WHY WE MUST TALK TO EXTREMISTS
The Washington Post’s Souad Mekhennet, a Europe-based national security correspondent and investigative reporter, recently published a book that stitches together some of her many fascinating conversations and experiences while covering Islamist extremists for more than a decade. I Was Told to Come Alone: My Journey Behind the Lines of Jihad is part memoir, part probing investigation into the roots of radicalization and what drives the militants who have carried out so much hideous violence in all corners of the world. Mekhennet, who helped unmask the identity of notorious Daesh executioner “Jihadi John,” chatted with us about her work, its risks and the insights she has gleaned along the way.
You have spent a career seeking to understand jihadists. Could you share one experience or conversation that you found particularly revealing?
Oh gosh, there were so many. But one of the most interesting was with a Daesh, also known as ISIS or ISIL, commander whom I describe in the prologue of the book. Like most of the other men I have interviewed throughout my career, he first talked to me about politics and international politics especially. I figured out that he was of a similar background — he was the son of North African parents and grew up in Europe. And we engaged in a very heated debate. I challenged him a lot up to the point where I felt he had grown very angry. And I saw he had a gun in his pocket, so I decided to stop. But I understood after this interview that this man could have turned into something different, and that we as a society had lost him into the arms of recruiters. Later, I found out that he was actually overseeing the hostage program and people like Jihadi John.
How has being a woman either hindered or helped your discussions? You’ve been in rather risky situations. And how, too, does being of North African descent play into the dynamic?
Being a woman with my background — growing up in the West with parents of Moroccan and Turkish background — has helped to gain access to groups and people who would usually not speak to journalists. I also had access to their wives and families, because I am a woman. However, it has many risks. I describe in
Was Told to Come Alone how in the early stages of my work, Western services had question marks about why I was doing what I am doing. I found myself also under the threat of being kidnapped once by two men from Europe who joined Daesh — they wanted to force me into marriage or behead me — and once I was verbally attacked on social media by activists in Bahrain, because I asked challenging questions and didn’t buy into their narrative. It is very difficult when you don’t take sides in your reporting.
How do you analyze the surge in Daesh attacks in the West and the growing Islamophobic backlash by far-right populists?
This is exactly the big dilemma our societies are in. Organizations like Daesh use the growing Islamophobia in Europe to spread the narrative that Muslims are not welcome. After the current attack against Muslim worshippers in London, it didn’t take even two hours for Daesh to spread on their social media platforms the narrative that this attack should be seen as evidence for a “war against Islam” in the West and that Muslims will be all slaughtered if they don’t join their group. Then you got the right-wing movements arguing that Islam is the problem. In both cases people use fear as a tool to recruit and convince people. In my book, I describe the conversation I had with Farid, a friend of Abdelhamid Abaaoud and some of the other terrorists who killed people in France. Farid grew up in Molenbeek (a heavily Muslim neighbourhood in Brussels) as well, and he described to me how they all didn’t believe they would have a chance to become a full part of the society due to their heri- tage, and the marginalization of where they grew up and how they had all conflicts within their own family. Then they got into criminal circles. Once they ended up in prison, many of them got mixed up with hate preachers. Their criminal background was used to get hold of weapons. Daesh ideology will not disappear. And the radicalization is not something foreign that was brought into our societies from abroad. This whole situation has to do with decisions and mistakes that were made for many years.
Are politicians such as Trump and his counterparts in Europe right that multiculturalism is a dead end that provokes social crisis?
I don’t think so, and I believe such words are not helpful to find solutions. In fact, they play into the narratives of all those who preach hatred. I grew up as the daughter of Muslim parents. I lived in Morocco with my grandmother where we had Jewish neighbours, and my first real friend was their daughter. Then, when my parents took me back to Germany, I went to a Christian kindergarten and played the Virgin Mary twice — until the girl who played the Archangel Gabriel burned my hair with her candle. I grew up in an environment where we looked at what we had and have in common with people and not what is dividing us. This is also what the U.S.-used to be about for many years. So it is alarming if President Trump, the leader of the “free world,” is voicing something like this. I don’t think he might be aware, but when he calls the media “fake news,” it’s a term that people within Daesh also used for us.