MARSEILLE, FRANCE // One, a bright student from Wales, wanted to be the first Asian prime minister of Britain.
Another, a product of the forbidding Parisian suburbs, was making something of his life with a family and good job. Others were initially driven by humanitarian concerns, anxious to help those in peril and distress.
All ended up as combatants in Syria’s civil war, which has become a magnet for global Islamist extremists for whom the overthrow of Bashar Al Assad’s regime would be just a start.
In many countries of the West, the magnet has proved powerful, with thousands of impressionable young people answering a call they typically encounter on the internet.