THE COST OF LEAVING ISLAMIC STATE: DEATH OR JAIL

Jihad enthusiasts travel across the world to join the militants, but disillusioned recruits soon learn that getting out is not so simple

The man stands furtively on a street corner near the broad avenue cutting through Tunis, his face masked by a hoodie, his tense eyes scanning the workday crowd for any hint of Islamic State militants. He was one of them before he left Syria, only a year ago, and he is afraid.

Now he chain-smokes as he describes the indiscriminate killing, the abuse of female recruits, the discomfort of a life where walls were optional and meals were little more than bread and cheese or oil.

“It was totally different from what they said jihad would be like,” said the man, Ghaith, who asked to be identified by his first name only for fear of being killed.

While foreigners from across the world have joined the Islamic State militant group, some arrive in Iraq or Syria only to find day-to-day life much more austere and violent than they had expected. These disillusioned new recruits soon discover that it is a lot harder to leave than to join. Even if they escape, they are trapped in limbo, considered a threat by both their former comrades-in-arms and their homelands.

Thousands of returnees are now under surveillance or in jail in North Africa and Europe, where they are often held to be terrorists and security risks. They are viewed with even more suspicion after the massacre at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris in January, orchestrated by a pair of French-born brothers who laid low for years before putting their training to use.

“The men who manage to leave Islamic State or al-Nusra have to do so secretly,” said France’s top anti-terror judge, Marc Trevidic. “Not everyone who returns is a budding criminal. Not everyone is going to kill — far from it. But it’s probable that there is a small fringe that is capable of just about anything.”

At other times, would-be escapees don’t make it out alive in the first place. Many emirs, or unit leaders, simply order death for those they suspect of disloyalty, according to Islamic State propaganda, analysts and those who managed to leave.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the militant group has killed 120 of its own members in the past six months, most of them foreign fighters hoping to return home. The same propaganda productions that call for skilled recruits in engineering, medicine and finance distribute videos showing the execution of fighters who have strayed.

More than a dozen former fighters, families and lawyers, many of whom spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, gave similar accounts about life in and escape from Islamic State.

PROOF OF DEVOTION

Ghaith went to Syria for jihad to reap what he believed would be the rewards of paradise. But once there, Ghaith said, he was highly disturbed to see female recruits forced into sex in the camps, often “married” for the night by different men.