Can I be the only one who jumped out a pub window once or twice at the news that a responsible adult was approaching? Or triggered a near riot in a Sydney gathering while delivering what I doubtless considered a nuanced defence of IRA mass murder? Or believed that no-one – NO-ONE . . . sob – could possibly understand my exquisite sensitivities or unique capacity for suffering? My defence? I was a teenager. Or to paraphrase George W Bush (whose rackety “youth” continued into his 40s), when I was young and stupid I was young and stupid. Luckily, I managed to locate my teenage diary and kill it. The cringey flashbacks come when the perennially silly debate about votes for 16-year-olds resurfaces for example, or we are reminded that 16-year-olds are allowed to marry in this State in certain circumstances. Culturally and legally, across much of the western world, a person under 18 is deemed to be a child, which seems fair enough for an age group whose biological imperative is to detach from, dismay, derange and outrage their elders before their brains have fully developed. For the elders, the conjuring trick is to give the child some rein while preventing actions that may affect their future.
As a teenager, Louise Richardson was locked in her bedroom by her mother to stop her running off to join Bloody Sunday protests in the North.
Brilliant academic
Richardson went on to become a brilliant academic with a specialism in the study of terrorism and is now president of St Andrews University in Scotland. Somehow, most parents pull off the conjuring trick. Years later, at family gatherings, there will be sheepish admissions, mock dismay and laughter. But the story of the three London schoolgirls, one aged 16 and two just 15, dressed in skinny jeans and trainers, who set off through Gatwick last week to a new life as brides of IS, must have crystallised many a parent’s nightmares. This one has ratcheted up the definition of teenage stunt. The girls have left behind families who are not only heartbroken, but facing allegations of abject parental failure and collusion in their children’s radicalisation. Why were their passports not confiscated? Where did they get the money for expensive flights to Turkey? How could such bright, diligent schoolgirls not know the nature of the barbaric, regressive movement they were flying off to join and help to build the next generation?
Or, conversely, did they flee because they were too sheltered, too closeted in their family’s embrace? Or because they were just silly, doe-eyed teenagers, their heads turned by indoctrination into a righteous cause and the excitement of broody jihadis trailing a whiff of danger?
The central problem is that whatever the cause, the damage cannot be easily undone. It can hardly be regarded purely as a family matter. If these girls were to return home in a month or a year or five years to the open arms of their families, whose job will it be to determine whether they are mortified penitents or IS time bombs? After all, IS has told its followers returning to the West that it wants them to commit acts of terrorism back home. It is the classic dilemma of liberal democracies. How much freedom should citizens be allowed when the exercise of that freedom impinges on the rights of other citizens or worse? If girls such as these are permitted to go and then return, they may potentially kill innocent people; but if they are prevented from going or returning, you betray the principles of a free society.
Only weeks after the Charlie Hebdo atrocity and the huge march through Paris in defence of free speech, an outraged chorus is calling for even more surveillance, more state controls, more pressure on Twitter and social media servers to shut down IS propaganda websites (one of the girls was signed up to 70 such sites, reportedly). Some see the solution in clampdowns on teenagers exiting unaccompanied through British borders. State authorities exert no role in departures from this country (we will draw a veil over the X case), nor from Britain. Departing passengers show passports only at the gate, at which point, the right to travel is at the discretion of the airline. Aer Lingus for example, requires a form of indemnity from a parent or guardian if the passenger is 15 or under. At 16, a child is presumed to be mature enough to travel alone. Once the child is known to have departed on such a mission, there is little mercy, even from posters on liberal websites.
Proposals in the UK include barring them from re-entry, stripping them of their citizenship, building rehabilitation/holding centres where returnees from IS territories can be deradicalised. Against that, voices intervene repeatedly to say that such girls are self-evidently children. As they are.
Particularly silly, deluded children but children nonetheless who must be protected from themselves yet given some freedom to grow and dream. It’s the balancing act that caring parents perform every minute of their teenage children’s lives.
Is it time for the state to play a role?