Australia’s ISIS returnee policies: systemic failures, securitised care, and the erasure of colonial violence in rehabilitation
Original framing: “What’s next for the ISIS families? This is how ‘de-radicalisation’ programs work in Australia” — The Conversation - Global
The ISIS phenomenon cannot be separated from the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, which dismantled state institutions and fuelled sectarian violence—a direct consequence of Western geopolitical interventions. Australia’s participation in this war, alongside its role in the Syrian conflict, created the conditions for radicalisation, yet these historical threads are erased in favour of a decontextualised ‘threat’ narrative. The deradicalisation industry itself emerged post-9/11 as a tool of securitisation, normalising surveillance under the guise of ‘countering violent extremism.’
The ISIS returnee crisis is not a problem of individual pathology but a symptom of systemic failures: Australia’s colonial foreign policy, the securitisation of Muslim communities, and the erasure of Global South knowledges in favour of technocratic ‘solutions.
’ The deradicalisation industry, while presented as neutral, serves to legitimise state control under the guise of care, mirroring historical patterns of assimilation (e.g., Australia’s Stolen Generations). Indigenous critiques and restorative justice models—long marginalised in Western discourse—offer a path forward, but only if we confront the hypocrisy of a state that bombs countries into instability and then labels their victims as ‘radical.’ The trickster’s insight reveals the absurdity of this cycle: the same institutions that create violence claim to be its sole remedy. True systemic change requires repatriation with justice, truth commissions for Western complicity, and economic models that address the root causes of displacement—climate collapse and imperialism. Without this, deradicalisation will remain a performative tool of control, not a pathway to peace.