Even so, there’s plenty that remains on the internet and on social media – the war in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, drone wars in Somalia and Pakistan, we’re watching all that in real time and it’s so powerful in terms of recruiting. That was all online in 2014 when I started writing but it got taken down. I spent hours watching jerky propaganda videos of Syrian rebels on LiveLeak – a jihad-heavy alternative YouTube site whose categories include News & Politics, Ukraine, Iraq and Syria –scouring Tumblr accounts belonging to runaway Malaysian brides, reading AMA threads on Reddit, Dabiq, a surreal ISIS glossy online magazine, and Twitter Q&As where Dutch fighters explained life under the caliphate. Those videos from American predator drones, the videos of soldiers kicking down doors in Kandahar or Fallujah, there’s no underestimating how powerfully all that worked to entice people to join radical groups.”
What kind of research did you do into the recruitment of radicals via social media, and how individuals in the movement communicate with each other and with the outside world? Sunny is obsessed with his self-image on social media, which he uses to motivate himself to become a killer. It’s anger, isolation, alienation, pain – that’s what drives young people to take up arms against the world. The West doesn’t understand radicalism – either by design or default – but that lack of understanding is making things worse. There’s an industry in the Western world built on creating this singular narrative on what radicalism means and why it happens, and it’s clear now – two decades into the War on Terror era – that that industry has no clue what it’s talking about.
And one’s duty as a conscious man to be a stone-thrower.” How would you summarise each of their paths from their everyday struggles to the battlegrounds of Iraq?įB: To me the question behind all of the runaways is how much pain would they have had to be in to go to war against not only the world, but also their families, their peers and their communities? As you said, they are all radicalised for different reasons but religion isn’t one of them. MR: The three runaways in your novel come from contrasting backgrounds at the edges of society, and are radicalised for very different reasons, though ultimately they all share Monty’s realisation that “all lives lived in glass houses. It turns out there are more sinister and despicable forces at play than are routinely depicted on the path to radicalisation. What is most striking is that Bhutto remains sympathetic to these characters even as they make the terrifying decision to join ISIS in the deserts of Iraq. Sunny, whose widowed father left India for England a generation ago to follow a dream of new riches and opportunities, is riddled with self-doubt in dead-end Portsmouth, until a charismatic cousin comes back into his life and promises an alternative future.
On the upscale side of the city, Monty defies his privileged birthright, bewitched by a rebellious new girl called Layla who shakes up the protocols at his private school. Anita, growing up in a sprawling Karachi slum, aims to better herself with book learning but finds herself brutalised and driven by events beyond her control. “ Bhutto’s new novel will move you with its profound wisdom and sharp grasp of our turbulent times.” Elif Shafakįatima Bhutto’s second novel The Runaways is a provocative, astute and ever-timely exploration of what makes three young people in Pakistan and England reject the society that raised them and sign up to the war against the West.