Turkey is entering this labyrinth and giving mixed messages. Iran, Hezbollah, and the Kurds are also players, and their position in the various equations is not clear. Iran, after years of being the nuclear terror of the West, has become an ally of sorts of the United States. At times it seems that the United States and the Obama administration still fear the volatility of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more than anything taking place in Mesopotamia.

The destruction and devastation plaguing the Middle East is accompanied by a frightening thought in the Western world of IS alumni returning to their native countries to undertake terror attacks, and perhaps even behead innocent civilians. There is much panic, and coupled with the fear of the Ebola epidemic, the Western world has become increasingly anxious. It finds relief in airstrikes and partial humanitarian aid for the millions of refugees created by civil wars in the Middle East.

However, the more the fight against IS takes the form of airstrikes and Western leaders do not even venture to hint that they might send ground troops into Iraq and Syria, the more attention is diverted from another aspect of the IS problem. Alongside IS are many other such elements – the “classic” al-Qaeda; Jabhat al-Nusra, which is supposedly more moderate than IS; the Taliban, which is poised to take over Afghanistan again once the United States leaves; other violent jihadi groups throughout the world; and several hundred Islamist clerics, who by virtue of the freedom of the internet, are galvanizing their flock and moving them in apocalyptic directions.

The West should be worried by the question of what causes so many young and not-so-young people from the West, Muslims and non-Muslims who have converted to Islam, second- and third-generation immigrants, to be so influenced by IS/jihadi propaganda that they join the struggle in relatively large numbers.

This phenomenon is not new. It began during the struggle against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, and a similar situation developed during the war in Iraq in the 2000s. Those were years of phenomenal growth for the jihadi internet, which brought the Islamist struggle to every young person with a keyboard. Even beheadings were shown on the internet since 2002. Nevertheless, there were few such incidents and the number of volunteers was limited.

Furthermore, in Iraq in the 2000s, most of the volunteers for jihadi organizations were Saudi extremists, but particularly over the past year, volunteering for IS and similar organizations seems to have become much more international, diverse, extensive, and on the rise.

More and more, volunteering for the jihadi ranks in Mesopotamia has become similar to volunteering for the International Brigades organized in the 1930s for the Spanish Republicans’ struggle against fascism. Why are analysts and commentators in the West not as publicly disturbed by the growing number of volunteers for IS and similar organizations who are citizens of Western countries and by their motives, given the potential flood of terror liable to take place when these volunteers return home?

Likewise, noteworthy is the ease of volunteering and the short time that elapses between a decision to volunteer and implementation of the decision. Already in the past, a short transition from a decision to carry out a suicide attack/self-sacrifice to the actual execution, sometimes only a few days, was a known phenomenon. This was seen among population groups that underwent prolonged mental training, not necessarily organized, for the struggle against the enemy.

There were many such examples among Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza; Afghanis; Sunnis in Iraq; and Shiites in southern Lebanon in the 1980s. These populations and societies had undergone training that included Islamic propaganda and justifications for the struggle against the occupier. The efforts to persuade young people from these societies to sacrifice their lives ran deep in society, were socially acceptable, and were infectious as well.  

Such a vision, which smacks of romanticism and perhaps even altruism, appears to be typical, at least in part, of those who volunteer for IS and other such organizations at this time. It is difficult to explain why several thousand Muslims who live in the West want to go to Syria and join IS, while a large number of them have already realized this desire. Most are well integrated among the middle class, have a higher education, are not unemployed, and did not stand out for their ties to Islamist elements before they decided to volunteer. Their process of radicalization took place very quickly, within a few months, and led them to a quick decision to go to Syria.