Failure is Not an Option: Indonesia's Repatriation Program

The Indonesian government is preparing to repatriate women and children from al-Hol and Roj camps in Syria. This is no easy task. An estimated 493-545 Indonesian nationals reside in the two camps, more than all other Southeast Asian nations combined. Conditions there remain dire with rampant disease, hypothermia, and malnutrition and little if any, resources for education, medical care, or trauma counseling. Youth continue to be targeted for recruitment and indoctrination by Islamic State sympathizers in the camps. Repatriating those Indonesians residing at al-Hol and Roj successfully will require careful coordination among Indonesia’s ministries, local governments, and civil society organizations to ensure proper allocation of resources, personnel, and opportunities for training. The international community should be prepared to assist Indonesia with the development of robust assessment and evaluation tools as well as with logistics, training, data on best practices, and resource procurement.

Following significant territorial and materiel setbacks by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), some 182 Indonesians returned home under a relatively open repatriation regime. Some did so quietly and reintegrated back into society without fanfare. Others, mostly women and children, were channeled to rehabilitation programs. Men of fighting age were assessed for threat levels and sent to prison. This approach changed in 2020 when the Indonesian government restricted repatriation to orphans under 10. Over the next three years, Indonesia repatriated just four youths whose mothers were imprisoned in Iraq and two families who escaped Syria of their own volition and made their way to the Indonesian embassy in Türkiye. They refused to take on the additional risk posed by a large-scale repatriation of their nationals, much to the chagrin of Syria, Türkiye, and Iraq; the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) urged them to reconsider.

In August 2023, Indonesian authorities agreed, recognizing the imperative of ensuring repatriation proceeds carefully and successfully with appropriate vetting, assessment, rehabilitation, and reintegration measures. The numbers were too high, and the potential risks too great to take this lightly. To that end, they established a Foreign Terrorist Fighters Task Force under the leadership of the Ministry of Politics, Law and Security, comprised of representatives from the National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT), the police counter-terrorism team, Densus 88, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Foreign Terrorist Fighter Task Force devised a three-stage process: before the border, at the border, and after the border. According to a security officer on the task force, the purpose of “before border” is to verify and validate the identities of Indonesian nationals. This has proved challenging as many of the Indonesians who came to Syria to join ISIS either burned their identity documents or had them confiscated by the group. As such, the Indonesian government has been working with UNICEF, managing the verification process on the ground in Syria, to exchange and cross-check data. Indonesia is prioritizing the repatriation of children under 18, who are viewed as “a source of recruitment for ISIS,” as well as women and elderly men.  According to Taufik Andrie, the co-founder of the Institute for International Peacebuilding, which is taking a leading role in “after border” initiatives, “they are not planning to repatriate fighting age men at this stage because they cannot get an accurate count; it’s believed that some of the men are in prison.”

The second stage is “at border.” This will also be managed by UNICEF and possibly a very small team of Indonesians. At border is a series of evaluations. Once a batch of individuals has been identified, they will go through a medical screening, a psychological evaluation and an assessment of the degree to which they pose a threat and the extent to which they remain ideologically radicalized. According to Taufik Andrie, at this stage, those who are found to have participated in acts of violence and terrorism will be sent to prison upon return while those who committed no crimes will be go to rehabilitation centers for a period of three months to one year, before being allowed to return home to their villages.

“After border” is a multi-stakeholder effort. All 23 of Indonesia’s ministries are involved in the planning. Each ministry will have a different responsibility based on their expertise. For example, the Ministry of Social Welfare will prepare shelters for returnees and the Ministry of Education will take point on educating the returning children. Indonesian civil society organizations like Ruangobrol.id, the Institute for International Peacebuilding (YPP), and the Society against Radicalism and Violent Extremism (SERVE) are working on different elements of rehabilitation and reintegration. YPP is currently assisting the BNPT in preparing the standard operating procedures (SOPs) for after border. Ruangobrol.id is contributing to expanding training opportunities for staff at the rehabilitation centers. Other civil society organizations (CSOs) will work on community resilience and destigmatization measures. Internationally, the Global Community Engagement and Resilience Fund (GCERF) and the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) are providing funding. Upon return to their villages, local governments and local civil society organizations will be in charge of reintegration efforts, monitoring, and aftercare.

