Radicalised soldier to come home
this week that the 38-year-old former Irish Army soldier was kicked out of Turkey.
Smith is due back to Ireland any day now and rightly she will be detained.
Anecdotally, commentators are saying she should be locked up and the key thrown away.
We are talking about a mother who was lured into a dark group of evil extremists, surely deradicalisation is the only solution?
But unlike the UK we don’t have a dedicated deradicalisation programme here.
What’s needed is ongoing counselling to underpin her reasoning to flee a first world country to a land of doom.
The Garda’s security and intelligence section, who specialise in anti-terror, will want to know what connections she made with ISIS sympathisers in Ireland.
Turkish police had already interrogated Smith over links to ISIS.
Following the collapse of ISIS earlier this year, Smith was held with her little girl in refugee camps run by Kurdish forces.
At this time she told BBC she had never any intention to hurt anyone, nor will she ever do so in the future.
In the same interview, conducted at the camp, she said: “I’m just interested in trying to bring my daughter up and get her educated.
“I don’t even think I’m radicalised, you know?
“All I know is I just came to an Islamic State and it failed.
“So, at the beginning I didn’t come to kill anyone and when I was there I didn’t kill anyone and when I go home I’m not going to kill anyone.”
She also slammed the testimony of a number of young women who claim she took part in military training.
Over the past few years, the Western media have been fascinated by the stories of “Jihadi brides”.
Smith like so many other European women gave up everything to marry an ISIS fighter and bear children in war-torn Syria.
From Austrian teenagers to Glaswegian students, these women have been characterized as weak, naive and vulnerable.
The question is once radicalisation sets in, can the brainwashing be undone?
That’s a huge task for the authorities to determine and one which will play on the minds of all who come in Ms Smith’s path in the coming months.
In July 2018, the number of Western foreign fighters and civilians who joined ISIS was estimated at 41,490 people with 4,761 being women and 4,640 being minors.
Possible reasons for joining may have included the recruits’ search for a new identity or the prospect of an exciting adventure.
Since the group’s inception in 2014, women and girls’ reasons for being drawn to the organisation revolve around the same factors as men’s – alienation, inequality and the attraction of a “noble” cause.
Women are seduced by a romantic ideal of the pursuit of a utopia but the reality is a far cry.
The group specifically targeted women, selling, the cult’s image as one of empowerment.
In reality, ISIS is a misogynistic group regularly engaging in violence and oppression.
Smith is now faced with the reality of being a single mother on Irish soil, a book deal and an interview on the Late Late may be her only chance to redeem whatever integrity she has left.