Article content

LONDON — The London-accented militant who delivered blood-curdling threats to the West before apparently beheading two American journalists has become, for most Britons, the masked face of foreign fighters in Syria.

But more typical, experts say, may be the Brit who recently called home from the front lines to say he’s fed up.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or Not everyone who went to fight in Syria goes on to live life as a Jihadi: Some return fed up with the experience Back to video

“The whole jihad was turned upside down,” the militant recently told Shiraz Maher, a senior researcher for the International Center for the Study of Radicalization at King’s College London. “Muslims are fighting Muslims. I didn’t come for that.”

The fighter’s disillusionment, experts say, has become a recurring theme among some of the thousands of young men and women from around the globe who have answered ISIS’s call for holy war but have found the reality is significantly less glorious than what they were promised.

For those trying to stanch the flow of fighters and combat extremism here in Britain, it’s a perspective that could be the perfect antidote to ISIS propaganda. And yet it’s one that is seldom if ever heard here, in part because of government policy that focuses on keeping Brits who have gone to war from returning home — and locking them up if they even try.