What can one expect a mother to understand? How much power can one expect a mother to have? What responsibility can one demand from a mother about the to and fro of her sons?
These are some of the questions that a war criminal court in Sweden prompt when they charge a returning ISIS mother with letting her son become a child soldier during the Caliphate’s brief tenure.
Two of her sons died in the war. Died in the fighting. So did their father. And now she’s come back to Scandinavia, mournful and regretful, and charged with war crimes. Among the evidence are pictures of the children, aged 14 and 18 at their time of death, brandishing weapons and tactical rigs. Sometimes even posing with mutilated bodies.
And the mother never knew a thing. Or so she claims. She never knew. She never realised. And there was naught she could have done if she had. Even though it was with her that they all went to Syria back in 2013. Even though the children lived with her, at home, in Raqqa, and strutted around with weapons and military apparel. Even though the children, according to the prosecution, witnessed the horrors of war first hand. But she never knew…
Let’s say that’s true. Let’s say that she isn’t lying to cover her ass. Let’s say that her denial doesn’t come from a desperate self-defence response to shield herself from her weight of letting her boys, one of them barely a teenager, walk off to a foreign war. Let us assume that there was absolutely nothing she could do to influence her husband or the kids to keep them away from the fighting. Let us ignore the evidence, ignore the myth that a mother always knows, ignore the fact that she single-handedly brought them along into an active war zone to link up with their militant father.
Let us take all this at face value… largely because there’s nothing but superficial value to be had from her defensive assertions. Let us, just for a moment, believe her.
Because if we do, the larger questions of parenthood become all the more interesting.
Most civilized countries agree that kids are dumb. So dumb, in fact, that they can’t be held accountable for the stupid shit they do. Not legally. As an example; an 8-year old doesn’t get charged with murder. They will probably suffer for having caused someone’s death, but they will not be tried as an adult. Because children are not responsible for their actions. That’s the song and dance we’ve told ourselves. They can’t be. Not fully. Because they’re still just prototype people. Their moral compasses and hormones and brains and bodies just aren’t al dente yet.
But responsibility doesn’t just evaporate because the git’s too young to fathom. It can’t be allowed to, because if it does, we’ll be stranded with post-pubescent gangster untouchables. And that’s no way to wield a society… No, it condenses on the child’s parents while the munchkin’s still developing all their amygdalas and lobes and squishy bits. The act of the child reflects and redirects, in some shape or form, as an act of the parent. And as such, it becomes the sole responsibility of the parent to know and control what a child does or does not do. Like that they brushes their teeth. That they eat their veggies. That they go to school. And so that they don’t go to war.
And (un)fortunately, philosophically, ignorance is not a viable defence against dereliction of duty.
A mother should know when her son has fired a Kalashnikov. A mother should know when her son has handled grenades for the mortar. A mother should know when her son has witnessed a beheading. Because she is a parent. And if you brought a life onto this world, is it really so much to demand that you take responsibility for it until it can take it for itself?
/Sebastian Lindberg 18/1-2022
WastedWords 