Parents of Teen Who Tried to Fight in Syria Say the US Needs Get Better at Preventing Radicalization

The parents of a Colorado teen who tried to flee to Syria to become a foreign fighter criticized US authorities this week for not having an effective way to deal with the growing threat of radicalization.

John and Maria Conley said in an open letter that the reasons someone like their daughter, 19-year-old Shannon Conley, might decide to go to the Middle East and fight on the side of radical Muslim groups are complex and not easily solved by a punishment such as prison.

Shannon Conley was sentenced to four years in federal prison Friday for her plans to travel to Syria, marry a jihadist, and help al Qaeda by fighting for them or working as a nurse. The FBI arrested her at the Denver airport in April 2014. She pleaded guilty to conspiracy to help a terrorist organization and received leniency in her sentence in exchange for helping the FBI.

"The conditions that led to Shannon's (and others') choices to try to go to the Middle East are complex, and we have no easy answers to address them," the parents wrote in their letter, according to the Denver Post. "We certainly have no 'sound bites' to offer on how to win the War on Terrorism. We do feel that a step in the right direction is to not give in to fear."

They added that the "disproportional governmental response simply aids the terrorist in winning his war by doing for him what he can't do for himself: terrify the American people."

The US response of criminal charges and jail time is an immediate, short-term one, according to policy expert Thomas M. Sanderson, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. It needs to be part of a longer-term, more comprehensive strategy for eliminating foreign fighters, he said.

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The US can deal with potential foreign fighters by pressing charges and jailing them, but the cases can be difficult to build, Sanderson said. Often, if there's an indication that someone might be thinking about going abroad, police will use surveillance.

"If someone is suspected but there's no proof there's nothing we can do about it," Sanderson said. "If there's an indication, they might be able to contact the individual to try to get a sense of their plan, but it gets tricky because you don't know if a person is going there on vacation, and you can't have police asking why people are going to Turkey."

Attorney General Eric Holder and the Department of Justice have made it a priority to intervene with radicalized Americans to prevent them from joining terror groups abroad or committing so-called "lone wolf" attacks at home, Sanderson said, but the DOJ is still trying to figure out the best way proceed in such situations. A potential pitfall to jailing would-be fighters is that they may become more radicalized behind bars.

"It's not a place to be rehabilitated," Sanderson said. "Intervention is needed before there's a need to send them to jail, and we need to be careful about putting them into an environment that could exacerbate their radicalization and give them a community to join once they're out."

Conley is among the most high-profile Americans to join the fight in the Middle East, but other Western countries — particularly in Europe — have seen thousands of residents fleeing to Syria and Iraq to join al Qaeda, al-Nusra Front, and the Islamic State. Authorities are trying to come up with ways to identify individuals who may be planning to become foreign fighters or may be returning home after participating, experts said.

Simon Palombi, an international security consultant at the British think tank Chatham House, said authorities in the United Kingdom use an intervention program that attempts to engage and de-radicalize potential foreign fighters before they leave the country.

"Whether it's through the parents or school that may have said we're worried about this person, they'll engage and assess them and they will be kept on a very short leash by the police so they know where they are," Palombi said.

He said that during the Royal wedding in 2012, British police asked many of the potential terrorists to come into local police stations for the day "so they knew they weren't up to no good."

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"It's an interesting concept in that it's not punitive," Palombi added. "They're trying to engage with them, keep them in a certain level of contact but at the same time they are afforded psychological help depending on what the person needs and how receptive they are to that process."

Just like their counterparts in the US, authorities in the UK will charge someone if they have evidence that a suspect is materially supporting a terror group by sending money or other means. But the burden of proof is high for criminal charges, Palombi pointed out, and so the UK uses surveillance and engagement to try and intervene where criminal charges are not possible. The strategy is part of the UK's counterterrorism policy, which has four components: protect, pursue, prevent, and prepare.

"The program is very progressive but shouldn't be overstated that it's not without its own problems or challenges," Palombi said, noting that police still rely heavily on surveillance and often find that communities are not forthcoming about potential threats.

The US policy is less focused on intervention and more focused on preventing those who have been in Syria or Iraq from coming back into the US.

"They want to gain as much intelligence as they can on those going over and those coming back," Sanderson said. "It's more likely the ones coming back will have more valuable intelligence because they have made the visits, will know the facilitators and routes and steps to get there, which can help prevent people from going over and certainly to capture or detain those coming back in order to prevent attacks here. It's still a key public safety function."

While Shannon Conley's parents did not offer specific interventions that could prevent young Americans like their daughter from becoming radicalized, they did emphasize the complexity of the problems and solutions that are needed — which Sanderson says is exactly the way authorities are evaluating the situation. The problems that lead foreign fighters to join are deeply entrenched, he said, including economic and political marginalization, lack of opportunities and respect in society, and lack of education and skills.

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"So they go to a place where they get respect, and a mission, a sense of purpose, and skills, and bring all of that back with them and they're not the people they were when they left," he said.

Police and policymakers in Western countries will have to pay attention to the immediate need of preventing foreign fighters from joining the conflict and returning home afterward, as well as addressing the long-term conditions that lead the fighters to want to join in the first place.

Sanderson said the strategy involves economic and social development. "These are huge economic and political changes that need to be made, and will take time to set in, take hold and will need to be there a long time to start to accrue benefits in this realm," he said.

Follow Colleen Curry on Twitter: @currycolleen