IS recruits not just fighters, but also...
The three teenage girls from the US state of Colorado swapped Twitter messages about marriage and religion with recruiters for the Islamic State group, then set out for Syria with passports and thousands of dollars in stolen cash. Authorities intercepted them in Germany, then returned them to their families without criminal charges.
That case and others
like it show how the militant group is targeting its sophisticated
propaganda beyond male fighters, seeking to entice not only wives but
also professionals such as doctors, accountants and engineers as it
pushes to build a new society in a territorial base that has spread
across broad swaths of Iraq and Syria.
The motives of this
diverse pool of recruits perplex Western governments trying to stem the
flow. One recruit, Shannon Conley, a Colorado woman who was caught and
is being sentenced next month, sought to fight in Syria or use her
nursing skills to help fighters there.
The group “is issuing a
bit of a siren song through social media, trying to attract people to
their so-called caliphate,” FBI Director James Comey told reporters.
“And among the people they’re trying to attract are young women to be
brides for these jihadis.”
Footprint
As IS seeks to expand
its footprint, it conscripts children for battle, recruits Westerners
for acts of jihad and releases videotaped beheadings that shock in their
exposure of the group’s violent intentions. But the organization also
uses propaganda with a humanitarian appeal, such as photos of bombed-out
Syrian villages coupled with pleas for help. Images in videos of
smiling children being given treats and enjoying stuffed animals paint a
family-friendly portrait that suggests roles within the proto-state for
wives and mothers.
Even as they preach
violence, “they’ll do the warm and fuzzy ... the gun in one hand and the
kitten in the other,” Assistant Attorney General John Carlin, head of
the Justice Department’s national security division, said in an
interview.
“They’re seducing them
with promises about how wonderful it will be,” said Mia Bloom, a
professor of security studies at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
“They promise a sense of adventure, that their worries will be
addressed.”
Justice Department
officials say people aiding the Islamic State understand what they’re
getting into and risk prosecution, whether or not they venture to Syria
and even if they don’t plan to take up arms themselves. Prosecutors have
criminally charged more than 15 people. A Rochester, New York, food
store owner stands accused of trying to arrange for others to travel to
Syria and of plotting to kill members of the US military. An Illinois
man, allegedly determined to join militants, left behind a letter saying
he was disgusted by Western society. And prosecutors say a North
Carolina man asked Allah online for martyrdom.
Most charges are brought
under a 1996 statute that makes it illegal to provide “material
support” — including money, training or a false identity — to a
designated terrorist group. Defense lawyers have long argued the law is
overly broad and ensnares the misguided as often as it sweeps up the
dangerous. Courts, however, have accepted an expansive interpretation of
the law.
“We need to make clear
that if you want to go over there and join a terrorist group, you’re
likely to end up instead in jail,” Carlin said.
But Justice Department
officials say they’re also trying strategies other than prosecution,
including trying to identify potential recruits before they go.
FBI agents in Colorado
met repeatedly with Conley, a 19-year-old nurse’s aide who had converted
to Islam, hoping to dissuade her from traveling to Syria to marry a
militant suitor she met online. Agents suggested that she try
humanitarian work instead of jihad, but she told them that if she
couldn’t fight, she would use her skills as a nurse’s aide to help
militant fighters, according to court documents. Conley pleaded guilty
in September and is to be sentenced Jan 23. Her lawyer, Robert Pepin,
has said she was “led terribly astray” while pursuing her religion and
was “saved” by her arrest.
Penetration
Perhaps no case better
shows the penetration of the recruitment campaign than that of the three
Colorado girls, all from East African families, who were radicalized
online and headed for Syria in September.
A review of the girls’
social media use, which included thousands of Twitter messages and
postings on other sites, by the SITE Intelligence Group shows they were
in contact with online jihadists from around the world and were deeply
interested in marriage and the role of women. As recruiters interacted
with the girls, their typical teenage banter about friends and school
became replaced with discussions of religion, paradise and death, the
review showed.
Six months before they
went overseas, one girl wrote that she wanted to get married as soon as
possible and her friends wished her well, telling her they hoped she got
an “amazing husband because you do not deserve anything else!”
One female recruiter
told prospects to expect to marry quickly and expect to live a domestic
life, as it is “‘completely impossible’ for women to participate in
battle,” according to SITE. Women are expected to marry the fighters and
bear their children, she explained. Another recruiter told a
16-year-old girl who inquired about joining that “everyone is welcome,”
according to the report.
US officials say that
even comparatively benign motives for supporting IS are troubling. “I’m
not sure we’ve seen someone who’s gone over there who’s not attracted to
the jihadi cause,” Carlin said.
Source: arabtimesonline
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