Whatever she might have done, Lisa Smith is Ireland’s problem

Now that she is on the move in Syria, the decision about what to do with the former Irish soldier can no longer be avoided, writes Eilis O’Hanlon

AS long as Lisa Smith remained in Syria, there was always a risk she might escape from the Kurdish-controlled camp where she was being held along with her young daughter. Indeed, that was one of the strongest arguments put forward by those who said the former Irish Defence Forces officer should be brought back to Ireland to face whatever judgment or interrogation authorities deemed appropriate in her case.

Now that’s exactly what has happened, after a break out at the camp where she was being held. Her precise whereabouts are not being disclosed officially. She is believed to have made her way with a group of other women from as far afield as Germany and Azerbaijan to a town under Turkish and Syrian rebel control near the border with Turkey. The presumption is that she will next cross over the border, where it will be easier for Irish diplomats to gain access to her.

No one could have foreseen the exact circumstances which led to Smith’s escape from the camp where she ended up after leaving Ireland in 2015, eventually making her way to live under the iron rule of what supporters such as herself called the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. There, the Dundalk woman married a British man who later died in the fighting.

It always looked more likely that a jihadi resurgence would be the trigger that led to her release, rather than a Turkish invasion across the border. The point is that it happened, and it could and should have been anticipated.

This is all the result of the Irish Government refusing to take responsibility for dealing with one of its own citizens.

The Taoiseach has had a good week, and it would be churlish to take that away from him. There’s many a slip between cup and lip, but, whatever else happens in the UK between now and the end of October, Leo Varadkar got an agreement with his British counterpart. He cannot be accused of not doing enough to prevent a no-deal Brexit. That still doesn’t mean he should get a free pass for his mistakes when it came to facing up to his responsibilities towards Smith and her innocent child.

To be clear, that’s not about showing compassion for Smith, who is entirely to blame for her own plight and still won’t face up to what she did wrong, as she parrots mealy-mouthed cliches to minimise and justify her actions: “I came here and it didn’t work out.”

It was only right to be outraged that she might now be allowed to come back and be given immediate help with housing and social security. It felt like rewarding the guilty. But that didn’t make it right to dump our problem citizens on to people thousands of miles away.

Her daughter is a different matter altogether. Back in April, the UN urged the international community to take responsibility for the more than 2,500 children of foreign-born fighters who remained in Syria after Isil was defeated. “Children should be treated first and foremost as victims... irrespective of family affiliation,” was how the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for the Syrian crisis put it. “There is a prime responsibility of states vis-a-vis their own nationals. Really nobody should be rendered stateless.”

Before the case of Smith was made public, the Taoiseach seemed to be equally clear about what needed to be done. “I think it’s bad practice to revoke somebody’s citizenship and render them stateless and leave them to be somebody else’s problem,” he said back in February after the UK renounced jihadi bride Shamima Begum, who originally left London as a 15-yearold for Syria.

As soon as Smith’s case hit the headlines the following month, that all seemed to change. Instead the Irish Government, like Britain, chose to hide behind the convenient diplomatic fiction that, because it did not have consular staff inside Syria, and because there was no extradition treaty with the territory where Smith was being held, there was little that could be done. That situation has dragged this out for months, despite Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Coveney admitting that “we do have a responsibility here as a State”. There were joint meetings between his officials and the departments of Defence and Justice to co-ordinate a response.

There was even talk of enlisting the help of the Red Cross. Once Smith fell out of the headlines, the haste quietly went out of the crisis, until now when events have conspired to resurrect the problem. Other countries have managed to find a way to take responsibility for their own citizens. Leo Varadkar chose to avoid doing so, perhaps because he did not want to face the ire of public opinion, which largely held that those who left Ireland to support or fight for Islamist causes should be stripped of their citizenship and left to rot wherever they happened to end up. This is what comes of listening to rabble-rousing, tabloid sentiment which wished to present the issue as a simple choice between condoning or condemning a monster, rather than a matter of showing mature statesmanship. Part of the problem lies with the EU itself. Once fighters return, if they’re EU citizens, then they would have free movement. No one wants former jihadis moving around Europe unhindered. In France, 67pc of those surveyed don’t even want the children to come back, never mind their parents. That doesn’t mean governments can wash their hands of their own citizens and then blame the public mood for tying their hands. What happens next is unclear. The Department of Foreign Affairs has indicated it will issue Smith with emergency travel documents once she and her daughter reach Turkey, but, whilst there is a shaky temporary ceasefire along the Turkish-Syrian border, if fighting resumes then the situation could change quickly.

Even if she does reach Turkey, she is likely to be detained and might even face charges there. Reports so far say the women who escaped the camp are being well treated, but there have also been incidents of brutality by the same rebel groups since Turkey crossed into Kurdish areas of northern Syria, so the safety of Smith’s daughter cannot be guaranteed yet. Isil is also unlikely to look on the former Air Corps member kindly, considering she has attempted to distance herself from its cause in an effort to curry favour at home. Many of those former fighters escaped the camps the same time as she did. Where they are now is equally unknown.

Many people in Ireland might not care what happens to Smith, but there are still nightmare scenarios for her that no one should want to contemplate.

Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs are now seeking an “urgent” meeting with her representatives. Nearly eight months after her existence first became public knowledge, urgency is evidently a relative concept.

At the very least, they will want to know what information she holds, and whether she poses a threat to security in Ireland. She insists she is not radicalised, and one can only hope that is so.

One of the reasons governments didn’t want fighters and their families back on home turf is because they knew that even those convicted of crimes would probably soon be out of prison, and, if they did go on to commit, sponsor or encourage acts of terrorism, then the politicians who made the decision to bring them home would be blamed by the public for not barring the gates of the country.

The Irish Government was clearly haunted by the same fear, hence the lack of action. Events have now overtaken them. Smith is no longer in a camp in Syria. Instead she is... somewhere. Whatever merit there was previously in putting the question of what to do with her on the long finger has gone.

A responsible government can’t leave its rogue citizens wandering around war zones presenting a headache at best, and a potential menace at worse, to other countries with more pressing things to do than babysit people who aren’t wanted by their own fellow citizens. Smith is our problem. She always was. Time to just make a decision and get on with it.