Former ISIS Soldiers - What to do With Them?

What should Canada "do " with its citizens who left Canada, usually surreptitiously, to join ISIS? According to the U.S., we should repatriate them and when appropriate charge them with participating in ISIS. While it can be clearly argued that given what some of those individuals did - specifically those who created videos aimed at radicalizing/recruiting more soldiers need to face consequences for their actions. For those who committed a documented crime, they too need to face trial. I am less clear as to whether or not those who joined and fought within some loose definition of what is allowed, should face punishment.

This is not the first time that Canadians who fought in foreign wars have been deemed to be criminals. Individuals from Canada who in the 1930s went to Spain to fight Franco's fascists were judged by many to be criminal. By 1937-38 it was illegal for Canadians to go to Spain to fight. They were labelled as Communists, initially prevented from returning to Canada, investigated by the RCMP and in some case became unemployable when they returned. Some were not allowed to enlist in the armed forces in WWWll because they were politically unreliable. Six or seven decades later - we see those men as heroes who had the courage to fight against oppression.

I am not in any way supporting ISIS. Their existence has only caused destruction and death. Millions of people have become homeless as a result of their insistence that their interpretation of the Koran was the right one. The suffering that their regime and the resulting war has caused is incalculable The damage their ideology has caused will last for decades. But do all of the Canadian's who supported ISIS by participating need to be punished and who should do the punishing?

It would seem to me that if an individual who fought for ISIS is judged to have broken the law in the lands that they fought it - then that country, if it so wishes, needs to press charges. Assuming that the individual was a competent adult when they left the country - then whatever consequences derive from that decision are their responsibility. It will, however, feel profoundly unfair to friends and family that the consequences might be death. I am not sure why they, after the fighting has finished, become Canada's problem to prosecute.

The issue becomes far more complicated when one discusses what to do with those individuals who did not break the law (other than fighting on the losing side) and say that they want to/need to come home. There may be as many as 200-300 Canadians somewhere in Syria or the neighbouring countries who sided with ISIS and who have been or are about to be arrested by the victorious forces. Not all of them have changed their minds as to the rightness of their cause, some of them may think that what they did was the right thing to do. A few of them might come back to their families and continue to advocate for a separate Muslim state - regardless of the strategies used to achieve it.

Clearly, the Canadian government will need to something. Human rights advocates will demand that it is not a legal problem but rather that sufficient supports and funds be allocated to ensure a successful re-integration; others will demand justice (vengeance) for those Syrians who have been killed or forced to live in refugee camps and therefore prison sentences will need to be handed out to the majority of those who are repatriated. There will be others who don't particularly care what happens to the returning individual as long as the individuals live somewhere else other than in their neighbourhood.

The Canadians in Syria are Canadian citizens. If they are not being held by the authorities for significant crimes than they should come home - on the assumption that they agree to live by Canadians rules and Canadian culture. If they are committed to living in an Islamist state - then they need to immigrate to one.