ISILs female fighters shouldnt get special treatment
Taylor Luck
With ISIL teetering, governments and security experts have sounded the alarm over the return of some 30,000 foreign fighters back to their home countries. But what happens to women who return? An estimated 10 per cent of westerners who have joined ISIL are women and thousands more have come from Tunisia, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Syria some with their children, others having started families with fighters.
Both western and Arab press tell the tales of women deceived and brainwashed by ISIL. Families petition their governments to bring their daughters and sisters home. These women, they say, are victims of ISILs dark reach. But many women who serve under ISILs black banner are far from victims; they are victimisers.
For three years, ISIL women have preyed on other women to help ISILs terror enter each and every home and household.
None has been more vicious than the Khansaa Brigade, the feared all-womens police force that imposes ISILs laws and edicts. Syrians and Iraqis who have fled ISIL territory say this womens hisbah is responsible for some of the worst crimes: torturing and disappearing women, subjecting them to whippings and forcibly marrying them off to ISIL fighters.
ISIL and its affiliated groups have provided women with weapons training, with women fighters taking part in operations from Eastern Indonesian Mujaheddin in Indonesia to the front lines in Iraq.
From its earliest days, ISIL deployed its first recorded woman suicide bomber against Kurdish fighters in Kobani. The groups affiliate in Nigeria, Boko Haram, has sent many women on suicide bomber missions, killing dozens.
Aisha Lauren Al Britaniya, and has posted images of jihadist women posing with rifles and other weapons. The 27-year-old is being investigated by MI5 and antiterror police.
She has admitted she has been in contact over Facebook with an ISIL recruiter called Abu Usamah Al Britani.
I cringe at how this terror group has been abusing an old tradition of laqab (earning a title) and giving themselves titles by adding Al to their country of origin, as if they were in league with greats from Islamic history.
When Abu Usamah posted a photo of a kitten wearing a suicide belt, Al Britaniya liked the photo, and responded with a string of jokey emoji. There is nothing cute or funny about this kind of image.
Posts about kittens and promises of becoming jihadi brides, where the women are offered a pampered new life as, well, basically a housewife, are some of the recruiting tactics used by ISIL on social media.
The fact that some women have become so desperate to just be married, even to a terrorist, is very telling of how modern gender roles, expectations and lifestyles have left some women feeling unfulfilled.
I saw a screen grab of a page by an ISIL recruiter a while back, and what he promises under obviously Photoshopped photos of buff muscular masked men in uniform are things like a home for an ISIL bride and how her husband will treat her like a queen and give her the child she had been dreaming about.
There didnt seem to be anything especially manipulative in this post. It was a basic proposal of marriage with a promise of a home and family. That shows you that deep down, what many women want is a home. When more and more men opt for lets see where it goes and I dont believe in marriage and so on, it pushes some women to look for that traditional setting in the most extreme places.
There is more than enough evidence of the atrocities committed by ISIL, but that doesnt seem to bother some women. They probably all believe that the jihadist they marry will be different. When I showed that screen grab to female friends, they laughed at the weak women who would fall for all this. But the fact that it is still working should be a wake-up call for the men who do mistreat, dismiss and take women in their home countries for granted.
Al Jazeera English reported in June that about 700 women and girls are among the 5,000 Tunisians who have been recruited by ISIL and other extremist groups.
If the women and girls were happy and content in their home countries, I really doubt they would leave.
Why men join up is not as hard to understand as some do tend to be more aggressive by nature and can release their worst side in a lawless land.
But this is an oversimplification, as there are other more personal reasons why different people would join these groups.
Some feel they are doing something special and buy into the propaganda of establishing a new state. For some, being part of something, even something this horrible, is better than being part of nothing.
During the battle for Sirte in Libya in February 2015, an ISIL affiliates deployed female suicide bombers to stop Libyan militias advance the first recorded use of women suicide bombers in Libya. Last year, Libyan forces arrested several women fighters, many of whom were equipped with explosive belts.
An ISIL female bomber struck Istanbul in January 2015. In December last year, Indonesian security forces arrested a would-be female suicide bomber.
Away from the front lines, women have also been key players in ISIL propaganda.
Umm Sumayyah Al Muhajirah, a Briton, provided online propaganda to recruit women from the West and is a regular contributor to ISILs Dabiq magazine. On a local level, women such as Um Aweis in Saudi Arabia used social media skills to promote ISIL and encourage recruitment of both men and women.
Perhaps the most infamous propagandist was Umm Layth, or Aqsa Mahmoud, a 21-year-old British woman who was prolific in social media efforts to urge women to join ISIL and encourage lone-wolf attacks in the West, and in arranging womens travel to Syria and Iraq.
Even less known are thefemale preachers and teachers, trained women who go house to house in Syria and Iraq and use their knowledge of Sharia to twist it and misrepresent it to support ISILs policies and goals.
These women have built networks in neighbouring states, in Jordan, Saudi Arabia and even in Egypt.
Despite these dangers, governments both in the West and the Arab world show leniency to ISIL women.
In Jordan, several women who attempted to join the group were pardoned. In Saudi Arabia, women have been given sentences ranging from one year to a maximum of six years for their allegiance to Al Qaeda or ISIL.
The writer is a political analyst and journalist in Amman
