When the young Muslim known as “Mo” decided he could no longer live in America, the Islamic State wasn’t his destination of choice. Initially, he said, he wanted to migrate to Saudi Arabia to study at the University of Medina—but he couldn’t get in. A diet of online propaganda convinced him the state was “a good Islamic community to raise a family.” So in 2014, he hopped a plane to Istanbul, and set off to join the caliphate.
“I went because I wanted to live in a sharia environment,” he said. “Some Muslims are fine living here, and find ways to live a proper Islamic life, but at that time I was not one of them.”
The much-heralded military rout of the Islamic State has led to a new headache for the West: the prodigal children returning home, bringing their unfriendly ideologies with them. Mo is one of 64 known Americans who traveled to the Middle East to join Islamist extremist groups between 2011 and 2015 (12 of whom have since returned to the United States). Those 64 men and women are the subject of a remarkable new report from George Washington University’s Program on Extremism, a multi-year, exhaustively researched look into their lives, allegiances, and motivations.
Some fast facts from “The Travelers: American Jihadists in Syria and Iraq”: 89 percent of known American jihadists are male. Their average age when they left home was 27. They hailed from 16 U.S. states, with the highest concentration coming from Minnesota—between 2013 and 2017, at least 17 residents of the Twin Cities attempted to travel abroad to fight; 7 were successful. More than a third died overseas, while 44 percent remain at large. Five percent returned to America without facing charges.
The report’s authors break their subjects down into three categories. First, there are the pioneers: Americans with strong ties to extremist communities (and often previous military experience) who left early, getting in on the ground floor in groups like ISIS and rising to positions of leadership. These individuals became propaganda beacons for other Americans to follow. The second (and largest) group is the networked travelers: family members or friend groups who relied on personal connections to aid their journey from home. These fugitives traveled together, trusting in numbers to ensure that at least some would make it past law enforcement to get overseas. Finally, there were loners like Mo: rare cases in which a person made their journey without any offline, personal aid.
But the real power of the report is not in its generalizations, but the specific stories it tells. “Radicalization is a complex process,” it reads; “What holds true in one individual’s case may not hold in another.” So some cases are as we expect them to be: disaffected American Muslims, perhaps poor, perhaps disgusted by what they perceive to be an immoral society, decide the grass would be greener in a state tailored to meet their religious needs. “Leaving a place where haram (things forbidden in Islam) was easy and halal (things that are permissible, or even encouraged, in Islam) was difficult,” as Mo said. Others, such as Brian Dempsey of Sacramento, California, a youth counselor for the California Department of Corrections prior to his conversion to Islam, are more unexpected.
Similar bizarre details abound: One American, Warren Clark of Texas, applied for a job teaching English at the University of Mosul. “I am looking to get a position teaching English to students in The Islamic State,” he wrote. “I believe that a successful teacher can understand students’ strengths and weaknesses and is able to use that understanding in order to help students build on their knowledge of the English language.” Apparently, even terrorist sympathizers have to write cover letters.
The report’s authors credit strong U.S. laws against traveling abroad with intent to join an extremist group for foiling many travelers’ plans. But they caution that prosecuting homegrown extremists is not in itself a solution to the problem: For one thing, they’ll be back on the streets in a few years. And even before their release, an extremist prisoner can easily create new networks with other convicts. The authors recommend intervention programs to help reintegrate radicals into society, perhaps with the help of other deradicalized returnees.
“Some American returnees have expressed disillusionment with the false utopian vision offered by Jihadist groups,” the report says. “The U.S. should consider leveraging these individuals in a more comprehensive way.”
Mo counts himself among that last group. Upon his arrival at the caliphate, he quickly decided he’d been taken in. The religious camaraderie he craved was nowhere to be found—instead, recruits quarreled and mistrusted one another. Where he hoped to find wise theologians, he found political indoctrination. Fearing he would be compelled to carry out a suicide bombing, Mo surreptitiously bought a phone and emailed the FBI. He was told they could help him if he could escape to a U.S. consulate in Turkey. In November 2014, after five months under ISIS, Mo fled. He eventually pled guilty to providing material support to and receiving military training from a foreign terrorist organization.
“Don’t be impulsive,” was his advice to budding extremists. “Think and sit still before you do something stupid.”
