They all want to come back to the US, UK, Europe, Bangladesh and so many other countries. In this case the "they" are the defeated rats of the ISIS foreign fighters'contingent who are now abandoning the sinking Caliphate like rats in a sinking ship. There are an estimated five thousand (5,000) European and American fighters and their families that have survived so far and want to trek back to the homelands in Europe and the US.
There are many thousand more who want to go back to Africa, Central Asia, Pakistan and other countries. These returnees pose an unparalleled security risk to the West and for that matter to any country that absorb them. These people perpetrated great violence on other humans but the evidence of their crimes are hidden and at best anecdotal. What should we do with these ideological murderers?
The best solution is for them to go ahead and find their way to Paradise and the waiting virgins. That is what they wanted to achieve in the first place. The French Defense Minister did not mince any words when he said ALL of the foreign fighters should be killed in Syria and not in France. To that effect, the French dispatched Special Forces soldiers to Syria and Iraq with pictures of the French and other associated foreign fighters with the specific goals to ensure that they never return to France. No one is sure how effective they have been in liquidating these murderers but the effort shows a clear bias against letting the foreign fighters get back to the Western countries.
One may very well ask why we should not let them return. They are not fighting anymore and they will have no weapons. Historically, the folks that went to fight against Franco were back in their respective countries after Franco managed to win the Spanish civil war. There have been people who went to fight in Nicaragua and some African countries who have come back and assimilated back into their societies. So, why not the Jihadis?
I think people really need to understand that the modern day Jihadi is radically different animal than other revolutionaries and adventure seekers of yore. These people are not psychopaths and misfits. The do not want to live and prosper, they want to die and go to Paradise. They have a very cogent philosophy that requires that they create mayhem and anarchy to bring about the end of days. Graeme Woods puts it quite succinctly, "the Islamic State is no mere collection of psychopaths.
It is a religious group with carefully considered beliefs, among them that it is a key agent of the coming apocalypse". It would do us all well to read the very well researched and extensively documented article by Graeme Wood in the Atlantic. Here is a link, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/03/what-isis-really-wants/384980/.
The Jihadis brought back sexual slavery, crucifixion, throwing gay people from tall places. None of these barbaric acts are random or conceived by themselves out of thin air. No, they were simply replicating the pure ancestor (salafs, hence the Salafist) actions and deeds from the tribal seventh century, in the 21st century. They are essentially against the passage of time and devoid of any light that the intervening centuries may have brought to the world as a whole. The core being of their existence is denying the existence of modernity and humanity.
So, what makes us think these people will come back to our world and live productive lives? The evidence is contrary. In France the Bataclan massacre and Charlie Hebdo murders were all conducted by returnees and acolytes of the returnees. In the US the latest terrorist act was enacted by an Uzbeki who immersed himself in the hate filled commentary from the Islamists and so-called Islamic State.
Never mind in Uzbekistan (a country with 90% Muslim population) he would not have been allowed to sport the luxurious and unruly beard that has disgraced the breathless media and he would not be in a private hospital room asking for the ISIS flag! What we have in these people are death loving fanatics and death they should get. In Bangladesh in a number of the cases where the militants were surrounded they killed their children as young as four years old before they killed themselves. There is not a shred of doubt in these people that they are doing God's work and their rewards are waiting for them on the other side of death's door.
Now, if we let these people return to our civil societies we will seed our societies with potential for great violence and also put the law abiding millions of Muslims in the West into a long term boiling vat of suspicion and harassment. The liberals will say we should try to de-radicalize them. This crackpot theory assumes that these people were wayward and just mistaken. Nothing can be further from the truth.
These people can back up every action with some verse of the Quran or the Hadith. This is why de-radicalization does not work. In essence, the Jihadists are telling the true Muslims, if you subscribe to the view, that the life in the seventh century was pure and unassailable. They are practicing the true faith and the rest of us are Murtads (apostates). So, all the singing and dancing of de-radicalization will fall on deaf ears.
We can try to jail them all. This is an expensive proposition. How long would we want to put them in prison for? It costs from $33,000 to $168,000 per year per person in an American prison. A simple math will show the costs will be staggering. In October 2017 the US Federal court sentenced Mohammed Jamal Khewis to 20 years in prison. That will cost the taxpayers something in the range of $2 million in today's Dollars.
This guy went to Syria after some effort. He had encrypted email conversations with ISIS recruiters, he traveled to Turkey and hitched a bus ride into Syria. His twitter handle was @iagreenbirdia. The militants believe that green birds carry the souls of those killed in battle to paradise. Too bad, Mohammed could not hop a ride on the green bird to the awaiting virgins.
No, he escaped and tried to finagle his way back to the US by lying to the Kurdish Peshmerga. Now, this pathetic pile of useless bag of waste will cost the American taxpayers some $2million. There are many hundreds of Khewis out there. There is no redemption for these folks. They should not be allowed back. We need to find a way to give them their desired ride on the green bird.
The more tragic question is what we do about the ISIS women and the children these women had with the ISIS fighters. Many of the children are brutalized and may never recover from the scars. They will pose long term danger to society. Many of the women participated in the brutality and rape of the Yazidi women. The First Lady of ISIS apparently escaped and now lives in Texas.
I am sure the authorities have vetted her and her story checked out. However, it is impossible to check out these stories as their victims are either dead or scattered around the globe. These women made a choice and wanted to be ISIS brides. Now, the pot is getting hot and they all want to get back to the cosy confines of their countries of origin or residence.
I personally find the whole ISIS saga offensive and the people that carried out the atrocities beyond repair and redemption. We, at least the US, need to make all efforts to prevent the re-entry of the fighters, the women and the children. The best solution from them is to die where they stand and take the flight on the back of the green bird. I know it sounds cruel and definitely not politically correct. But I was born a Muslim and I have seen the intolerant face of these militants up close and personal. I see no redemption. So, I say, 'Be brave you little rats, die where you stand!'
The writer is an academic and writes from the United States
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