On June 9 , 2014 m , in the evening , The city of Mosul fell in the hands of the organization of the Islamic State and the Levant in Iraq , known by the media, as “Daash . This fall startled the world to wake up at dawn of the next day, to the sound of surprise , the smell of the rupture and the beginning of a new era: Daash occupied the second city in Iraq, and seized weapons of four military divisions of the Iraqi army, which collapsed and withdrawn with out engagement in a battle. In addition to this , Daash took hold of nearly half a billion dollars from the Central Bank of Iraq in Mosul, and in a few days extended over a wide geographical area, between Syria and Iraq, to be formed gradually a world of Daash, or the world which Daash has become part of it and the reality.
Therefore, the date of the fall of Mosul is considered , in spite of its gravity and symbolism , as the birth of Daash. , and when we say: Before or after Daash , we mean – most often – before the fall of Mosul or after this date, although Daash was born before more than a year of the fall of Mosul, and that was an extension of the long Gin a logia, started from “Al-Qaeda”, and past -Zarqawi line and other names of al Qaeda organization in Iraq after 2003, leading to the “Islamic State of Iraq” , the direct ancestor of Daash.
The event was an articular ones , which is no less important than the rest of the articular points in the modern and contemporary history of Iraq, such as the emergence of the Iraqi state in 1921, or revolution In y 958 m, or the occupation of Kuwait in 1990, or overthrow the rule of former President Saddam Hussein and the US occupation in 2003; in the sense that Iraq after the fall of Mosul, will not be as it was before, as it is the case in the rest of those dates.
Therefore, this paper will highlight on the role of women in the organization of the State in Iraq and the Levant “Daash”, in various aspects. It is considered that the feminist element is one of the most fundamental pillars of the reliable important factors of state organization in the construction and renovation of its structure deployed in operations sectors considering of women’s role in linking the equanimity and patience of the Arabs and foreign fighters. And the state organization differs from the rest of the other organizations by giving a large workspace that ignited the enthusiasm of many of teenage and women in the Gulf , the Maghreb and European countries and most of them suffer from cases of duplication, poverty and some of them have a deep rooted doctrine of the extremist thought , and the teenage considered to join extremist groups is a new virtual world unfamiliar with their counterparts.
Along of the geographical extension , the state organization depends on women, mainly on the factor of separation between men and women and the urgent need for volunteers in logistics operations and paralleled with sophisticated nature of military operations, which it derives this tactic from al Qaeda as a strategic approach adopted by Al-Qaeda in the maintenance of community ties and to try to gain a greater number of fighters by recruiting feminist elements by the electronic network of easy access to any home or what is known at this organization by the “electronic Jihad” , and by this hard work , the organization managed to recruit from Europe and the United States up to 200 women and there are increasing numbers among Westerners adolescents who seem being sympathetic with the organization through the virtual world gateway, specifically sites controlled in both Iraq and Syria constituting another source for recruits as they are unemployed women and aged between 30-40 years and most of them can read and write and their living circumstances are very difficult and then the organization has become as a chance to live and protection.
Sure, there are a variety of factors and reasons why women of different nationalities of the world to join the “Islamic state”, and live on its ground , despite the difficult circumstances they face, and those reasons which lead them to this trend are variant , which can be summarized as follows:
Personal motives, often are linked with Syrian and Iraqi women , so under the conflict in both Syria and Iraq; many women are subject to harsh conditions by regular forces which pushed them to join the organization of the “Islamic State”; some of them lost sons or husbands or members of the entire family, or have been subject to torture or kidnapping, and also homes of some of them were demolished during the bombing of Bashar al-Assad’s forces of Syrian towns, therefore , it was for them the option to join the “Daash” is the perfect solution for revenge, as well as the possibility of living under the new protection.
Sectarian motives, so under the civil war in Iraq and Syria , the conflict was primarily turned from political conflict into a sectarian conflict, which has led many women to fight alongside “Daash”, not as a matter of conviction of the thinking of the organization but as a matter of “jihad” for the defense of the doctrine of “people of the Sunee” against the Shiites Al-rawafidh who are represented by both the Syrian and the Iraqi regime, and they should have roles in the jihad in order to protect doctrine, as well as their persuasion that “Daash” has become the only way to the creation of the “Islamic Sunni” state .
