EDITORIAL: Albanese must make correct call on ISIS brides

The news that another group of ISIS brides wants to return from the Middle East has created a challenge for the Albanese Government.

It has arisen after photos emerged of the women and their children preparing to leave a detention camp in north-east Syria.

Syrian news outlets reported the families, comprising at least 24 individuals, would soon depart Roj Camp for the capital Damascus, where they would be met by relatives.

Later their convoy was forced back to Roj Camp because of a lack of approvals to cross from territory still held by the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces to the Syrian Government side.

On Tuesday Prime Minister Anthony Albanese denied his Government was assisting the group to return.

“We won’t be providing assistance or repatriation,” he said. “My mother would have said, ‘If you make your bed, you lie in it’.”

Australian officials had obligations but “if there are any breaches of the law, they will face the full force of the Australian law”, Mr Albanese said.

Mr Albanese chose his words carefully. Knowing full well how many Australians would view the issue, the Prime Minister appeared to be talking tough.

But he is being too clever by half. It’s what he didn’t say that leaves it an open question.

The bottom line is that so far the Government has not done anything which would definitely stop the majority of the group coming back.

Let’s be clear who we are dealing with. They are not unlucky tourists who missed a flight. Most would have been married to Islamic State fighters. They ended up at the camp after the men were captured or killed when ISIS was defeated in 2019.

Roj is home to more than 2000 people from 40 different nationalities, and among them is believed to be Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship in 2019 on national security grounds.

The conditions in the camp present fertile grounds for hard core Islamist ideology. It is the kind of ideology which inspired alleged Bondi Beach murderers Naveed Akram and father Sajid, who placed ISIS flags inside the windscreens of the vehicle they drove to the scene.

In November The Nightly reported on the father of an ISIS bride who wanted to return to Australia saying his daughter had not been “tricked” into going to Syria but had gone willingly with her husband to live in an Islamic State under Sharia law.

In the years before she went to Syria, she regularly posted hard-line religious quotes, slogans and videos on social media under her Islamic name. “It is better for a man that a steel nail be driven through the centre of his head rather than if he touches the palm of a strange woman,” said one Facebook post.

This is the kind of environment in which the ISIS brides have lived. Do we think they have abandoned pro-ISIS views? Have they done anything illegal by going into a war zone in the first place? How can we guarantee the safety of others if they come back to “make their beds” in our suburbs?

The Government must do whatever it can to protect its citizens living in Australia.

Responsibility for the editorial comment is taken by Editor-in-Chief Christopher Dore.