Shamima Begum, who achieved notoriety in 2015 as one of three young schoolgirls from Bethnal Green who left the country to join Islamic State, has re-emerged in a refugee camp controlled by the Syrian Defence Forces in north-eastern Syria. Understandably, given her situation – she is about to give birth and has already lost two children – she would like to get home. But where is home, and what does home mean?

By her account, as reported in The Times, she enjoyed living under Isis control, even as it beheaded its enemies and left their remains for all to see. She was married to a Dutch member of the group who was presumably fighting for the cause, and she was ready to bear children who could follow in his footsteps to the frontline. She appeared therefore not only to have abandoned her family but also to have firmly rejected the broader society in which she grew up.

It’s unsurprising therefore that the immediate reaction of the British government has been a complete lack of concern for her plight. The security minister Ben Wallace told the BBC: “I’m not putting at risk British people’s lives to go looking for terrorists or former terrorists in a failed state.” Indeed, Britain is not alone in wishing that all its citizens who joined Isis would either die in its territory or disappear. The United States has been urging its allies to take their captured citizens back in order to keep them from committing terrorist acts in the future, but with little success.

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Male fighters are considered an unacceptable long-term risk, even if there is a good chance they could be arrested on return and successfully prosecuted and imprisoned. Women are considered harder to prosecute, and almost as dangerous. There have been enough cases of all-female terrorist cells plotting attacks in Europe to justify this concern: Safaa Boular was convicted last summer of planning to bomb the British Museum with her mother and sister. Governments even resist repatriating children, including those whose grandparents in Europe have offered to look after them.

But despite the justifiable concern, governments have a responsibility to address the problems created by their captured nationals and also to look more closely at why they made the choices they did. These people did not die or disappear, and it is unreasonable to expect the Syrian Defence Forces – who have no jurisdiction to try them – to look after them indefinitely. Few countries would accept that their nationals be handed over to the Syrian or Iraqi authorities, where summary execution might be the most likely outcome. If they are merely set free, or sent to a third country, then the risk of their doing further harm remains very real. In addition, their treatment will have an impact not just on their own behaviour and attitudes but also on their communities.

Like it or not, these individuals were products of our society, and it would make sense to take a good, hard look at why they turned their backs on it in such dramatic fashion. This can help us find ways to build the social cohesion that we increasingly need in the face of growing nativism and intolerance.

Governments may fear a rightwing backlash against any treatment of Isis returnees that looks like going soft on terrorism, but a strong society is one that can take the right course whatever the prevailing wind. It is all too easy to forget what we are fighting for when we are engaged in a battle against something that seems as evil as Isis.

The concept of an Islamic state as envisaged by many of its foreign recruits was quite different from the reality that appeared in its most violent propaganda. Many people sought opportunity that they did not have at home, or freedom from a past that seemed an inescapable limitation on their future, or release from a society that devalued them and denied them any sense of purpose. Unlike Begum, most of these recruits will have tried to get home when they realised Isis could not deliver what they sought; others may have hoped the situation would improve once the bombing stopped; and others may have felt trapped, either by Isis itself or by the fear of what their national authorities would do should they get home.

Others no doubt remained fully signed up to Isis, atrocities and all, though most of these people will indeed die or disappear. Perhaps Begum should be seen as one of them. But even she, as unrepentant as she may be, should be given a chance, if we are to stand by our values – and if we believe our society is strong enough to reabsorb a 15-year-old who went badly off the rails.

• Richard Barrett is a former director of global counter-terrorism at MI6 and is currently director of the Global Strategy Network