Return of IS-linked families sparks debate in terror-traumatised AustraliaMost Australians do not want the women and children to come home, but advocates say they're in danger.5 hrs agoAustralia

After years spent detained in Syria, the freedom of the Islamic State group-linked families who landed back in their homeland of Australia this week was dramatically short lived.

Three of the women were swiftly arrested. The fourth was left to confront a frenzied media scrum alone, small children in tow, with the knowledge she could be next.

Australia has been eyeing their potential return with trepidation for years.

It has been resisting pressure to claim dozens of its citizens – families members of men who fought for the so-called Islamic State (IS). They have been languishing in highly-guarded camps since the group lost its territorial control in Syria after a years-long military campaign by the US-led coalition and local allies.

But as the country wallows in the fallout of its worst terrorist attack – a mass shooting allegedly inspired by IS at a Jewish event in Bondi Beach in December which left 15 dead – sentiment towards them has hardened.

The prime minister has repeatedly said he has nothing but contempt for the group: “If you make your bed, you have to lie in it,” has been Anthony Albanese’s mantra.

But amid increasingly volatile conditions, advocates say the predicament of the Australians still stuck in Syria is growing more dangerous and the need to get them home more desperate.

“The government want us to forget about them… [But] the quicker they come to Australia, the safer it is for all of Australia and for themselves,” Sydney doctor Jamal Rifi told the BBC in an interview earlier this year, after an earlier bid to return by Australian IS families failed.

The two camps where the families of IS fighters were channelled when the “caliphate” fell have long been described as a ticking time bomb – rife with violence, incubators for radicalisation, and an ever-growing humanitarian crisis.

The largest, Al-Hol, was shut down in February after Syrian forces of the new government reclaimed the country, while the future of the remaining Al-Roj camp, in the country’s north-east Kurdish region, is uncertain.

There are about 2,000 people in Al-Roj, from dozens of countries which refuse to take them back – including Shamima Begum, who was stripped of her British citizenship after travelling to Syria as a 15-year-old and marrying an IS fighter.

Until last month, it was also the home of Janai Safar, 32, who landed in Sydney with her nine-year-old son on Thursday night, and has since been charged with terrorism offences.

The former nursing student told The Australian newspaper back in 2019 that she didn’t regret travelling to join IS, but “didn’t train or kill anyone”.

Arriving in Melbourne at the same time was 33-year-old Zahra Ahmed, who spent years in the camp alongside her younger sister Zeinab, 31, and her 54-year-old mother Kawsar Abbas.

They say they were trapped in Syria after travelling there for a family wedding, not realising the groom had sworn allegiance to the Islamic State group – though authorities suspect the patriarch of the family had been funnelling cash to them.

“I didn’t make this bed,” Zahra told the Special Broadcasting Service (SBS) in 2024.

“We are now forced to suffer for the decisions that other people – other male influencers – have made on our behalf, and now they’re all gone, and we are left to suffer with our kids.”

Her mother and sister have been charged with crimes against humanity related to slavery.

The Australian Federal Police say Zahra Ahmed is still under investigation, and that the nine children who returned with the group will be asked to undergo community integration and countering violent extremism programmes.

They were part of a larger group which in February left Al-Roj for Australia, but were turned back within hours due to “technical issues”. The camp administrators later told media they believed Syrian authorities had been spooked by Australia’s insistence the women would not be welcomed back.

Twenty-one Australians now remain in the camp, seven women and 14 children.

Though details of their lives are scant, several of the women were only teenagers when they left Australia – including Kirsty Rosse-Emile, whose sister says she was groomed by a much-older extremist whom she married at 14.

Even less is known about their children, many of whom have never known life outside the camps.

This isn’t the first time that Australians linked to IS have returned home. A group of orphans was repatriated in 2019, and another 17 women and children were brought back in 2022.

But after backlash from some in the community, the government said it would not help any others – though another two women quietly worked their way home in September.

While all citizens have a legal right to return to their countries, there is little doubt most Australians would prefer these ones do not.

“They made their choice to go over there and be with their terrorist husbands, so let them stay there,” Peter Cockburn, of Geelong, told the BBC at Melbourne airport.

“It’s a disgrace that both governments, state and federal, are letting them come back.”

Refugees who fled to Australia for safety from IS – many of whom survived massacres, slavery and sexual abuse at their hands – are particularly distressed.

“Imagine a Yazidi survivor encountering ISIS brides [here],” one such man named Sami told Australian public broadcaster SBS.

But people like Rifi – an award-winning Western Sydney doctor – say Australia owes the children in these camps protection too.

He was roped into providing the group tele-healthcare years ago, but – moved by their plight – more recently became a broker and “delivery boy” for their temporary passports.

“If those women have done anything wrong by our legal system… if the prime minister wants to ‘throw the book’ at them, let him throw the book. We’re not going to stop him,” he told the BBC in February.

“But while they are staying in Syria, he can’t throw anything at them, except words.

“We believe those children should not continue to pay the heavy price for the sins of their fathers and mothers… It’s not what we understand of Australian values.”

For helping these women, Rifi has gone from being a national hero to a pariah – with the opposition party going as far as to float a policy aimed at jailing people like him.

The community’s “alarm, concern and fear” is “entirely understandable”, Australia’s special envoy to combat Islamaphobia said this week, adding the women had put the Muslim community in particular in a “deeply challenging position”.

But Aftab Malik said the “rule of law” must be upheld, calling for the temperature of the national debate to be lowered.

In her role with the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Jana Fevaro has seen firsthand the harm wrought by IS, but she argues Australia has to trust its laws – and law enforcement agencies – will do their job.

“Once politicians start… deciding how citizens should be treated, what right citizens should have, that is a dangerous and slippery slope,” she told the BBC.

Labor knows that showing any concern towards people linked to IS is not popular right now, but legally, their hands are bound.

Announcing this group of 13 had booked flights home earlier this week, Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke said the government did not help these IS families return and will not help others.

But there are “very serious limits” on what can be done to stop them, he added.

One un-named woman was in February barred from returning upon advice from the national security agencies, but the legal threshold for invoking that law is high and no other member of the group has met it, Burke says.

However opposition spokespeople, right up until the moment the four women landed on Thursday, said the government should stop them at any cost and offered to work with them on laws which would help.

“It’s a hot button issue in a way that it may not have been six months previously,” says Rodger Shanahan, a Middle East expert at the Lowy Institute.

Had the government dealt with it earlier, it would have “blown over”, he argues.

For those who have been campaigning for Australia to help these women, Thursday was but temporary joy, when so many still remain in Al-Roj.

Things have become so desperate some mothers have suggested they’d allow their children to go home without them – though Rifi says that’s an unthinkable solution.

“My task right now is try to win the public debate about these issues because there is a lot of misinformation, lies, and at least to set the record [straight].

“If you’re gonna leave them for another 10 years, are they gonna get better or worse? Mentally, emotionally, psychologically, ideologically, it’s gonna get worse. If you bring them right now, it’s easier to rehabilitate. It is easier to educate. And if there is any danger of radicalisation, it’s easier to de-radicalise.”

Additional reporting by Simon Atkinson, in Melbourne.