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Despite the dangers, foreigners still flock to join ISIS

October 2, 2014 at 11:54 am

Over the past year, much has been made of the influx of foreign fighters into the conflict in Syria. According to experts, the Syrian civil war has seen more foreign fighters than any other Muslim conflict in recent history; a recent estimate puts the number at around 9,000. Although most of these hail from other countries in the region, a significant and unprecedented number are from European countries. Ever since ISIS seized huge swathes of land across Syria and Iraq, this number has only increased. The militant group, which has established what it calls a new Caliphate in this territory, has called explicitly for Muslims from all over the world to go and populate the so-called Islamic State.

It is difficult to ascertain exact numbers, but according to intelligence figures there could be as many as 3,000 men with ISIS in Syria, many from Britain, Germany and France. This has been a policy headache for governments across Europe. After a British jihadi appeared to behead the American journalists James Foley and Stephen Sotloff, and British aid worker David Haines, the government has outlined broad-ranging plans including stripping citizenship from anyone who has been in Syria.

Most of the attention has been on men, some of whom have been engaged in active combat and acts of extreme violence (although others have remained off the battlefield). However, according to researchers, an increasing number of European women are also making the journey. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR) at King’s College London, says that around 50 European women – at least 21 of them British – may have already gone to Iraq and Syria to join fighters. They include 16 year old twins from Manchester, Zahra and Salma Halane, and a 20 year old former radiography student from Glasgow, Aqsa Mahmood. Young women, many of them teenagers, are reportedly bombarding ISIS fighters with marriage proposals during online Q&A sessions that the group holds.

What is the reason for this trend? Horror stories about the poor treatment of women in ISIS-held territories abound; Yazidi women held as sex slaves, women banned from leaving the home, and so on. This makes it difficult to understand why young women would voluntarily choose to leave their homes in the West to risk this treatment.

A large part of the explanation is ISIS’s recruitment strategy. At the start of the conflict, ISIS actively discouraged women from joining, with members using social media urging women overseas to support the militant group by fundraising and encouraging men to join the fight. The group, which follows a fundamentalist, Wahhabi version of Islam, believes in the strict segregation of the genders and does not see a role for women in war. The shift came as the group increased its focus on establishing the Caliphate; an Islamic state. For any state to be functional, even an unstable proto-state like the one ISIS has established across the Iraq-Syria border, it must be populated by both men and women. In addition to the obvious – families being required for the population to grow – ISIS called for female doctors and nurses, and in the Syrian city of Raqqa, established a female security force to ensure that local women stuck to its strict rules of dress and conduct. Women have been searched at checkpoints to ensure that they weren’t carrying arms for the opposition.

According to ICSR, many young women are travelling to the region for the same reason as young men; for a sense of adventure and because they feel alienated at home. Many were not particularly pious before deciding to undertake the journey, and certainly had not always adhered to the fundamentalist Islam practiced by ISIS. But they see the idea of forming a new state and marrying a fighter – a hero – as exciting and worthwhile. Many of these women have used social media to express their support for the murders of Foley, Sotloff and Haines. For ISIS, too, having Western women on board is a valuable part of its already highly effective public relations strategy. The presence of women – many of whom are active on social media – strengthens the narrative that ISIS is not simply a terrorist group, but a functional state that all Muslims should join.

While some women have been vocal on social media about their support of the beheadings or their desire to fight, in practice, they spend most of their time at home as they are prohibited from the battlefield. On arrival in Syria, they are either placed into tight communities of women, or married off, generally to other foreigners. They cannot leave the house without a man. It’s an interesting juxtaposition; much of ISIS’s recruitment and PR is done on the 21st century media of Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Ask.fm; but day to day affairs remain grounded defiantly in the 7th century.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.