[LINK] "There’s No Place Like Home, Unless You’re a Repentant Jihadist"

[rfmcdonald]

Jihen Laghmari and Caroline Alexander's Bloomberg article notes Tunisia's efforts to deal with Islamic State recruits who have returned to their country. I feel a certain, very limited, sympathy for these people. Offering them pathways out may be important, but I do not think these should be easy, if only for the sake of the people they brutalized.

It took just weeks of brutal fighting for Ahmed to realize that his journey from a working-class home in Tunisia’s capital to the battlefields of Syria had been a mistake.

Radicalized at an unofficial Tunis mosque, Ahmed, then 24 years old, was helped into Syria by militants he met on social media. With their assistance he slipped across frontiers in early 2013 on his way to jihadist-run villages. He says he expected to be defending Muslims caught up in civil war, and instead found himself among their oppressors.

“I saw with my own eyes how armed groups like Ahrar al-Sham and Al-Nusra Front kill and terrorize civilians, especially women and children, without reason, just to intimidate residents and control cities,” Ahmed said. He asked for his real name to be withheld and replied to questions posed through his lawyer.
“Anyone who rejects orders or tries to quit is killed. Getting out of Syria alive was like being reborn.”

Back in Tunis, where he keeps a low profile to escape police searches, Ahmed is at the center of a debate over how to deal with returning fighters -- one that may soon echo all over Europe with as many as 30,000 foreigners having traveled to Syria and Iraq. It pits activists calling for greater emphasis on rehabilitation against politicians who fear being seen as soft on terrorism.

Assaults on tourists and security forces have shattered Tunisia’s image as the Arab Spring nation that avoided spiraling violence and held successful elections -- a transition rewarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. Compounding the problem are the estimated 3,000 Tunisians who’ve traveled to war zones to fight.
The government has imposed a state of emergency and is fencing part of its border with Libya, where intelligence agencies say attacks on a Tunis museum and a beach resort were planned. That won’t be enough, say proponents of a draft law that would offer a future to men like Ahmed.

“You can’t fight terrorism with violence, imprisonment and insult,” said Mohammad Iqbal Ben Rajab, president of the Rescue Association of the Tunisian Stranded Abroad. “Without a clear strategy, most of the returnees will turn into time bombs and sleeper cells.”