BY BIKRAM VOHRA
The three British schoolgirls, ostensibly on their way to Syria to join the ISIS (Daesh) in Syria may think of it as a bit of a lark but it boggles the mind that these reportedly academically proficient children should be so easily led into militancy. What is it about extremists that they so easily impress young minds and can attract people who have absolutely no connection with them. These girls live a British life, so remote from the stench of cordite and the spill of blood. Certainly, the teenage years are dedicated to rebellion and there is much angst against the system. Disenchantment comes with the territory and it is a few small steps to making oneself into a martyr and thinking a sacrifice is necessary. But they have no idea what they are getting into and actually putting their lives in danger.
While one appreciates the sense of outrage that can be felt seeing the anguish of the Syrian people, especially the women and children and the infirm, but your presence is not going to help. You are not trained to be nurses, you have caused your family great distress and this sort of ‘running away’ loses its appeal in a few days. When reality slaps you in the face then the good intentions are replaced by sheer fear and a gut wrenching fearfulness at that. There is nothing romantic about conflict and even less about fetching up as vulnerable young girls in a kill zone.
Whenever you read about these young people being brought up in a western culture it does strike on that the childlike foolishness aside there is a sense of alienation. Their parents or grandparents migrated to the west and this generation of technologically weaned youngsters is totally torn over their inability to identify who they are and what their values stand for. They need to be linked to something and the foreign vista which is the backdrop for their lives becomes a sharp burr under the saddle. They learn to hate the environment they are brought up in, this marginalization often intensified by the realization that they do not truly belong and the occasional racist experience that leaves then bruised and bewildered.
Unless racist profiling is wiped away with a wet cloth there will always be those that seek the sanctuary of violence even if it means going against the ones you love and the system that made you comfortable and fed.
Every rebel in those awkward years needs a cause and these girls are poster kids for what they see as the good fight. What they do not see is the agony of conflict, the break-up of families, the loss of loved ones, the broken bones, the destroyed cities, the collapse of law and order, the innocent victims and the bodies piling up.
What they do not see is they themselves being put on that list.