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I have my doubts about the story. I raised 2 daughters neither of them were so inclined to go out alone until much older than 15 and 16. The story just seems unreal, almost boiler plate 2 white girls yadda yadda.
No sympathy at all. Fortunately, they didn't decide to return home by now. Which means that they will probably be 18 when they are fed up with all that ****. Which means ~10 years in prison.
I have my doubts about the story. I raised 2 daughters neither of them were so inclined to go out alone until much older than 15 and 16. The story just seems unreal, almost boiler plate 2 white girls yadda yadda.
I'm calling BS.
You sure about that? I was a good kid by every stretch of the imagination - straight As, volunteering, the neighborhood babysitter, eventually earned a full (40K a year) tuition scholarship to a top 30 private university out of state, no drinking or drugs, good friends, probably didn't even speed - but I had a serious independent streak with a healthy dose of rebellion. By 15 and 16, I was traveling as much as possible on my own - albeit I didn't have a car and there was no public transit where I lived, so I didn't get far without my parents' approval. My parents allowed me to go on a summer scholars program the summer I was 16 in Miami (close to 1000 miles from home). Even though I had never been on public transit before, I hopped on the bus many days after classes were over to go exploring and talk to people in various neighborhoods, making lots of friends that would probably horrify my parents. By 18, I went to college across the country and traveled all over the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Midwestern states by Amtrak and Greyhound without my parents' knowledge. Looking back, spending all that money to visit people I had only talked to on Skype who I had met on message boards like CD was absurd. I might have been an adult, but I wasn't thinking of any consequences. I could see how going to another country could have felt like an adventure, especially if it was framed around helping other people (many reports say the girls were told they were going to help Syrian children).
I *also* got sucked into internet subculture and online friendships very easily at that age, especially because I felt different as a minority religion and liberal in the Bible Belt. The "othering" I experienced made it really easy for me to seek comfort in people who validated my beliefs, and I'm lucky nothing horrible happened to me based on some of the risks I took to meet these friends (most of whom ended up being other kids just like me, thank goodness). This was over a decade ago when our lives weren't nearly so intertwined with the digital world, and I was too embarrassed to talk about my "online friends" to my real life friends. Today, I think it's much more accepted, to dangerous ends. 15 year olds with low self esteem change themselves for boys all the time - what is making these girls change so much for such universally nefarious causes?
So to that end, I feel a lot of sympathy for these girls. When you're 15 or 16, you think you know everything. You think you understand more than your parents or even government officials do (believe me - I was this age during the Bush administration and I'm sure I thought I had a real run on Condi's job from my sophomore year homeroom). It's important for us to understand how so many teenagers become radicalized. What language and tone is being used to attract them? Why are the susceptible to radicalization in the first place? I've read a few stories of teenage girls specifically being swept up by ISIS - many of them come from mostly-secular Muslim families while others come from intermarried families with a parent of European descent who never converted to Islam. Still others seem to have no Muslim background, and I've read reports in Israeli media about a Jewish teenage girl in France who got swept up in this. What is causing it?
No way. I have no sympathy for terrorists. I hope they die.
Also they're 15 and 17, they're old enough to know what they're getting in to.
Not really. The mid teens tend to be a fairly impulsive age. Brain development isn't complete until about 25. It may not have occurred to them that they'd be given to men as brides. 15 is too young for a pregnancy in most Western countries (I mean young, psychologically, socially, educationally). The kid who took up studying Islam and ended up with the Taliban was 15 when he became interested in the religion, and was about 17 or 18 when he went to the Middle East. Some boys do wild and reckless things at 15, having no idea what they're getting into.
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