ISIS Fighters Drawn 2 Movement 4 Reasons Having LITTLE To Do W/EXTREMIST ISLAM!

From 10/21/15 Edition Of "The Nation" Magazine -- By Lydia Wilson --

What I Discovered From Interviewing Imprisoned ISIS Fighters - They’re drawn to the movement for reasons that have little to do with belief in extremist Islam.

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No sooner am I settled in an interviewing room in the police station of Kirkuk, Iraq, than the first prisoner I am there to see is brought in, flanked by two policemen and in handcuffs. I awkwardly rise, unsure of the etiquette involved in interviewing an ISIS fighter who is facing the death penalty. He is small, much smaller than I, on first appearances just a boy in trouble with the police, his eyes fixed on the floor, his face a mask. We all sit on armchairs lined up against facing walls, in a room cloudy with cigarette smoke and lit by fluorescent strip lighting, a room so small that my knees almost touch the prisoner’s—but he still doesn’t look up. I have interviewed plenty of soldiers on the other side of this fight, mostly from the Kurdish forces (known as pesh merga) but also fighters in the Iraqi army (known as the Iraqi Security Forces or ISF), both Arab and Kurdish. ISIS fighters, of course, are far more elusive, unless you are traveling to the Islamic State itself, but I prefer to keep my head on my shoulders.

At the end of the interview w/the first prisoner we ask, “Do you have any questions for us?” For the first time since he came into the room he smiles-in surprise-& finally tells us what really motivated him, w/o any prompting. He knows there's an American in the room, and can perhaps guess, from his demeanor and his questions, that this American is ex-military, and directs his “question,” in the form of an enraged statement, straight at him. “The Americans came,” he said. “They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security.