When 19-year-old Akhor Saidakhmetov started talking about waging jihad in Syria, his mother took away his passport. When he begged to get it back, she hung up the phone. Mothers like her may be the first, last, and best approach to stopping militant recruiters, but law enforcement often leaves them out of their counter terrorism efforts in the U.S. and Europe.

There are three different approaches a country can take against violent extremism and terrorism: prevention, repression, and intervention. Mostly, Western countries rely on prevention and repression. And they overlook more targeted deradicalization programs (sometimes called “off-ramps”)that engage the families of individuals deemed to be falling under the sway of extremist narratives.

Two years ago I founded GIRDS, the German Institute for Radicalization and Deradicalization Studies.I first became interested in the topic growing up in a Berlin suburb where neo-Nazi skinheads were an accepted part of the youth culture. I went away to university and then on a Fulbright to study violent extremism and counter terrorism. Since then, I have been working as a family counsellor to develop deradicalization programs, including specially designed family counselling programs for relatives of Jihadi fighters.

In almost all previous attacks by lone actors or members of small terror cells, someone in the attackers’close social environment recognized a disturbing change in their behavior. Sometimes this close relative or friend even knew about the attack plans.

Frequently these families or friends are desperate to get advice on what to do, despite their mixed feelings about betraying a loved one, but law enforcement rarely offers a strategy for making this seem possible.Every country that has introduced a dedicated family counselling hotline and support program has seen these programs overwhelmed with calls and requests for help.

These programs work by reaching out to the gatekeepers—family and close friends. Mothers are essential gatekeepers.

Most of the mothers I have worked with who have lost their children to ISIS or other terrorist groups have noticed something changing about their child, but were mostly alone without any outside help. When families contact me from around the world, what I hear almost every time is the urge to understand what is happening and to do something about it. Many parents act on their own, take away passports, lock their children up, or move with them into another town. These reactions are understandable but can be counterproductive.

There is a common saying amongst Jihadis: “Allah tests the ones he loves,” meaning that any obstacle on the path to martyrdom will be seen as a proof that one is the chosen one. Recruiters and the Salafi-Jihadi ideology explain to those drawn to terrorism that these signs of rejection by their own family are a natural consequence of the perfect truth they have found. The biological family is superseded by the spiritual one—the ummah— and even your own mother can an “infidel.”

When a mother comes to us she is assigned a trained case manager. Together they will analyze the child’s situation. What is driving the son or daughter towards ISIL? Together they design a step-by-step plan, identify external partners, and build support networks around the family. The counselor will teach the family de-escalation techniques to reduce frustration, fights in the family, and bullying in school. They will bring in positive alternatives addressing the motives of the son/daughter. Does he or she want to help women and children in Syria? The mother might suggest that the youth work with a Muslim charity. Also, the mother will get constant risk analysis from the counselor so that they will be able to decide if and when to bring the matter to law enforcement. The counselor is a bridge between the family and all relevant external partners.

To connect mothers to one another, we’ve built a community called Mothers For Life, which exists mainly online.When we wrote an open letter to ISIL in the summer 2015 and the group responded the same day on Twitter, we knew that they were afraid of the parents’ power to block their recruitment efforts. This letter contained the feelings and questions mothers around the world had when their beloved ones were taken away against their will.After receiving letters from imprisoned fighters saying they have realized what they did to their own mothers and want to leave jihadism behind, we knew it worked.

Mobilizing mothers fixes another hole in the law-enforcement strategy. Parents in the Mothers for Life network have told me that they do not have a problem with cooperating with law enforcement agencies, but that they have lost trust in them. Sometimes intelligence and police surveilled their children and did nothing to stop them from leaving. Sometimes the mothers were treated as terrorists themselves during house searches. At other times they have even been charged by courts with providing material support to terrorist organizations despite doing everything they could to get their children back. Sometimes I have to explain to the authorities that families are allies and want to help, that they should be seen as partners, not suspects.

Mothers for Life is currently active in 11 countries (U.S.A., Canada, France, U.K., Belgium, Denmark, Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Norway). GIRDS experts are based in six countries (Germany, France, England, U.S.A., Canada, and Denmark) and have advised governments around the globe on countering violent extremism. Most recently I was asked to train probation officers in Minneapolis on deradicalization interventions.

ISIS itself has announced that taking away its territory in Syria and Iraq will not defeat its brand and core ideas. It will shift its strategy to overseas terror attacks. That makes it all the more important for Western societies to counter the appeal of ISIS and other  violent extremist and terrorist organizations. There can be no more effective fighters in that cause than the families and immediate communities of disaffected youths tempted by the perverted promise of martyrdom.