Ideological motives, represented by the intellectual attraction in the thought of Daash ,” as the Declaration of the organization of “Islamic caliphate” and install a caliph to the Muslims had touched on a sensitive spot of all Islamists in general, and jihadists in particular. So to Join the Islamic state and living in its protection has become a wish of many of the Islamists, including women who come to Iraq and Syria in order to join the ranks of “Daash”, in order to struggle , Jihad, for the sake of God on one hand, and to live under the “Islamic caliphate” on the other hand.
Social motives, many of Islamic women in Western societies often face the case of alienation in their communities, and most of those who descended of Western origins and joined to Daash-according to western sources , come from atheist families, or Christian Catholic, and Jewish who refuse to let their children to embrace Islam, unlike Westerners who descend of Islamic origins and families to pursue the rituals of Islam, to be pushed to travel to join the “Islamic state” in order to live in an Islamic state which does not feel any alienation.
Humanitarian motives; as many of the Westerners Ladies who have migrated to live in the state of “Daash”, and they were grown up on Western values, such as justice, equality, and respect for human rights, So they refused , motivated by those values, leaving the Syrian people to be killed under those hideous image and under the ignorace of their Western governments about that. Therefore, these ladies come to the regions of the Islamic state, either motivated by jihad religious sense, or for the provision of humanitarian aid to the poor, injured and orphaned children who lost their parents in the fighting in Syria and Iraq.
State organization has been keen that the “black widows” to be of the most famous internal factions of women and a “women’s battalions” in the organization of the state were on progress to be granted executive roles such as providing moral support, medical care and food preparation as well as monitor to the overall behavior of women , and that stimulated women to rush to join this organization. As the organization entrusted to women other executive roles and the most important of which are to provide moral support to the fighters and intelligence gathering and women to be in great modesty uniforms carrying weapons and explosive belts and engage in arrests and torture of women in areas controlled by the state organization , this organization developed the process of women’s work and formed the two battalions that the first was called ” Khansa battalion and the “second” battalion was called um al- rehan “in the Syrian province of Raqqa which is actual capital for the organization of the state and these battalions had a distinct role to carry out moral police missions led by women generals of the organization Army and identified the functions of these battalions to monitor the general behavior of women and the application of Islamic law and inspection veiled women at checkpoints to prevent the mixing of men along with women and ensure that women with the utmost modesty which imposed from the sixth year, and all the women in these battalions are single women aged between 18-24 years and receive monthly wages amount of US $ 160 .
With regard to the mechanism of state organization in teenage recruit, the fact that the organization has a professional institution attracted , at the regional and international level , Arab and European women in constant recruitment spots including social networking , cultural forums , religious institutions and charitable societies and women who are chosen should have the ability or emotional religious stimulus and then moving towards them after gathering the necessary information to prove their purification and staying away from the security tract or intelligence of that State then a report will be submitted to the authority known , a recruitment network , “charity” They started following up the recruitment of these girls and then handed them over to a responsible authority in charge of the joined women , and operations of their transfer from place to place then they took part in legitimacy and military courses and then be transported to Iraq and Syria, and specialists , suppliants and publishers of the extremist ideology are in charge of these networks and who have a beautiful voice and have experience in humanitarian relief and those can by blaring speeches to attract a lot of adolescent girls who have the emotional potential and they suggest at them that the place of this passion is the participation in the organization to create caliphate or a prophecy and these words attract women who are unaware of the true thought of Islam and these networks are spread in areas known for its freedom of Islamic movements or associations and consequently , they are scientific, religious and logistical networks. Regarding the nature of women that state organization had recruited them , it can be said that most of those women who have been recruited by the organization are wives or sisters of the leaders who have been arrested or killed or from families that carry an extreme thought and they were employed in the money wash and foreign investment or in guest places of the agricultural outskirts of Baghdad and these guest places had become safe havens for foreign and Arab fighters.
