Seeding the Soil for ISIS: we are all complicit in creating and perpetuating these cycles of violence & loss

Before I read this article in The Nation, I could have guessed what the findings of this research would be. It circles around something I've been talking about for many, many years. I encourage folks to read this article and start thinking about conditions (in which we are all complicit) that create incentive and 'feeder mechanisms' for ISIS.

The 'feeder sources' are usually young men cut out of society--economically/ socially/ politically. Many feel worthless and hopeless in their lives. Poverty and lack of opportunity are driving forces (in relationship to wellbeing of their families particularly). Education and literacy are not options for them. They desperately want to do something for the ones they love (their families), and want to somehow make their lives of value, of use.

What (economic, psychological, social, emotional) conditions make young people susceptible to recruitment by ISIS? Marginalization, discrimination, lack of opportunities, complex cyclical patterns of poverty and exclusion--for starters. [A capitalistic globalized colonial extractive economy has a few winners and many, many losers--particularly when social democracy is absent or cosmetic. Exploiter or exploited--are those our options? Or a sliding scale across exploitation and consumption?] Often these are the self-same conditions which make children vulnerable to becoming child soldiers across Africa and Asia (is there much difference?). Quite similarly: youth who become embroiled in gangs in the U.S. and Europe (and Asia and Africa and Latin America-- esp. in favelas and barrios). Are we seeing a pattern here? These kids wind up on death row, with long prison sentences, or dead. And often they wind up hurting others along the way, feeding a cycle of violence and loss.

Children in central Niger-- opportunities, education and family/community support is transformational
 for their futures and the roles they will play on the global stage.
(Photo by Emilie Parry, 2008, Filingue, Niger)

To be sure, other factors are at play. On the day of the evening of the Paris attacks, the BBC carried a story about a British teen who tested 'at the bottom 2% of his peer group for IQ.'  He was recruited to IS and got as far as Turkey before the pleas of his family got him to turn around and come home. The teen was found guilty of 2 counts of preparing acts of terrorism-- for flying to Turkey on his way to Syria with the intent to be trained there. (He was also convicted of fraudulently securing a place in university and then using student funding to pay for the groups flights. Given his IQ is what would be classified as 'mental disability' in the U.S., I think it is highly unlikely he did that on his own, or came up with the idea-- or any of the ideas to engage in this process himself).

We need to look at the manipulators, recruiters and schemers behind the scenes, along with the kids they target for recruitment and why! In the late 1990's, I worked on death penalty appeals cases, in non-profit law in California. I encountered many, many death row inmates whose IQ was tested at 70 or well below. Most of their families were (at least fiscally) impoverished and societally marginalized, so there were few protective buffers for them. These unfortunate souls either took the rap for the actions of other people who manipulated them --or -- they were manipulated into activities/pulling the trigger, etc. - in circumstances from which they did not have the cognitive capacity of judgement to protect themselves or others.

There are many insidious and sinister factors (in which our governments have been complicit --with our tax money) that have led to the instigation, strengthening and expansion of ISIS. The people behind the scenes--those recruiting, training and sending young men to commit heinous acts, sending young men to their deaths--they understand perfectly well the social, psychological and economic factors that make young people 'recruitable' to ISIS. And they know how to exploit this to their sick agenda.

Cornering their prey (thanks to www.walesonline.co.uk for the image)

Paris, Beirut, Nairobi, Bangkok, Dhaka, Borno State, New York & D.C.-- these ghastly, rupturing acts of violence are not the thing itself. They are symptoms of the wounds and brokenness within our BodyPolitic/ BodyEcology/ BodyEconomy. They are painful signs of the disease within.

We must get to the core of a) corruptive power agendas of governments and corporations and b) the impact these systems have on so many young people (and their families) who are discarded as 'useless' or 'expendable' in our production-and-consumption based global economy. If we do not identify and transform the root systemic 'disease,' then we will only see more and more of this fracturing and grievous loss. It may emerge in these moments of 'media-magnetic violence' yet it is experienced by millions of people daily, away from the cameras-- without a bit of compassion or care.

When we are grieving through such traumatic loss, it reverberates through our collective body. Our impulsive reaction may be to strike back. Striking back only hits at the wound and makes it worse for everyone. Healing is only possible when we breathe deeply, and answer brokenness and hate with active (applied) compassion and unbounded love. There are no monsters here. There are many, many wounds.