Yet again we get the infantilized woman, the woman incapable of ideological clarity and conviction. We can never know why Suhayra Aden left Australia for the ISIS caliphate! A moral idiot, like all women, Aden must have been victimized by some clever man who talked her into boiling away in the stinking desert so as to be treated as sexual chattel by one ISIS fighter after another.
Now the men… ah, the men grasp the content of fanatic Islamism, and they like it, see? So we can hold them accountable. “It’s unclear what role, if any, Aden may have had in ISIS.” Not only was she just really confused as to where she was and why, she probably didn’t … do anything. But what can this mean? Lived in the caliphate for years doing… nothing. Nothing to promote a terrorist state. Nothing besides hanging around being an idiot.
If you want to know why no state – even places like New Zealand, which pride themselves on being humane and progressive – wants this woman, you have to understand that while some observers seem to believe she’s harmless solely because she’s a woman, actual politicians tasked with protecting actual people have eyes in their head. The same group of fanatics she hung out with in Australia are still there in the home country, ready to take her back into the fold. You think she’s an idiot, but Australian security services will need to spend years, money, and plenty of personnel tracking her once she returns.
Put her on trial in Australia, you say? She could have murdered ten people; the chaos that was ISIS and the burqa as fashion choice makes it almost impossible to find documentation and witnesses.
No, UD does not think this woman and her children should stay in the desert. Authorities should first try to convince Aden that the children’s best interests are served by sending them to family in Australia, if family willing to take them exists.
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Australia and New Zealand are locked in a nasty battle over which country has to take this woman in; both have dug in their heels. As Jacinda Arden notes, Australia has the greater claim:
“It is wrong that New Zealand should shoulder the responsibility for a situation involving a woman who has not lived in New Zealand since she was 6, has resided in Australia since that time, has her family in Australia and left for Syria from Australia on her Australian passport.”
But Australia has revoked her citizenship.
Constant readers know UD‘s suggestion. With money from sympathizers, Aden can try buying citizenship in any number of countries. Some will reject her; but if they agree with those who believe that because she’s a woman she’s harmless, others will take her. Her children can visit her there. Not the worst outcome for her.