Watching What's Happened to My Family in Iraq Helped Me Understand Radicalized Western Muslims

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

I can see why some people become radicalized. I'm half white-British, half Arab-Iraqi, born and raised in the UK. I was 15 when millions of my fellow countrymen marched against the imminent invasion of Iraq. My family in Mosul (uncles, aunts, cousins, and grandma) were happy, wealthy people in 2003. But since that fateful year, because of the actions of mine and other governments, they now fear for their lives every day. The sense of injustice I feel drove me to investigate why a tiny pocket of British Muslims are becoming radicalized.

When I was 15, I was worrying about getting grades for my GCSEs that wouldn't make my dad cry. The same year, my Iraqi family of teachers, doctors, and construction contractors stopped being able to work because of curfews and airstrikes. When my eight-year-old cousin broke her arm, they couldn't afford the cast to fix it.

The same year, while I was worrying what color trainers would go best with my school uniform, in the middle of the night, six US soldiers camped in one of Saddam's former palaces broke into the nearby house my grandma, uncle, aunt, and young cousin were living in. They held guns to my 70-year-old grandma's head and stole the last $100 the family had from her bedside table, before dragging my uncle out into the street, bundling him into a car, and interrogating him as a terrorist suspect for 24 hours at the palace before releasing him. As moderate Sunnis, my family have no affiliation with extremists. My grandma never fully recovered from the shock and died the following year.

When I was 18, I was caning it around Manchester's suburban streets in my hand-me-down Vauxhall Corsa, wondering if dropping biology in favor of film studies was really the best idea. Over in Iraq, my 19-year-old cousin was kidnapped by insurgents. He was blindfolded, handcuffed, thrown in the boot of a car, and held hostage in a house outside the city. His captors called his dad and told him to pay a ransom or they would chop his head off. Two days after being captured, my cousin was left alone for a few minutes. He untied himself, jumped out of a small window on the second floor, found his bearings, and ran several miles home. He remained inside the house for years after so he wouldn't be found and killed.

From 2003 to 2009, they couldn't afford food, clothes, or medicine. I doubt they would have all survived without my parents being able to send money over to them.

To make sense of my anger at their suffering, I called Rana Allam, the former editor-in-chief of Daily News Egypt. She described seeing her colleague, a "genius, upper-middle-class young man in his mid 20s," become radicalized during the Arab Spring. After witnessing his father killed and his brother tortured by state forces, then losing his job, he became a vengeful extremist who celebrates when police officers, judges, and soldiers are murdered.

She said: "He's out of a job, his friends are jailed, his father was killed—that's a perfect environment for someone to become radicalized. These people need to fight back; that's a normal reaction. If it's between joining Isis or getting a life sentence, or executed, when you did nothing at all, then you will join Isis.

"Democratic countries should take care to maintain the peace they have and not persecute their own people into a place where they believe radicalization is the only option for them."

Unlike Rana's friend, I don't witness any of what my family is going through firsthand, yet I'm still enraged. Could other members of the diaspora—who maybe don't have as comfortable a life in the UK as I do—find such events cause to become radicalized?

Dr. Francesco Ragazzi, an expert in counter-radicalization who advises the European Parliament on counter-terrorism, said: "In terms of invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA torture program, the drone extrajudicial bombings, killings, and so forth—in places like Birmingham or east London, people who are recruiting for the Islamic State don't even have to come up with conspiracy theories. They just say, 'Look what's happening in Pakistan, Guantánamo, what's happening to Moazzam Begg. What are you doing about it?'"

So far, up to 700 people have left the UK to join the Islamic State—a number too large for us to simply dismiss them all as psychopathic monsters. Currently, the most high-profile of those presumed to have joined the terrorist group are three teenagers from east London. School friends Shamima Begum, 15, Kadiza Sultana, 16, and Amira Abase, 15, left their homes for Syria in February.

Addressing why the girls decided to join the apocalyptic Islamist group, their solicitor, Mohammed Akunjee, cites "difficult family circumstances" and the tight bond between adolescent friends. He added: "They also have the promise of housing and income over there, which makes it look like a better option than staying in the UK. [ISIS] provide a benefits system; al Qaeda never did that. This is the fundamental difference between them and ISIS, and why there are so many people going to join them."

While Akunjee has been branded an extremist by some sections of the right-wing press, he is not the only British lawyer encouraging the UK government to examine its role in creating a climate ripe for radicalization.

Solicitor advocate Sophie Khan said structural racism in the UK means 75 percent of Muslim women and 50 percent of Muslim men are unemployed. "So you have a very low standard of living here. The Muslims becoming radicalized are on the edge of society," she said. "They are suffering racism at school and then in the job market. The government should be asking how it can address this issue."

One of the main tactics the government is employing through its " toxic" Prevent strategies is to encourage "a move into the private space" of British Muslims. Last week, Commander Mak Chishty, the most senior Muslim police officer in the UK, told the Guardian that subtle changes in children's behavior—such as shunning Marks & Spencer, negative attitudes towards alcohol, social occasions, and Western clothing—could be signs of radicalization and should be reported to the police.

READ ON VICE NEWS: Families of Islamic State-Bound Schoolgirls Say UK Police "Let Them Walk Out"

Anjum Anwar, a Muslim teacher awarded an MBE in 2005 for her work in community cohesion, said, "Commander Chishty's comments have upset the [Muslim] community. It puts five-year-olds at risk of being targeted as extremists."

Dr. Ragazzi slammed Chishty's comments as "insane." He said, "Having a conversation about what the role of communities, doctors, [and] high school teachers have in fighting radicalization is entirely useless, and creating a completely counterproductive atmosphere of fear. Most of the attacks in the last few years, such as the Boston bombings, the Woolwich killing, the Charlie Hebdo and Copenhagen attacks—all of these people were on the watch lists of the intelligence services.

"The efforts should be on how we make sure that intelligence services, the police, investigative judges, and the Crown Prosecution Services have the means and the ability to stop wasting resources and focus on those who are really dangerous. All of that requires the respect of the law, human rights, and privacy, and to stop wasting resources on mass surveillance, which has been proven to be completely useless in terms of stopping these issues."

So with the UK's reprehensible foreign policy in the Middle East; increasing structural racism against Muslims resulting in disenfranchisement of many in the community; and the growing reality of what Greater Manchester Police chief Sir Peter Fahy called "a drift towards a police state", the government desperately needs to rethink how to tackle the radicalization happening on its doorstep.

As for my family, now Isis have come to prominence, we can only speak to them when one of the men manages to get outside of the city once every couple of months and call us, because of the block on communications. My aunties and female cousins aren't allowed out of their homes without a male chaperone. In between snatched phone calls, we hope they're all OK. I don't pray; I just cry angry tears at the injustice of it all.

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