I’ve had a lot of loaded guns, in a lot of different countries, pointed right at me. Sometimes their barrels were put straight to my head. But in my years as a foreign correspondent, none was scarier than a machine gun pressed into my temple in Iran — held in the hands of a 12-year-old boy.
That was a quarter-century ago, during the Islamic Revolution. But the story behind it helps explain not just the threats facing journalists, aid workers, and others today on the wrong side of the Islamic State, but it helps explain the eccentric if evil appeal, especially to young people who feel no pride or purpose in their lives, of becoming the power behind those threats.
In Iran, after the revolution, the newly empowered rebels welcomed all comers. Age was not a disqualifier; thus, neither was maturity. If you were strong enough to stand steady with a 10-pound AK-47, you were in. (Some of those same impressionable young rebels are the vanguard today of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.)
Holding a gun, you see, is power. Joining an army, especially one that is out-gunning and over-running its enemies, is collective power. And for a young man who sees no purposeful place in his future, holding in his hands the fate of a fellow human being — let alone that of a whole population of people — is power beyond his dreams.
Some commentators and analysts have been jumping through hoops, trying to explain why more and more young men (and women) are running into the ranks of the Islamc State. They’ve come up with everything from religious zeal to liberating the oppressed. But there are so many behaviors in the Middle East today that we just can’t explain, no matter who we are. Can you even begin to get your mind around whatever it is that drives suicide bombers to slaughter as many innocent citizens as they can? Let alone what brings an Islamic State terrorist to behead a Westerner who was taken hostage only because he was helping innocent prey in a brutal war? Neither can I.
But when we turn to joining the most depraved movement in modern times (or at least since the end of Hitler’s Nazis), I don’t think there’s much mystery at all. I think it’s about power. Especially for those who never before have felt the flush of holding it in their hands.
A fair parallel is the American street gang. The attractions of street gangs have been studied, and recorded, and verified: they give people who otherwise feel disenfranchised a sense of identity, a fellowship of peers… and a perception of power.
Or look at it this way: Why do so many young Americans aspire to be the next big name in sports or entertainment? Sure, wealth and fame play a part, but what those amount to are power. The power to say what you want, be who you want, do what you want, and there’s little to stop you; to the contrary, almost no matter how you behave, you are idolized by your followers.
Now picture the apparently Western-educated Islamic State leader who has been the spokesman in those five gruesome videos broadcasting the beheadings of Western hostages. He and his sinister blade are the epitome of power. One moment, he has a hostage on his knees. The next, there is blood on the blade and the hostage is history.
How many aimless young men would love to have power like his?
Some who theorize about the reasons why the Islamic State is growing also suggest campaigns to teach potential recruits about alternative opportunities for everything from education to moderate Islam to economic prosperity.
But people join militant movements like the Islamic State because those kinds of things have been elusive in their lives. And once under the sway of their new leaders, those are the very values they are brainwashed to resist. Power is a stronger draw, and a sure thing.
Greg Dobbs of Evergreen was a correspondent for ABC News for 23 years, then for HDNet television’s “World Report.”
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