Why does a 15-year-old Londoner leave her home and family to join an international terrorist group and live her life in a caliphate more than 2,000 miles away? Is it ever possible to answer that question?
That’s what Josh Baker sets out to do in his second season of I’m Not a Monster, with the story of Shamima Begum. Baker’s award-winning first series of the same name centred on Sam Sally, a middle-class mother from Indiana who left it all for the caliphate in Syria to live with her husband, a sniper for Isis, and see her son star in ISIS propaganda videos. This time, Baker shines a light on Begum, one of three teenage girls who left their London homes in 2015 to travel to Syria and join the caliphate.
Why? What persuaded Begum to leave her mother at a bus stop six years ago without telling her she might not ever be back? How did she and her friends get into Syria? And why won’t British authorities let her come back?
Baker was filming a documentary at an east London mosque when the news broke that the girls had fled, an accident of timing that set him on a path as an investigative journalist. In I’m Not a Monster, recorded for the BBC, he shows himself to be a dogged, painstaking and often fearless reporter – he’s got the audio to prove it too, with swift exits from terrifying interview subjects documented as part of the quest to find out who helped the girls get right inside caliphate and what happened to them once they got there.
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Is Shamima Begum a victim or a monster? She will cop to neither
He’s also a careful storyteller who can craft a tale while staying true to its complexity. With Begum, he has his work cut out: on the one hand, she was a teenager when she left, following a trusted friend who encouraged her to distrust everything the western media told her about what was really happening, a 15-year-old essentially trafficked for marriage to an Isis fighter. On the other, she’s a young believer who joined a brutal terrorist army that was committing heinous atrocities – there were allegations that she sewed suicide vests and was part of the brutal morality police, which she denies – and expressed no regrets about her decision even four years later, when she was discovered at a refugee camp.
Over 10 episodes, Baker traces her journey and life in Syria – her marriage to a Dutch Isis fighter within days of her arrival, the birth of her first two children, their death from malnutrition while war raged around them, her husband’s imprisonment and Begum’s journey to a refugee camp, where she gave birth to her third child who then died of pneumonia. Who was the man who helped her get into Syria? Who was the friend who convinced her to go in the first place? How much of what Shamima Begum says can be believed?
Piecing together archival audio, with fresh reporting, and the long-term access and co-operation of the podcast’s subject, Baker tries to answer the questions raised while raising others in the process. He presents what he can corroborate, and uncovers truths wherever possible, but ultimately the question remains: is Shamima Begum a victim or a monster? Begum, the London teen turned exiled terrorist, will cop to neither.
