Following the news that three girls from Bethnal Green, London, fled home and then were traced to Gatwick, then an Istanbul bus station, then a town near the Syrian border, then Syria, where they are believed to have been met by Isis fighters, British police have revealed just how many other British women have taken this journey. They say 60 women have travelled from the UK to Syria to join Isis and that 22 of them left in the past year – the year we learned that Isis like to throw gay men from buildings, behead journalists, aid workers and enemy soldiers alike, destroy ancient cultural artefacts, abuse, rape and enslave women, traffic organs and allegedly cook a man’s flesh to feed his own mother.
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Helen Ball, the senior national co-ordinator for counter-terrorism at the Metropolitan Police has said that of the young women travelling to Syria to join Isis, ‘all but four of those 22 were aged 20 or younger. The last five who travelled were aged 15 and 16,’ so we understand that so many of the girls are vulnerable. But plenty of young girls - plenty of Muslim girls, at that - are vulnerable (up to 3,000 people aged nine-25 contact the London-based Muslim Youth Helpline annually) and don’t join ISIS. So what is it attracting girls to Isis? What is it pushing these girls away from the West? We spoke to Jonathan Russell, the Political Liaison Officer from the Quilliam Trust, a think tank focusing on counter-extremism, to find out.
The Pull Factors
Sex Appeal
‘We might love life here, but the Isil [this refers to the same people as Isis, but under a slightly different name, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an area covering a large swathe of the Middle East, including Israel and Jordan] mantra that they love death like we love life has certainly blown up their bad-boy image.’
‘Girls have got the glamour of being with a bad boy. They’re told time and time again that their roles will be as wives and mothers, so maybe there is something to be said for going to be with these guys.’
‘It has annoyed me that the media have been using slightly different language to deal with young girls as opposed to young boys. I think, to a certain extent, they’re all vulnerable to radicalisation before they go.’
Generation Y-tailored social media campaigns
'It’s so easy to watch one YouTube video after another and you get shown an echo chamber of your most extreme views. They say “What are you doing? You’re 24, you’re in the West, you’ve been told that if you go to school and do well and go to university and do well that you’re going to get a job. But there you are, you’re unemployed or at the very best you’re in a dead-end graduate recruitment programme with no clue where to go. Why don’t you come set up a utopian caliphate to improve the world?”
‘Isil’s propaganda videos are professionally shot. One shows two minutes of five Isil guys chilling out by an Iraqi lake. They’re enjoying some R&R, saying “The caliphate isn’t all about fighting, we’ve got a good life here, maybe there’s an opportunity for a tourism industry.” They’re keen to promote the notion that it’s not all war, which I think is appealing to girls’
The Push Factors
Grievance
‘Whether it’s what people think about foreign policy, or their experience of racism, or socioeconomic elements like not having a job, these grievances are all push factors. Plenty of people post-Iraq War got taunted for the colour of their skin and are poor yet do not do all of these unspeakable things. But these make an individual vulnerable and radicalisers exploit this.’
Identity Crisis
‘Lack of integration plays a part here – 2nd or 3rd generation immigrants are not sure of their identity – British, Muslim, of Bangladeshi heritage, Manchester United fan, gay – they get told by lazy right-wing anti-immigrant parties "Oh well, you’re not British" but simultaneously, they’re told they’re not welcome in say, Pakistan because "You’re British, you don’t even speak our language". Values taught at school don’t add up with family values, you speak a different language at school and home – all of these things could feed into an identity crisis. It could leave you vulnerable with very few solutions.
‘Islamist extremists will solve your identity crisis – they’ll say, it’s very easy, you should be Muslim first and foremost, nothing else matters, if you’re Muslim, god will look after you.’
Lack Of Gender Equality in the UK
‘I’m not a fan of Cameron’s British values stuff, but if one of those values is gender equality, and we can uphold gender equality in everything we do, or at least make a commitment to it, then that gives us a very firm base to tackle gender inequality within Muslim community organisations and I think that would be really powerful.
‘These girls might have been told by Islamist extremists: “You must wear a hijab when you go outside”, “a women’s place is at home. Don’t even think about getting a job. You can work here and be a good Muslim wife when you’re older”, “don’t look for a husband, don’t even dare think about bringing home a boyfriend. We’ll find you a husband when you’re older.”
‘I think for too long we’ve normalised the Muslim extremist ideological spectrum because we’ve just said “It’s their culture, it’s what they do” and I think that’s given oxygen to the jihadist fringe aspect.’
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After that, we had a few more questions for Jonathan, like:
Why are girls like the Bethnal Green three falling through the net?
‘All of these girls had contact with the police after their schoolmate left for Syria last year. The police are very good at the hard, counterterrorism stuff and are less good at the counter extremist stuff because they’re law enforcers. They don’t need to understand the process of radicalisation to become a police officer but they do have to commit to upholding the law.'
Are the girls not just like any other victims of grooming?
'You never want to blame the victim in grooming and, rightly so, but with radicalisation there is some personal agency involved. Just because they’re girls doesn’t mean we should talk about them in a grooming sense.'
How can everyone ensure this never happens again, that no other girls travel to Syria to join Isis?
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'We’ve got to change the responsibility for delivering Prevent (a Governmental counter-terrorism strategy) to front-line workers. And in that engage more with mothers, families and teachers'
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'Those teachers have got to be taught how to spot radicalisation, how to intervene and use tools available to make sure it goes no further. As demoralising as it is, if you gave the parents of those three girls the option, they would rather have a visit from counterrorism police than the heartbreak of their children going.'
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'We’ve got to do more to teach gender equality, human rights, tolerance of others…their faiths. We need to teach critical consumption skills so people can tell the difference between Islam the faith and Islamism the political ideology, so they can tell the difference between propaganda via social media and the reality of Isil'
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Follow Sophie on Twitter @sophwilkinson
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.