Why They Go
A hundred and thirty Canadians left to join ISIS. That’s not a small number for a country that size. Suroosh Alvi made a documentary about them—how they got there, why, what it looks like from inside and from outside, if you’re a parent waiting for a phone call that doesn’t come.
The recruiters don’t sell ideology. Not first. They sell what kids want: you matter. You’re part of something. You have power, money, women, respect. All the things a kid sitting in his parents’ basement in Toronto doesn’t have. The documentary talks to the kids, their families, the ones who almost went and didn’t. Damian Clairmont’s mother is in it. Damian didn’t almost leave. He went and got himself killed.
What gets to me is how small it is—the space between bored and gone, between alienated and committed, between angry at the world and willing to travel halfway across the planet to blow it up. It’s not mysterious. You can slip through in six months if everything is lined up right. The recruiters know this. They’ve studied it.
There’s a community in Canada pushing back, young Muslims trying to be the voice that reaches kids first. I imagine they save some of them. I imagine some slip through anyway. The kind of desperation that makes you want to leave doesn’t usually respond to arguments.