Youth Being Lured by the Pied Pipers of Jihad

It's a steady drumbeat of death. More than 16,000 foreign fighters from 90 countries are streaming into Syria and Iraq to join jihadist groups.

It's an alarming trend and especially tragic because many of these fighters are teenagers.

In northern Virginia, 17-year-old honor student Ali Shukri Amin is facing up to 15 years behind bars for helping another teen travel to Syria to join ISIS.

"Amin worked to create a prolific online presence that included more than 4,000 followers on his Twitter account," FBI Assistant Director Andrew McCabe said.

"Amin made ISIL propaganda accessible to Western supporters," he continued. "And he provided justifications of ISIL actions, including the beheading of journalists."

Authorities say it's an example of how Islamic State's Internet propaganda is luring American youth.

"They're just kind of flooding the airwaves so to speak," U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia Dana Boente said.

In Britain, a family was shocked by the death of their teenage son, who reportedly killed himself in a suicide bombing for the Islamic State in Iraq.

"The fact that some of these youngsters are still going over there, I find really worrying actually – I sort of despair," Lord Alan West, former U.K. minister for security and counterterrorism, said.

"To go and fight for such an organization as that - and of course once they are there they are swept up into this and they actually lose. They can't really control things as it is easy to brainwash them," he added.

So what draws these young people to join ISIS and other extremist Islamic groups? Recruits are promised a glorious afterlife, as well as a sense of belonging, purpose, and camaraderie in this life.

Tina Borchashvilli is the mother of an ISIS recruit.

"When you repeat every day to young 16- or 18-year-olds that jihad is the best and you will get into the paradise, these children think it is right," she said.

Mohamad Nidalha looks at pictures of the son he says he'll never see again, a boy who suddenly took up with ISIS with only a quick goodbye over the phone.

"On his way to Syria, he called his sister from Turkey and said, 'I love you, I love Mama, I love Papa, but I'm going to Syria," Nidalha recalled.

Twenty-year-old Reda Nidalha was normal, growing up in the Netherlands, interested in girls and discos – until he was wooed by extremist recruiters.

"Those people are professionals," his father said. "They know exactly who their prey is. They pick on the easiest prey they can easily brainwash."

It's estimated that as many as 15 percent of the recruits are killed in battle, and those that return will come back hardened by fighting and trained for war.

"I don't get the same son as before," Nidalha lamented. "I get a totally different son back. My son might be able to make bombs now; maybe he can shoot."

Now fears are growing that the returning recruits will carry the jihad to their home countries.