What to do with an ‘ISIS bride’? Show her children a better life |
What to do with an ‘ISIS bride’? Show her children a better life
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Four women follow their husbands into known terror zones, give birth to their children, wind up in a refugee camp, and then return to Australia promising to be model citizens. Where on Earth do you start to unpack this, or, for that matter, them?
At the centre of it all are Kawsar Abbas, Zeinab Ahmed, Zahra Ahmed and Janain Safar, who travelled to Islamic State-occupied Syria about a decade ago – some with their partners, some in the thrall of its murderous ideology. When the regime collapsed, and with their husbands variously in jail or dead, they and their nine children were held in the notorious Al-Roj camp in north-eastern Syria, where they have languished for years.
The federal government did not repatriate the families; rather, it says, it gave them “the minimum amount of assistance” to return to Australian shores. In any case, it has sparked understandable fear and outrage, with some arguing they should be sent off to The Land of........