Saturday, 20 April 2013

Uprooted and lost as a young man


In Western Europe, there are thousands of young men like the one that has been captured in Boston or his dead brother.

They are the children of immigrant families that came from afar. Most of those families just ran away from poverty. But many others have left behind violent conflict experiences, be it in the Middle East, in South Asia or in Africa. Or maybe closer by, in the Balkans or the Caucasus. Their sons – it’s indeed a boy’s problem – might have been born in Europe and raised in a peaceful and democratic context but some of them feel uprooted and excluded. They end up by aligning themselves with those who express extremist views about the West. For some, the war in Syria has been an opportunity to join what they believe to be a Cause. Others have been elsewhere, including in Pakistan. These fronts have made them harder and more willing to take action. As such, they represent a major security challenge to the Western European societies. And the experience has shown that this is a challenge that is difficult to match. 

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