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Fate of IS returnees to be decided in first half of year

As thousands of former Islamic State (IS) sympathizers in Syria and Iraq look to return home after the fall of the jihadist group’s territory last year, the government is examining how to handle inbound returnees in the next couple of months, Indonesia’s chief security minister has said

Apriza Pinandita (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Thu, January 23, 2020

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Fate of IS returnees to be decided in first half of year

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span>As thousands of former Islamic State (IS) sympathizers in Syria and Iraq look to return home after the fall of the jihadist group’s territory last year, the government is examining how to handle inbound returnees in the next couple of months, Indonesia’s chief security minister has said.

Following a meeting with relevant agencies, Coordinating Politics, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Mahfud MD said the government would continue weighing its options for handling the possible repatriation of IS sympathizers.

“Today we discussed whether or not to repatriate them [Indonesian returnees] and, if they do return, whether or not [we take] all of them,” Mahfud said at his office in Jakarta on Tuesday.

He guaranteed that the rights of some 660 vetted returnees as they relate to statelessness would be upheld — Article 28 of the 1945 Constitution stipulates that “every person has the right to legal recognition, guarantees and protection, as well as fair and equal treatment before the law”.

However, he also said there were other risks involved should the government decide to bring them home. “The problem is if they are sent home, it may stir up concerns over the potential to inculcate a new 'terrorist virus',” he said.

Beginning some six years ago, thousands of citizens from Indonesia and from countries around the world were emboldened to join IS in a failed experiment in statehood in parts of Syria and neighboring Iraq.

Kurdish-led forces expelled the group from its last patch of territory in eastern Syria in March last year, leaving some 4,000 women and 8,000 children linked to the extremist organization wallowing in detention, AFP reports.

Facing squalid living conditions and growing desperation, many IS sympathizers and former combatants have begged their countries of origin to repatriate them.

For Indonesia, the complicated decision involves institutions such as the Social Affairs Ministry, the Law and Human Rights Ministry, the Foreign Ministry, the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) and even other agencies that oversee tourism and investments, given the potential impact that another wave of terror could have on the country’s security outlook.

All considerations will be considered and the resulting recommendations will be handed over to President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo soon. “We will come up with a decision in the first half of this year,” Mahfud said.

The government is also observing the decisions that other countries have taken with regard to their IS returnees — some have chosen to only repatriate women and children, while others have rejected them all, even going to the lengths of stripping them of their citizenship.

And while Jakarta has tread carefully, experts have warned of another potential danger — that women returnees are perceived to be the new promoters of radicalism — and have called for proper investigation into their roles to ensure repatriation efforts can still succeed.

University of Indonesia (UI) terrorism expert Broto Wardoyo said Indonesia should more closely examine the involvement of women as IS sympathizers, to see if they were victims or aggressors.

“We cannot assume that all the returnees will pose new threats as soon as they return,” he said. “But to be fair, they could be [screened] by security actors if they meet them.”

Jakarta has to some extent argued that most women involved with the extremists understood the consequences of their actions, even though they might be facing hardships after the fall of IS.

Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi has said that most women returnees were “aware of their intentions”, but gave an assurance that the state was committed to putting humanity first for repatriation.

Mahfud said previously that most Indonesians in Syria were women and children.

The London-based International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) estimates that some 6,900 women from 80 countries have been identified as foreign terrorist fighters (FTFs), equal to around 16 percent of the total number of FTFs in 2019.

At least 113 Indonesian women have been identified as being affiliated with IS, of whom 54 have returned.

A spate of women-led terror attacks in parts of Indonesia last year have also heightened concerns that women repatriates might pose a new security threat for the nation. “Awareness among the grass roots is important. I can say that they have their own kind of authority to do some screening,” Broto said.

Yon Machmudi, a Middle East affairs expert at UI, recently urged the state to set up a system of classification to measure the extent of relationships among women returnees and their IS ideologues.

He also called for the establishment of a program that could safeguard these women’s successful reintegration into society, while also warning about the oversimplification of overseas conflict in Muslim-majority Indonesia.

“The rise of terrorism [and conflict in the Middle East] is actually about territory, not ideology. At home, this is often reduced to a religious issue — and that’s dangerous,” Yon said, adding that the segment of the population that bought into such narratives should not be underestimated.

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