Saving Them From Themselves

"In most of these cases like this, it's not so much they want to fight with ISIS [the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham]. They are promised they will have homes, be safe, have husbands and live within their religion."
"It's been a wake-up call to us with this type of predator."
"There's no indication they had been radicalized in a way that they wanted to fight for ISIS."
Tustin Amole, Cherry Creek School District, Colorado

"Social media has played a very significant role in the recruitment of young people. What we've experienced here in Minneapolis is that young, disaffected youth who exist primarily on the fringes of society -- they seem to be more  susceptible to this type of propaganda, unfortunately."
Kyle Loven, FBI spokesman, Minneapolis

"[People in their] teens and early 20s are searching for an identity, a cause, something bigger than themselves."
Nader Hashemi, director, Center for Middle East Studies, University of Denver

Zahra Halane, 16, poses with an AK-47, an Isis flag, knife and grenade. A series of tweets about her kitten, thrown out by her husband, betray her youth. The Guardian

According to Mr. Hashemi, the appeal to ethnic identity and feelings of social justice emphasized by Islamist extremists is key to recruiting Muslim youth. Minneapolis, which has the largest Somali immigrant community in the United States has experienced a problem in terrorism recruiting for years. In the last seven years, 22 young Somali-American men chose to travel to Somalia to fight with Al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda-linked jihadist group tailored to Muslim youth.

Now, it is young Muslim girls who choose to travel abroad surreptitiously, making their plans, unbeknown to their parents, who discover to their horror what their children have been up to once they've fled. Two sisters of Somali heritage, 17 and 15, and a Sudanese 16-year-old friend made plans to travel together from their home in a Denver suburb to Syria. They were convinced they would find their destiny there.

One of the girls was thought to have been communicating online with someone who enticed them to travel to Syria. Mia Bloom, a professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, addressed herself to this troubling phenomenon surfacing lately in Europe and the United States. It is her opinion that Islamic extremists have made an art of using social media to prey on younger and younger female targets.

They ply them with "Disney-like versions of what it is like to live in the caliphate", she explains, complete with promises that they will find husband and have homes of their own and a wonderful future awaits them. The girls' parents reported they were missing on Friday once it was realized they had skipped school. The girls had taken passports and $2,000 with them in cash from the family home.

Three American teenage girls from Colorado have been detained in Germany while reportedly on their way to Syria to join ISIS. Pictured: Frankfurt airport 

American authorities contacted their German counterparts and they were detained at the Frankfurt airport as they were planning to travel on to Turkey and make their way from there to Syria. From Germany they were sent home, where they were interviewed by the FBI and then returned to their parents. Investigators were trying to determine what contacts they had made in Syria.