IN November last year, a Dutch mother, Monique, “donned a veil and crossed clandestinely into the Syrian city of Raqqa,” looking for her 19-year-old daughter whom she described as a “blonde, blue-eyed girl who liked going out and playing piano.” (The Independent November 21 2014).
Her daughter, Aicha, had left her home country, the Netherlands, to go and fight alongside the ISIS militants.
Lucky for Monique, she found her daughter and brought her back to Holland where she is facing prosecution for engaging in terrorism.
Monique is not the only European parent having to travel to the war-torn region looking for their children who have decided to betray their countries and fight on the side of the Islamic jihadists, ISIS.
A few days before Christmas I watched a short documentary/news clip of another parent, a Belgian ex-soldier Dimitri Bontinck, who travelled to Syria not once, but numerous times, first to look for his son Jejoen, who had also joined the ISIS militants; and on other occasions to help distraught parents whose children have travelled from Canada, Europe and as far afield as Australia, to join the militants.
Some parents are however, unlucky.
Their children have been killed in Syria fighting alongside the militants.
In April last year, two teenage girls born in Austria to Bosnian immigrants, Sabina Selimovic, (15), and Samra Kesinovic, (16), travelled to Syria to fight with the Islamic militants and in September last year the Telegraph reported that one of the girls had been killed in Syria.
In March 2013, a 22-year-old Swedish-born jihadist, who used a nom de guerre Albu Kamal, was killed in Syria by Assad’s forces as he fought on the side of the rebels.
And in November last year, a 25-year-old French jihadist, David Daoud Drugeon, who travelled to Syria to fight alongside ISIS, was killed when a vehicle he was travelling in was hit by a US drone.
The 25-year-old had been to Christian parents and baptised and later converted to Islam.
Speaking to the media, his father said, “He was baptised, he received a European education, with parents who are Christians, and… he strayed.
“I’d tell parents to really pay attention to their children, to listen to them, to talk to them, to convince them not to join the jihadists because learning about your son’s death on the internet is very hard, and I would not wish it upon anybody.”
Since the war in Syria, many young people from the West (Europe, Australia, Canada and the USA) have been travelling to Syria to fight on the side of the rebels, some who have now become ISIS militants.
Ironically, these rebels were funded and armed by some Western countries.
The new recruits are not just young Muslim men and women who feel that participating in a ‘holy war’ is their duty, but blue-eyed Caucasians have also been joining the militants.
The European Union’s anti-terrorism chief, Gilles de Kerchove, estimates that more than 3 000 Europeans have joined Islamist fighters in Syria and Iraq.
In an article ‘The challenge of keeping Denmark’s Muslims out of Syria’ (May last year), the BBC’s Arabic Correspondent, Murad Batal al-Shishani, reported that Britain, Denmark and Belgium were among the top countries with European jihadists who have joined the ISIS militants.
He put the number of Briton jihadists in Syria at more than 350, and argued that the UK had by far the highest number of European jihadists in Syria.
However, Khalid Mahmood, an MP for Birmingham, estimated the number of British nationals fighting as jihadists in Syria and Iraq to be over 1 500.
The Kouachi brothers responsible for the Charlie Hebdo killings, were French citizens born in France to Algerian parents.
The question now is, what is really motivating these young men and women, some as young as 15, to undertake such dangerous missions and fight against their own countries?
Many people believe that it is no longer safe to be living in Europe and some Western countries.
The people killed during the underground bombings in 2005 were ordinary people travelling to work during a busy rush hour.
The people who were killed in a Jewish supermarket in France were shoppers who had gone to buy food for their families.
Last week the Belgian authorities said they foiled a planned terrorist attack on their soils and killed the two suspected jihadists who had returned from Syria.
An African-Caribbean man I spoke to said since the London terror attacks he no longer feels safe to travel using public transport, or shopping in overcrowded places.
“It is now dangerous, I tell you. You can’t really tell what your neighbour is doing ‘next door’ or what the chap down the road is doing, because there is just too many people, can you?” he said.
A Zimbabwean woman who lives in Leicester said, “Europe is no longer a comfort zone.
“Given a choice I prefer our potholes to terrorist attacks.”
The recruitment of jihadists is a nightmare for many parents, especially those with young unemployed youths roaming the streets of Europe.
What is motivating them to join these militants?
Is it mere fantasy, feeling marginalised or just radicalisation?
One young man interviewed by the BBC Arab correspondent said joining the jihadists in Syria was, “an obligation and a way for Muslims to demonstrate their manhood.”
Speaking to the Christian Science Monitor (December 21 2014), the ex-Belgian soldier Dimitri Bontinck said of the European jihadists: “They don’t want to return to stay in jail.
“They live in nice villas with swimming pools.
“They are having the good life, why should they return to be in jail?”
But Dimitri’s son (who looks bi-racial) did not come from a poor background.
Speaking to Russian Television, the father said his son “was a Western child, who had the best education you can ever imagine.
“He was a Jesuit.
“He went to elite schools in Belgium.
“He had a Catholic education.
“I’m an atheist, his mother is Catholic.”
Last year I attended a workshop on community relations, and many young immigrant people of African and Caribbean origin who attended the workshop said they don’t feel they belong to the UK at all.
These included third generation migrants.
Most of the disgruntlement was the way they were treated by the police, while others said since they left higher education they never got jobs.
One British-Caribbean boy, whose grandparents came from Jamaica in the 1950s, said he hated being asked his immigration status and passport each time he is stopped by the police.
“They ask me where mi passport is, and if I have a visa,” he said.
“I say what! I don’t need no visa because I was born here, my mum was born here.
“My dad was born here… I don’t really feel I belong here.”
An article published by The Guardian newspaper (October 2013) highlighted that “in England and Wales, black people are searched seven times as often as white,” because of the police powers to stop and search people.
Denise Richards (the chair of a stop-and-search scrutiny group for Brent police) said the stop and search affected the young person involved and the whole family.
“It impacts on their family, their mothers, their fathers, their grandmas,” she said to The Guardian.
“It impacts on the community.”
In addition the Office for National Statistics, which holds most of the UK’s statistical database, said between 2008 and 2011, unemployment rate among young black men had doubled from “28,8 percent in 2008 to 55,9 percent in the last three months of 2011.”
Most of the European jihadists are second or third generation children of immigrants.