Mothers Of ISIS Recruits Fight Their Own Battles Back Home - The Huffington Post

Very powerful, very sad but a glimmer of hope,,,

These women are just four of thousands who have lost a child to the Islamic State, also known as ISIS. Since the Syrian civil war began four years ago, some 20,000 foreign nationals have made their way to Syria and Iraq to fight for various radical Islamist factions. Over 3,000 are from Western countries. While some go with their families’ blessing, most leave in secret, taking all sense of normalcy with them. After they’ve gone, their parents are left with a form of grief that is surreal in its specificity. It is sorrow at the loss of a child, it is guilt at what he or she may have done, it is shame in the face of hostility from friends and neighbors, and it is doubt about all the things they realize they did not know about the person whom they brought into the world. Over the last year, dozens of these mothers from around the world have found each other, weaving a strange alliance from their loss. What they want, more than anything, is to make sense of the senselessness of what happened to their children—and, perhaps, for something meaningful to come from their deaths.

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What Boudreau had witnessed was a classic radicalization process, Koehler told me. Its phases are remarkably similar whether the person is joining a sect of religious extremists or a group of neo-Nazis. First, the recruit is euphoric because he has finally found a way to make sense of the world. He tries to convert those around him—and, in the case of radicalized Muslims in recent years, to make them care about the suffering of Syrians. The second, more frustrating stage comes when the convert realizes that his loved ones aren’t receptive to his message. This is when the family conflicts begin: arguments over clothing, alcohol, music. At this point, the convert begins to consider advice from his cohorts that perhaps the only way to be true to his beliefs is to leave home for a Muslim country. In the final stage, the person sells his possessions and often pursues physical fitness or some kind of martial training. As his frustration mounts, his desire to act becomes overwhelming, until he starts to see violence as the only solution.

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Part of the problem is that the phenomenon of ISIS recruitment is so new that efforts to counter it are still in their infancy. Many Western countries are only starting to think about jihadi recruits in terms of prevention, rather than punishment or rehabilitation. Often, parents like Torill who actually sound the alarm are treated simply as sources of intelligence. Nor are many governments eager to bring radicals back once they have left: One American official told me privately that the U.S. would rather foreign fighters die in Syria than return home.

Mothers Of ISIS Recruits Fight Their Own Battles Back Home - The Huffington Post