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Islamic State Members from the West Seek Help Getting Home
(Wall Street Journal) Maria Abi-Habib - Disenchanted Islamic State members recruited from the West have increasingly been contacting their governments and asking for help in getting home, according to diplomats and a Syrian network that aids defectors. Some are fighters and others are people who were enticed to move to the caliphate and now find themselves in dire straits. "There are a lot of French people who are coming back," said France's national intelligence coordinator, Didier le Bret. "They've got a feeling it's not going that well." Westerners who joined Islamic State once enjoyed not only power and social status but also free food, housing and even cars. But that gave way to cowering in basements during air raids, dwindling food stocks and scant medical care. Islamic State militants have threatened to execute people who try to escape and paraded the severed heads of would-be defectors as a warning.