Recruiting women in Daesh: Mechanisms of attraction (1-2)

Ahmed Sami Abdel Fatah

Extremist groups have always been able to attract fighters from different regions regardless of the social context through various rhetoric and propaganda.

Daesh was able to attract women as well as men; a report by the Kazakh intelligence that in 2014, around 50% of Kazakhs who joined Daesh were females.

Hans-Georg Maassen, the head of the agency, told reporters in Berlin there had been a sharp increase in the number of young women under 25 leaving Germany to join the insurgents.

He said that about 100 of the 700 Germans in combat areas were women and about half of those women were under 25.

Daesh committees tasked with recruitment were determined to study the negative effects of suppression and marginalization of women in some communities.

The terrorist organization adopted a different consideration for women unlike other radical groups who tend to completely isolate women from the society. Daesh integrated women in its activities, as some female Daesh members took part in the organization’s educational and health structures as well as participating in armed battles.

Daesh appeared more understandable to certain pressures and marginalization over women in Muslim communities. Unlike the rest of extremist organizations that rely on religious reasons for recruitment, Daesh committees take advantage of vulnerabilities of each individual female, before representing itself as the salvation to their problems. A Washington Post report said ISIS offers $50 a month to fighters for each wife.

The organization also attracted women who failed to prove themselves because of their male-oriented societies by offering them greater roles in the Daesh community in accordance with the religious framework of the group.

A report by the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), said the reasons that drove hundreds of women to journey from Europe to Isis territories were “complex”. The report found that women and girls are joining ISIS after being seduced by the terrorist group’s offer of a twisted version of “empowerment” for Muslims

Daesh took advantage of some female individual’s frustrations due to economic or social problems; Belgian Laura Passoni who converted to Islam and moved to Syria after falling for a man she met in a supermarket said she realized the promises of a better life made by Islamic State were a lie.

Some Muhajirat (female migrants) are active on social media and blog about their life in the Islamic State as a utopian dream in contrast to the narrative served by Western media.

Moreover, some females also left Europe for Daesh for suffering persecution, especially when it comes to wearing the Hijab; in other words, the rise of extreme-Right and its anti-Muslim speeches contributed significantly to this phenomenon. On the other hand Daesh-affiliated media outlets target the West by taking advantage of its interventions in Muslim countries to attract women under the banner of defending Islam against the west.

Also, there is no doubt that EU countries can be blamed for Daesh’s success in attracting European girls for not being able to address their societal problems.