Tough talk on ISIS-linked families won't fix Australia's terrorism problem

Anthony Albanese has played a cynical political game over the so-called "ISIS brides".

For months, the prime minister talked tough on the four women and nine children who arrived in Australia on Thursday — and on the remaining families in Syria — while acknowledging he had no legal means to prevent their return.

His harsh words have not been matched by a sense of urgency about the resurgence of the Islamic State terrorist group in Australia, nor about the security gaps being exposed by the royal commission into the Bondi attack.

The political storm over the families has consumed the oxygen that should be directed at a far more pressing problem: Australia's homegrown terrorism crisis.

Keeping these families out was never a serious option and pursuing it as one has come at a cost.

The reality both sides of politics have refused to state plainly is that "out of sight, out of mind" is the most dangerous response to terrorism.

Known quantities like these families can be monitored. Australia's growing cohort of radicalised citizens at home are not as easily tracked.

The women and their ties

To argue for their return while acknowledging the security risk they pose requires holding an uncomfortable truth.

The women who returned this week had close ties to significant ISIS figures.

Zahra Ahmed, 33 — the only of the four who is yet to be charged — is the widow of Australian ISIS recruiter Muhammad Zahab, who died in an air strike in 2018.

A former Sydney maths teacher, Zahab recruited more than a dozen Australians to join Islamic State in Syria and rose to a leadership role within the terrorist group.

Zahab maintained ties to senior jihadists in Australia, including Wisam Haddad — the notorious pro-ISIS preacher whose Bankstown prayer centre was shut down after his connection to the Bondi Beach terrorists emerged.

Zahra Ahmed's father was suspected of funnelling money to ISIS through a fake charity, but claimed his family became trapped in Syria and he never supported terrorism.

Her mother, Kawsar Abbas, 53, and sister, Zeinab Ahmed, 31, were arrested at Melbourne Airport on arrival and charged with crimes against humanity — the first Australians to face such charges under domestic law — over the alleged enslavement of Yazidi women in Syria.

The fourth woman, Janai Safar, is the widow of an Australian ISIS operative and is now charged with membership of a terrorist group and entering a declared conflict zone.

She travelled to Syria with her cousin, who married an ISIS commander reported to be Tarak Khayat, who was sentenced to death in Iraq after organising a failed plot to bomb a flight from Australia.

Many of the "ISIS brides" say they were coerced or tricked into travelling to the so-called caliphate in Syria, before being incarcerated in the squalid Al Roj detention camp, after it crumbled in 2019.

Their ISIS connections carry real risks. What the political storm obscures is that Australian agencies are well-equipped to manage them — and the danger may be greater if these families remain abroad.

Why their return is the safer option

There is a firm consensus among security experts: it is safer to monitor these families within Australia than to leave them in Syria, beyond the reach of our legal and intelligence systems.

Australian citizens have a legal right to return home, regardless of what they may have done.

They will be watched by ASIO.

Courts can impose control orders, which can include home detention and communications restrictions, where there is evidence of imminent risk.

The government's decision to issue a temporary exclusion order to prevent just one of the women from returning from Al Roj to Australia suggests the intelligence on the others does not clear that threshold.

There is another strategic case for their return. Their years in Al Roj became a propaganda asset for Australia's ISIS network.

Wisam Haddad spent years highlighting their plight in lectures and online propaganda, portraying Australia as a nation that discriminates against Muslims.

That message lands because it contains some truth.

Failing to uphold citizens' rights while enforcing the law where evidence exists only sharpens it.

The new prosecutions will undoubtedly be seized on for the same propaganda purpose, but that is an argument for getting the legal process right, not for keeping the women stateless.

Returning extremists carry real risk, as history shows in Australia and abroad.

However, the risk of violence posed by these women is lower.

Under ISIS ideology, women were not combatants. They were wives, mothers, and in some cases recruiters and propagandists.

There are already more dangerous people operating freely within Australia.

Some men have been jailed for fighting with ISIS. Others remain free because of the challenges for authorities in gaining evidence overseas.

The returning children present a different challenge. They will need the best Australia can offer in deradicalisation intervention programs and welfare support. They did not choose to grow up in the caliphate.

Alongside monitoring, these are costly but necessary investments. The opposition puts the cost of monitoring high-risk individuals at $2 million per year, a figure the government has not contested.

The true crisis

The political energy spent on the "ISIS brides" has not been matched by serious attention to the deficiencies in Australia's counterterrorism architecture.

After being dragged into establishing the royal commission, the prime minister's response to its interim report last week was, in essence, nothing to see here.

Albanese accepted its modest recommendations but said "no urgent changes were required to keep Australians safe".

He deflected questions about a significant decline in the funding share allocated to counterterrorism by intelligence agencies.

The report showed the government had taken its eye off terrorism, despite ASIO's repeated warnings about a "probable" terrorist attack and the threat to Jews.

For two years, an ABC investigation has documented the resurgence of ISIS in Australia and raised questions about the official response in the lead-up to Bondi.

Australia faces a crisis of radicalisation across the ideological spectrum. Some young people are falling through the gaps of deradicalisation and early intervention programs.

ASIO now assesses the terrorism threat at the same level as during the height of the caliphate.

There are at least 20 Australian women and children still hoping to return to Australia from Al Roj.

These families can be known quantities. They can be monitored by intelligence services and managed within a legal framework.

The real threat, as Bondi demonstrated, comes from those on the periphery, the people who slip through the cracks when the nation's attention is elsewhere.

In his response to the women and children who have been desperate to return to Australia, the prime minister has been fond of quoting his mother's advice: "If you make your bed, you lie in it."

It remains to be seen whether he will heed it himself.