There are discussions underway regarding the building of rehabilitation centers. In the past, the Handayani Center and the Rumah Perlindungan dan Trauma Center (RPTC) ran point on rehabilitation with Handayani charged with rehabilitation of children and their mothers, while RPTC focused on single women. However, there is no certainty that Handayani will lead the effort this time. There are several scenarios under consideration and Handayani is one of them. Yet, the BNPT would like them under their purview, and, to that end, it is considering offering use of its Deradicalization Center. However, this would be more akin to imprisoning returnees and may prove counterproductive, especially for the children. There are no football fields, playgrounds, or badminton courts at the BNPT facility. Another scenario under consideration would involve building entirely new rehabilitation facilities.

The rehabilitation centers will have an extremely heavy lift. They will need experienced social workers and psychologists to run assessments, design individualized treatment plans, and provide trauma counseling, play therapy, and art therapy. They will need to educate the children and prepare women and older teens with vocational training to join the workforce after release. They will need sports fields and playgrounds. According to Siti Darojatul Aliyah, director of SERVE, those who come back from Syria will have acute levels of trauma from their experiences with ISIS, at al-Hol and Roj, from their escape, and possibly from the interrogation process upon their return. Thus, it is imperative to hire sufficient psychologists, teachers, and social workers and to ensure all are trained rigorously in culturally appropriate, trauma-informed therapies.

Another critical task for the Ministry of Social Affairs, the BNPT, and Indonesian CSOs will be reducing stigma or, as the Indonesian authorities call it, fostering “Community Resilience.” According to a security officer on the task force, “we are working with CSOs to educate the people to forgive and to accept those returning and reintegrating.” It is not sufficient that returning women and children receive rehabilitation counseling and vocational training; they must be accepted by the communities they left in order to make friends, obtain employment, return to school, and build a post-ISIS life.

The magnitude of the task at hand for the Indonesians is great. Given their prior history of terrorism and over the past decade of terrorism from pro-ISIS Jemaah Ansharut Daulah (JAD) cells and their neighborhood — the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia struggle with the same problem – they must be successful in rehabilitating and reintegrating the Indonesian returnees from Syria. The decision to pause repatriation between 2020 and 2024 has had serious consequences: four years of youth stranded in al-Hol, subject to ISIS radicalization and recruitment. Those who were 10 and 12 in 2020 are now 14 and 16, and there is a real risk they are far more indoctrinated than they were as younger children.

Thus, Indonesia must receive the resources, materials, and support it needs to ensure its plans are successful and its staff is appropriately trained. Jakarta needs to learn from the successes of countries that have repatriated their nationals and reintegrated them back into society, counteracted stigma, and adopted appropriate monitoring and aftercare protocols. According to the Department of State’s Bureau of Counterterrorism, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, Iraq, Barbados, North Macedonia, Kyrgyzstan, Albania, and Sudan have made significant strides in repatriation. Regionally, Malaysia has long established rehabilitation programs and has already repatriated sixteen of its nationals from Syria. The Philippines has been a regional leader in state-civil society initiatives to demobilize and rehabilitate domestic militants from the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, the Abu Sayyaf Group, Islamic State-Sulu and Islamic State-Basilan. Thus, there may be real lessons to learn from these countries.

The stakes are high. If even 25 of these youths remain radicalized at the end of these programs, if they are unable to secure jobs or return to school due to lingering stigma, and if, as a result, they seek refuge in JAD communities instead, there is a real risk they could destabilize Indonesia and the wider region. However, should these programs take off, they could serve as a model for the rest of the world on how to successfully reintegrate returnees from Syria. In short, success is imperative; failure is not an option.

Julie Chernov Hwang is a Senior Research Fellow at The Soufan Center, an Associate Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Goucher College, and a Harry Frank Guggenheim Distinguished Scholar.