Small Wars Journal

Pay More Attention to the Women of ISIS

Fri, 11/01/2019 - 12:09am

Pay More Attention to the Women of ISIS by Elena Pokalova – Defense One

As U.S. forces reduce their anti-ISIS efforts in Syria, and amid the group’s calls for lone-wolf revenge actions after the death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, we must focus on a largely overlooked subset of its radicalized supporters: women. While security services have generally tended to approach women as victims, female participation in ISIS has evolved beyond caretakers and housewives.

In August, Pentagon officials estimated that the group still controlled a force of some 18,000 fighters, including some 3,000 foreigners. But thousands more might soon rejoin the group, freed from ad hoc detention centers as U.S. troops and its allied Syrian Democratic Forces, or SDF, flee ahead of Turkish armor and infantry.

When ISIS was in its final days of retreat, many of its fighters and their family members ended up in SDF detention facilities. Some 11,000 men, including 2,000 foreigners, were housed in such towns as Kobani and Ain Issa. One of the largest facilities is the al-Hol camp, 25 miles southeast of Hasaka, which holds some 70,000 people. Most are believed to be civilians displaced by the Syrian conflict, but as many as 30,000, including 10,000 foreigners, remain loyal to ISIS, SDF general Mazloum Kobane told the Washington Post earlier this month…

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