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strong>May 20, Online/AP

One day this April, instead of coming home from school, two teenagers left their valley high in the Caucasus and went off to war. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, a 20-year-old stole her friend'€™s passport to make the same hazardous journey.

From New Zealand, came a former security guard; from Canada, a hockey fan who loved to fish and hunt. And there have been many, many more: between 16,000 and 17,000, according to one independent Western estimate, men and a small number of women from 90 countries or more who have streamed to Syria and Iraq to wage Muslim holy war for the Islamic State (IS) movement.

Your comments:

The way I see it, the more that go the better, we should sponsor a one-way ticket system, please go and never come back.

Good riddance once and for all. By the way these are not real Muslims. They only use it as an excuse and disgrace the real Muslim community.

Peter Verdum

Governments have the dilemma of what to do with those who go and join IS.  

In Australia it means a jail sentence, an outcome not lost on six people now attempting to return.

It is possible these people may mitigate their sentence by cooperation with police in assisting the spread of a negative view about IS.

They of course have few options with their passports cancelled and the potential of IS executing them.

Jagera

IS is on the rise now and people looking for the next big thing want to join.

The only way is to decisively defeat them, tarnish the luster.  Unfortunately US President Barack Obama and the West just sit there and watch them make gains.

Mevans

There is nothing holy about IS. Those people are the opposite of holy and are deluded about their destiny after they die.

Mark Sutton

It is nothing new. The Shiites and Sunnis have been killing each other for 1,400 years.

The corporate United States just decided it was a good idea to get involved and pick sides with the Sunnis for some oil.

Paul Trott

 We are all keen to blame everything on Muslims and Arabs so we are willing to blow them up.  

This is how the blood suckers operate.  They are quite brilliant in their dark works.

John Stewart