Repatriated IS women should be accountable to the state they left behind

It is also a strong argument for, wherever possible, prosecuting the women who left Australia as adults, whether for terrorism or prescribed area offences. We know that arrest warrants have been issued for a number of Australian women. But the narrative being proffered by their advocates and by others is that adult women were somehow tricked, coerced or forced to enter Syria. While each case must, of course, rest on its merits, claims regarding lack of agency are, on the face of it, hard to accept – more so when courts in other Western countries have largely found similar claims to have been fabricated.

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Al-Qa’ida affiliates were active in the Syrian uprising from 2012, Islamic State declared its caliphate in June 2014, and called for men and women to join them in June 2014, and they called on followers to kill foreigners, including Australians, wherever they found them from September 2014. The idea that any adult woman could be ‘tricked’ or ‘coerced’ into travelling close enough to the Syrian/Turkish border so that she could then be ‘forced’ to cross into Syria any time after 2012, but particularly after June 2014, appears completely implausible. The idea that they would innocently take young children to southern Turkey in the same circumstances is even more implausible.

Society at large appears comfortable with repatriating the children of Islamic State parents so the rehabilitation process can commence. But it is important from a broader societal perspective that the women are held accountable for their actions and face legal action from the state that they turned their backs on. Only then can we truly judge their contrition and the public can be satisfied that adults are held accountable for the damage they and their partners did to so many innocent lives.