Women who join ISIS, are they really just victims?

Marlin was 15 years-old when she decided to travel to Syria last May.  She grew up in Boras,  Sweden. She wanted to join the Islamic State with her boyfriend and be part of the jihad. According  to Swedish press, when she traveled to the Islamic State, she was also pregnant. Allegedly she got “mislead” by an ISIS recruiter in Sweden who convinced her to make the journey.

On February 17 she got rescued by Kurdish anti-terrorist force, CTD, during a raid in Mosul. The girl, who is now 16,  is in Kurdistan and she will be hand over to Swedish authority. Her boyfriend, most probably at this point husband, got killed by a Russian airstrike. It is unclear what the girl was doing in Mosul, and why she was moved there.

A statement from the Kurdistan Region Security Council (KRSC) said the family was informed of the human rescue mission.

Most of the articles that have been published so far emphasis the “misleading” part, treating this girl as a victim. There is a sense of pity around them, as if we are unable to process their choice, so we tend to believe someone else forced them into the jihad. Some girls maybe so, but not all of them.

Marlin is not an isolated case. Up to 550 women (and girls) from Europe decided to join the jihad in Syria. Their motives vary, and some experts are starting to distance themselves from the one-way street “victim” narrative.

Jayne Huckerby, a professor at Duke University, in several conversations she described to me these girls as well-educated, and extremely motivated. Not so young, most of them have a degree, although the most known cases are the ones of teenagers running from home.

“They are going to Syria to fight, and become the jihadi-Jane type. The marriage narrative is misleading,” she said. And I totally agree with her.

For over a year now the Islamic State called for women to come to the Islamic State and become brides. It was a quest for populating their areas and keep their promise to foreign fighters.  Many women responded and got recruited. Many academics referred to these women mainly as objects used by militants. By confirming the Islamic State narrative, and depicting them merely as housewives with no responsibilities within the organization, these experts take away these women’s responsibilities and forget that some of them are ruthless and violent.

When talking to people who live in Mosul or Raqqa, they are all terrified of the Al-Khansaa brigade, a women unit . Victims say they are as cruel as men, and they torture with ad-hoc instruments. Other account on the ground talk about women fighters.

This is why I believe they are not victims.

Besides few cases, these women have decided to join the jihad. They wanted to go to Syria and be part of the Islamic State. Some people might argue that they have been tricked into this. Their recruiters described life very different, and most of them had no idea what they walked into. Sure. But that is true for both men and women.

Last month, Tareena Shakil, a 26-year-old  British woman got convicted of being an Isis member and encouraging acts of terror on social media. In court she said: “I don’t want your sympathy it was my decision to go there.” She fled Syria to go back to the UK where got arrested.

Some women tried to flee once they realized Syria is not paradise and it “is the most dangerous place in the world,” as Shakil described it in court. There are significant examples of people who tried to go back. And if caught, they are dead.

Samra Kesinovic, 17, and her friend Sabina Selimovic became ‘poster girls’ for ISIS after they arrived in Syria in April 2014. They both fled their home in Vienna.

Their pictures were all over the web. They both wore a Niqab, and their blue eyes popped out from the black fabric. About a year later rumors started to circulate about Samra being beaten to death because she attempted to leave Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State in Syria. Then a Tunisian woman who was able to escape ISIS confirmed her death. ‘Till now the Austrian government refused to comment “on individual cases.” Yes, another victim of war.