Are the ISIS brides to dangerous to return to Australia?

Sami Sheebo fears the return of Australia’s so-called ISIS brides. He does not believe that the seven years he spent in the Syrian camp saved them from the bloodthirsty Islamist ideology they had traveled and lived under.

Sheebo is the leader of the Yazidi community in Australia. He fled Iraq after ISIS fighters invaded his native village in 2014. Eight mass graves were required to bury the thousands killed here. More than 6,000 Yazidi women were abducted and subjected to the horrific horrors of sexual and domestic slavery.

“My community is very concerned about this if it is returned.” [the IS-related families] He might attack them again,” Sheebo says simply.

“They work and build as a group. They meet on Friday, they talk, they try to persuade people to join them. They grow from a small group into a large group. Others will join them and they control a whole suburb.”

“They will pose a danger to Australian society.”

Youel Zaya and Ismail Ismail feel the same way. They fled Syria after their Assyrian Christian village was overrun by ISIS fighters, who desecrated and destroyed their churches. Zeya, Ismail and their families were ordered to convert to Islam or leave the country. They, among 200,000 others, fled. More than a thousand people who remained behind were killed.

I ask if they sympathize with the Australian children of ISIS-affiliated women. Zeya answers: “These children are growing up there, they are growing up with ISIS, so what are they thinking? What is going through their minds? We really don’t know.”

These fears are specific to the experiences of these groups but reflect the broader political debate about ISIS women and children.

On the political left, there are calls for the government to bring them home. People say women are tricked or forced to travel by their husbands. The children did nothing. On the other side of politics, it is said that these 11 women and 23 children (plus one young man) are so dangerous that they should be denied the right to Australian citizenship.

As Sheebo puts it: “They are responsible for their own lives; they made that decision and they have to accept it.”

This debate raises many questions. How and why did these people come to Syria and what did they do during the so-called caliphate? Did they commit crimes there and did they really reject ISIS’s ideology?

It would be reasonable to ask whether there are programs to reintegrate and deradicalize them and whether these programs are up to date.

Josh Roose is skeptical of claims that some women were tricked into going to Syria or were bullied by their husbands. The Deakin University associate professor and expert on violent extremism says it was clear from ISIS’s early days in 2014 that its ideology was violent.

And for some, it was extremely attractive.

Drawing on the idea that Muslims are oppressed and persecuted around the world, ISIS challenged people, especially marginalized second- and third-generation young Muslim men, to “be warriors, heroes and knights of the caliphate.”

Women would establish a new society by raising “lion cubs” for a new utopia.

Roose says 200 or 300 Australians were intrigued by this narrative; One of the largest groups in proportion to the world’s population.

According to Roose, upon arrival, Western women in general were “extremely active in acquiring weapons and visual propaganda… and they were also active in policing women’s behavior, making rules and laws, and enslaving women and girls.”

But he says he knows little about the group’s activities in Syria and Iraq as it now wants to return.

Analyst Rodger Shanahan has figured some of this out. In a recent story AustralianOne of the women, Hodan, wrote that Abby said, “How nice it would be to be a martyr in the way of Allah.” He wanted to “raise lions that would be a thorn in the hearts of their enemies.”

Melbourne-based Kirsty Rosse-Emile posted after the coalition airstrikes: “May God destroy them all… destroy these filthy infidels and protect our brothers.” The ABC recently reported that Rosse-Emile was taken into the care of a much older man, married at 14, and taken by him to Syria.

Kawsar Abbas, along with her adult daughters Zahra and Zeinab, went to Syria to be with her husband, their father, Mohammed Ahmed. They insist their business is charitable. However, Shanahan writes that Kawsar’s brother Roger Abbas and his two sons Ahmed and Omar were killed in Syria. Two of the girls were married to men who were killed in 2016.

Neither the government nor the Australian Federal Police have said what criminal charges might be filed against the women upon their return. A provisional expulsion order has been issued, but officials are not saying against whom or why.

“Unless there’s an extraordinary claim against them, we’ll probably have to take them back,” Roose says.

But “as a starting point, every effort should be made to establish that they are guilty of crimes they committed abroad.”

This will be difficult. Eyewitnesses are likely dead or returned to their villages, and certain crimes must be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Much will depend on foreign intelligence, he said.

Family lawyer Kamalle Dabboussy was unavailable for comment this week, but told this imprint in 2022 that there was no evidence they were dangerous.

“As far as I know, they were just protecting their children and were in survival mode.”

She said many women quickly regret their lives. They were mistreated, widowed, and married to men they did not know. Young girls are also married off and quickly made pregnant.

Dabboussy said at the time: “Men were allowed to exercise their basic animal instincts without any control – and very quickly a woman found herself with absolutely no agency whatsoever, no matter what she came up with.”

“What is important now is that the women have offered to work with law enforcement on return, which is evidence of their offer to come under control orders by consent.”

In 2019, 2022 and 2025, three groups of Australian women and children (32 people in total) returned from the camps. None were convicted of a crime.

Advocates say community and government programs offered at the state level are working and police are keeping a close eye on the issue. But despite requests, no women or children were interviewed to show the community their progress.

Roose says many studies show that people never become truly radicalized, but that they can remain “free” from enforcing their views through violence. The “quiet reintegration” of returnees so far has been encouraging.

Criminologist Dr. who works with terrorist criminals and prison gangs. Each state has its own model and no deradicalization program can get it 100 percent accurate, says Clarke Jones. He says that the work with Syrian returnees has been successful so far: “There have been no untoward incidents… It has gone more smoothly than I thought.”

The best programs involved sending people back to their communities for support (including changing and monitoring their religious views) and police monitoring them.

“I can understand why there is reluctance in the community,” Jones says. “This requires extreme caution. It would be foolish to say otherwise.”

But these women and children are not convicted terrorists, and to say they will never adapt is “nonsense, it’s not true,” Jones says. First and immediately: “You really need to get these kids out of there. [the camps] to include them in the necessary support structures”.

The risk of leaving them there is too high.

“When they are constantly exposed to ISIS ideology…it gets worse every week.”

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