Jihad and the West - Chapter Five Podcast Four

Wanting to Come Home   “The Revolution is like Saturn. It devours its own Children.” Georg Büchner, Danton’s Death, 1835   “My iPod is broken. I want to come back.” A young French Jihadist’s tweet to his parents in France             The first three parts of this chapter discussed the broad groupings of reasons why Westerners travel to the Caliphate. The chapter will now turn to reasons why some of them want to leave the Caliphate and return to their former homes.   Three Reasons for Wanting to Leave the Caliphate               Some Westerners who have traveled to the Caliphate are happy there and do not want to leave. They have built new lives and found important positions. Some Westerners have died, often in combat, and are buried in what became their homeland. But many have not found what they hoped to find in the Caliphate and want to return to the West after a grim life. The diehard British Jihadis fighting for the State call their homesick comrades “mummy-boys.” It is hard to gauge how many or what proportion of those Western émigrés want to leave the Caliphate. Those who try to break out are often killed or threatened. Some are caring for their children and would not escape without ensuring their safety. There are three reasons they want to come home: disappointment, fear, and the belief that cruelty was not in their nature.   Reason One—Disappointment and Discomfort   “Syrian woman backbiting us [me and my Australian sister] while we’re sitting in front of her, thinking that I don’t speak Arabic.” A British woman called Umm Rayyan               For some Westerners, there is a gap between what they expected in the Caliphate and what they found. Many did not find the enchanting village they were promised. The roasting temperatures and inadequate air conditioning are enervating. An Australian woman, “mother of the seeker of martyrdom,” carped about the blazing summer sun: “The heat in Sham [Syria] is shocking. I’m thinking to change my kunya [name] to Umm [mother] Sweat. Over this heat.”               The sweltering heat creates ideal conditions for exotic bugs and diseases, including neglected tropical diseases largely unknown in the West, to flourish. Many Europeans in Syria today do not understand the cause of their skin sores. For example, a deadly flesh-eating disease, leishmaniasis, is carried by a sand fly that feasts on the corpses strewn in the streets by the State’s fighters. After devouring the dead, the bugs bore into the living.               The searing temperatures, boutique diseases, and sand flies are not advertised in the Caliphate’s recruitment brochures. Nor is the mundanity awaiting many Western recruits. Some have blogged that their assigned tasks are menial or unfulfilling. There are a few luxury goods or cars. Male fighters are offered beautiful, nubile brides as well as sex slaves, but many are not as eye-catching or sexually enthusiastic as promised. An Australian recruiter preparing to leave for Syria and join his comrades canceled his plans when he heard about the squalid conditions in which he would live. They slept on “spongy” mattresses and took showers with dirty buckets of water. They also had no toilet paper.               Those who come dream of becoming warriors, but instead they launder clothes, cook, and clean up after others. One fighter complained about cleaning weapons and transporting dead bodies from the front. He said, “Winter’s arrived here. It’s begun to get really hard.” A South African returning from the Caliphate said, “Much of the Islamic State’s appeal to outsiders is built on half-truths and propaganda. It’s no surprise that reality did not live up to the illusion.”               An American Jihadi escaped from Syria, in part, because he was forced to study Islam for eight hours each day. A Virginian, he had earned a degree at a community college and worked as a teller at a local bank, but he was not academically inclined. He hoped to fight for Islam in the State, but was forced to study the religion instead. He was captured by the Kurdish Peshmerga and confessed that he could not endure the daily Koranic memorization and regurgitation. It became maddening. He also missed smoking. “My message to the American people is that life in Mosul is really, really bad.”   Beyond the weather, diseases, and tedious lifestyle, many Westerners are also astonished by the hatred locals show them. Westerners expect to be welcomed as liberators but are seen as occupiers and thieves. They have heard comments such as “You are here to sabotage my country; you are coming to force something on us.” State leaders explain to new Western recruits that some Syrians are not delighted by their presence. A Caliphate-produced book, Culture Clash: Understanding the Syrian Race, aims to lessen the culture shock.   In addition to the brutality, some Westerners are repulsed by the manners of their compatriots. They find Middle Easterners, particularly Arabs, vulgar and inconsiderate. One Briton blogged about the initial shock and steady fatigue he experienced while grappling with boorish table manners, peevish behavior, and brazen theft of personal property.   Others who want to leave are killed by their fellow fighters. This likely happened to “Florent,” a Cameroonian who immigrated to Germany, where he was raised as a Christian. He converted to Islam at fourteen and left for Syria the following year. He died at seventeen, and his German hometown was unsure whether to hold a Christian or Islamic memorial service. His former Christian pastor decided to hold a Muslim service in his church to show “learning and respect among religions.”T