Tania Joya has devoted her life to “reprogramming” extremists and reintroducing them into society — a process she understands well as a “former fighter” herself. “My aim is for them to feel a sense of remorse and to train them so that they can be good citizens once they are released from prison, so they can adjust to society,” Joya said during a visit to Washington, to present a project on preventing extremist violence.
Born in 1984 near London to a Muslim Bangladeshi family, Joya grew up confronted by racism and the struggles of integration. She radicalised at age 17, after the September 11 terror attacks in New York and Osama bin Laden’s call.
In 2004, she married an American Muslim-convert, Yahya al Bahrumi (born John Georgelas). She began advocating for a religious state, for which her three children would be soldiers.
But in 2013, her husband took her and their children against her will to northwestern Syria to join insurgents. Joya reported her husband to US authorities and, after three weeks, fled Syria to the United States.
Joya settled in Texas, her husband’s home state. There, she changed her life, divorced and re-married.
Yahya, her first husband, joined the IS group, which would soon control large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq. He was in charge of the group’s English-language propaganda, and Joya said he became the “highest-ranking American” in the IS group.
He died in 2017 during fighting in Mayadin, in northern Syria, as the so-called IS “caliphate” crumbled.
However this created a new problem — Western fighters or their spouses and children wanting to come home.
Joya realised that she had something to offer. “It’s really important to de-radicalise them, rehabilitate” these people, she said.
“It’s reprogramming them and giving them a sense of hope in the political process.” It’s also important to “get them to understand the psychology and the patterns... what led them to extremism,” understanding “the rejection many in the US and Europe faced growing up there, the cultural conflict, the crisis they went through,” she said.
“Once it’s all explained to them, very logically, they will accept it just as I did.” Joya favours repatriating foreign rebels from the Middle East so they can be judged in their countries of origin. While that is the US policy, many European countries such as France are wary of taking in the fighters. — AFP
Cyril JULIEN
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