The federal government has said Australian women and children expected to be repatriated from Syria will be closely monitored by national security agencies, as the Coalition argued the rescue mission is too dangerous.
The details of the repatriation effort are being kept tightly under wraps, but preparations are underway to rescue around 20 women and 40 children held in detention camps in north-east Syria since the fall of the Islamic State group in 2019.
Many are the wives, widows, and sisters of the so-called Islamic State group fighters, with some arguing they were coerced or tricked into travelling to the Middle East.
Labor frontbencher Tanya Plibersek said the government was following the advice of security agencies.
"We've got about 40 Australian kids living in one of the most dangerous places on Earth, in a refugee camp," she told Channel 7.
"Some of the women, some of the mothers were taken there as little more than children themselves and married off to IS fighters, some of them tricked, some of them forced to go there.
"When they come back to Australia, I think it's going to be very important that the children in particular receive counselling.
"But I think for everybody involved, there will be an ongoing expectation that our security and intelligence agencies will stay in contact with them and monitor them."
Shadow Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews told ABC Radio it was too dangerous to repatriate women and children in Syria when she held the ministry.
"I wasn't prepared to risk Australian officials going into Syria to do what they needed to do to get these people out," she said.
"I was concerned about radicalisation, not just of the women, but potentially of the children.
"And thirdly, I was concerned about the risk of these people coming back to Australia, because they may not have been deradicalised and could well have been radicalised."
She also argued the women who travelled to Syria went there voluntarily and said some will face charges and may end up in prison in Australia.
"They made their own decisions to be in Syria and they were complicit generally in the role that they were expected to play, which was to support ISIS and to support the foreign fighters who were there," she said.
"I've seen nothing to alter my view."
Victoria University associate professor Debra Smith, who researches violent extremism, said Australia had an obligation to bring the women and children home.
"I think it's natural for people to be concerned and frightened, but I think for people who work in the space and who understand what this process entails, it is a balance between understanding potential threats that people hold and how you balance that with the very real need to actually reintegrate people," she said.
"It's through that reintegration process that we actually make ourselves safer."
Save the Children chief Mat Tinkler said young Australians held in detention camps in Syria could die if they were not urgently repatriated.
He argued the potential security threats could be mitigated by security and law enforcement agencies.
"The biggest risk right now is one of these Australian children will die if they're not repatriated from these camps quite urgently," he said.
"That's the risk right now, and hopefully the Australian government is preparing to act."
Australian teenager Yusuf Zab, who was taken to Syria when he was 11 years old, is believed to have died in in July just months after begging for help.
