant part” in monitoring any returnees free to live in the community, while Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan declared that anyone “who has broken the law will face its full force” and that “children will be asked to undertake countering violent extremism programs. That is appropriate.”
Behind-the-scenes planning for the group’s return has been under way for ten years, including a community liaison team working with affected local communities. NSW Police Minister Yasmin Catley assured parliament that NSW police were “working closely” with the AFP, adding: “If anyone has committed an offence, they will face the full force of the law.”
ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess said advice about the group had been provided to policing agencies, and he wasn’t “concerned immediately by their return but they’ll get our attention, as you expect.” Shadow Home Affairs Minister Jonathon Duniam, however, claimed the government had “actively failed to safeguard” Australians from a security risk - because nothing says bipartisan consensus like disagreeing about whether to let people come home.
The group began their second attempt to travel home last month after a much larger cohort was turned back by Syrian authorities in February. The US has pushed countries including Australia to repatriate citizens who joined the IS caliphate, but the issue has dogged successive governments. Under Albanese, Labor had supported bringing the families home as recently as 2022, but the politics shifted dramatically after the December shootings at Bondi beach. Albanese has refused to help, saying the adults had “made their bed” and should suffer the consequences - a philosophy that presumably doesn’t extend to their children, who didn’t exactly choose the mattress.