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 "Characteristically, a young person who has been recruited ...
thinks that he is chosen and that he knows the truth," said the
bleach-blond, discreetly watched by three police bodyguards as she
sat in a Parisian café. "As soon as you use reason – knowledge – to
tackle this type of young person, you are failing."
Bouzar, a Muslim herself, instead uses memories, music and even
smells to try to win young militants back. Recruiters have adopted
techniques developed by cults, she says, so it takes different
skills to break their hold.
Bouzar now works for the Ministry of the Interior to train local
authorities in her methods. Pierre N'Gahane, the official in charge
of a 6 million euro ($6.62 million) program to prevent
radicalization in France, says Bouzar and her team are "giving
results with which we are quite satisfied." Neither Bouzar nor
French officials suggest hers is the only answer to militant
recruiting. But Bouzar says her tactics are the start of a process
that can work.
France has lost more people to militant Islam than any other country
in Europe, according to most estimates. Two bloody attacks at home
this year have emphasized the risks. The French government estimates
1,800 citizens have joined jihadist networks in Syria or Iraq, or
are on the verge of going. Another 7,000 are "at risk" of following
that path. Bouzar works under police protection and changes location
constantly.
 About one in five French radicals in Iraq or Syria are women. And
only a minority of the radicals Bouzar helps come from Muslim
families, she says. About 80 percent were originally atheist or
Catholic; some are even Jewish.
Her Centre for the Prevention of Sectarian Trends Linked to Islam
(CPDSI) has handled around 600 families in the last year and
receives about 15 calls a week. It employs six people. She says she
has failed in two or three cases but has "saved" about 50 young
people.
Her methods are sometimes controversial. Her cases cannot be
independently verified because she disguises them for the sake of
privacy. Her critics say she is no expert on Islam, cannot speak
Arabic, and is playing with amateur psychology.
But Bouzar, who was a social worker dealing with delinquent or
at-risk young people for 15 years, has a team whose members have all
experienced the loss or recruitment, and has plenty of experience
with radicalized youth. In 2004, she started a project with 10
people who were radicalizing, and published a book about it.
Two years later, while working with an imam to convince young boys
they were on the wrong path, she realized she was failing. When the
imam spoke about religion, she says, the youths would reply: "'Shut
your face. That's not what God says. I'm chosen. I know what God
says.'"
Things got more complicated early last year, when Islamic State
"brothers" began hunting online for wives. Many of their French
recruits were well educated and came from stable backgrounds.
"These adolescents are undergoing a process of suggestion which is
almost at the level of hypnosis," said Serge Hefez, a family
psychiatrist at the Pitié-Salpêtrière hospital in Paris who treats
some of the recruits seen by Bouzar.
THE MATRIX
Islamist online recruiters are powerful worldwide. Earlier this
year, a 14-year old Briton who found friends in a jihadist community
almost persuaded an Australian comrade to behead police at a parade
memorializing war dead.
French recruiters are particularly skillful, Bouzar believes. She
has studied the recruitment process by examining phones and
computers of hundreds of French adolescents, and heard it described
by the young people and their families who have come to her for
help.
"Recruiters show differing utopias to young people," she said. "It's
by listening to how they get caught that we can undo the deception."
The messages are not initially religious; sometimes adolescent
alienation is the hook.
One online recruitment movie suggests the viewer is sleep-walking
within a matrix of corruption and deceit. Starting with a young
woman at a nightclub standing open-mouthed as alcohol is poured down
her throat, it flashes images associating America with Freemasonry,
exhorts the viewer to "wake up" the world, and ends with extracts
from the movie, The Matrix, showing the protagonist choosing between
a blue and a red pill for 'truth.'
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Recruiters mash up fantasy with news footage and idyllic scenes. One
boy Bouzar has dealt with was captivated by characters from the
Assassin's Creed game; others have been drawn by figures in the Lord
of the Rings.
Recruiters have multiple profiles in mind, she says, and use keyword
searches to seek out personality types. Among fantasies they promote
are girls seeking a protector, chivalrous would-be heroes, "Call of
Duty" characters, and risk-takers who want to rule the world.
For Lea, as Bouzar calls one young woman who was preparing to attack
a synagogue, compassion was the key.
Her Facebook profile made plain she wanted to do humanitarian work.
Recruiters then showed her videos "saying I could do humanitarian
work in Syria," she says on a film produced by Bouzar's center. "The
videos showed the Syrian population being gassed ... bombed, and
women taken to hospital in such a state, even without their veils."
The sights were so terrible, she said, "I wanted to be forgiven."
Recruiters bombard their targets night and day with exhortations and
orders. Some young people find themselves repeating religious
phrases, almost as a shield from other influences.
"I heard myself saying the same thing over and over again," Lea says
in the video. "I still find it hard to believe I was indoctrinated.
I still find it hard to believe I was that stupid."
PROUST
In Paris in early 2014 Bouzar met a group of families who had lost
children to Islamists. One mother brought her daughter from
Grenoble. The parents were desperate.
They had discovered their daughter had a secret Facebook profile
plastered with Islamic State propaganda. The girl had made
arrangements to leave for Syria in two days. She did not know her
parents knew about the page; they did not know what to do.
Bouzar asked other families for help. They decided to meet the girl
with her family. But they would not talk directly to her about her
Facebook page. Instead, they would speak to each other about their
own experiences of recruitment and loss. The girl listened, and
eventually broke down and confessed.
The experience is akin to the shared stories in Alcoholics
Anonymous. Bouzar has also borrowed an idea from French writer
Marcel Proust, who wrote a masterpiece on memory which said how the
flavor of a certain sponge cake – a Madeleine – revived an intense
experience from his childhood.
She suggests families use emotional cues – music, pictures, places,
scents, food – to "wake up" recruits. Only parents know how to do
this.
"When the young person is touched by memories of his childhood," she
said, they come back to themselves "for a few instants." That's the
start families need.
($1 = 0.9066 euros)
(Additional reporting and writing by Sara Ledwith; Edited by Simon
Robinson)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
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