As for the reasons for European women to join to the state organization , that the women of Europe had exceeded the number of men of their continent enrolled in the ranks of the militants, in March, who were counted 136 French women as candidates for Jihad on the Iraqi-Syrian arena, versus 125 men . These numbers confirms that the girls were attracted to the State organization , who developed the propaganda techniques towards those who will become faithful wives to the jihadists.” In an interview , the French newspaper “Twenty minutes,” made with Kosirukavar Farhad, director of research at the Graduate School of Social Science explains, the secret of attraction of a lot of European girls to Daash. And was asked about the benefit for the Daash organization in recruitment of women , the researcher said that the role of girls in particular, is having a future jihadists. Daash does not use them as combatants, because it does not need them in the fighting yet, but their role may come in the fighting in future . It is likely that Daash will send them to Europe to carry out attacks, because women are less suspicious to become more violent than men .No doubt that their existence by side of men is of a symbolic dimension: If this huge number of Western women are taking part in the jihadists, that will give greater legitimacy for Daash image of the candidates to join it later. Out of the 3,000 to 4,000 Europeans who joined the jihadists , there are at least 1000 women among them .
And he was asked about how the recruitment done by the organization for girls, and at what speed achieved, the researcher said, “Beware of the exact and regular figures published here and there, but it was certain that all over Europe there are an influx of young women on Al -jhad . Daash had developed effective services on the Internet to influence the girls and attract them. These means are playing on their minds, and made them to feel alienated in their country, and all this makes it easier to their departure . In many cases, they simply go as an imitation of a friend and to receive messages through the Internet, stir in them the spirit of adventure and competition . Youth simply enroll to Daash only motivated by virtue of tradition , there is no ideology in many of them , but only of a secondary role . and about the secret of their attract to men of Daash, researcher said: in the West, girls live in a culture of same-sex: Never before has the male and female were close to each other culturally as demonstrated by the convergence between them now, through education or law . But girls are disappointed in living this relationship towards the feminist movement, and to the achievements that their mothers and grandmothers have fought for , which became a seemingly ordinary or outdated and old from the other hand, they undermine males around them , because they no longer embody the ideal for a man who supports his family . They therefore tend to jihadists who face death: If the man was able to fight for his ideals to death, he is able, in their perspective, to provide for his family to death. There are strange romantic arise about the concept of presumed virility in Aljhadian. We must not hide the fact that violence also has become to attract them, because violence in our societies is no longer the preserve of the male alone . A question about whether they knew what is waiting for them there, the researcher said “they expect to find the perfect man who can guarantee their family stability, in contrast to the deep lack of stability that prevails in Western modern families .It is a form of retreat toward stability that prevailed in ancient times. According to the doctrine of Daash the woman is not enslaved, but complementary to man.
With all of the above , the state organization is different from other extremist organizations in the recruitment of women, since the latter took from the woman the subject of known logistics , only the state organization Gave a greater role for women and handed over important files and among them the media file as the electronic army, which sings and shall be published and is following in Twitter sites and Other social networking of these women, as well as the organization used them in the private mail transfer between the emirate council and cities of this this organization and worked as coordinators between the commanders of emirate and governors of the organization , also they took part in combat operations and in addition to the traditional method in medicine and logistics operations .
As for the most prominent women in the organization of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant “Daash , we can give the following, for example, but not exclusively :
1. Um al-Miqdad: she carried out combat operations against Iraqi soldiers in Qaim and the border of Tal Afar in 2004.
2. Or Jelbab “Nada Al-Qahtani” she is the first SaudiArbia fighter in the ranks of state regulation.
3. Um al-Miqdad: she is from Saudi Arabia and in charge of the recruitment of girls in the Iraqi province of Anbar and Iraqi security forces were able to arrest her in 2004.
4. Wafa al-Shammari: one of the prominent women leaders and widow of the leader Saeed al- shahri in the al-Qaida organization in Yemen.
5. Arwa Baghdadi: one of the leaders, which specializes in financing for the organization of the state and has issuances and invitations via secret and public e-mail sites , to join the organization.
6. Hella Alkusair : known the lady of the organization married twice of two people from al-Qaeda and accused of several crimes, including to help the organization and possession of weapons used in combat attacks.
7. Suaad Hassan Alsamaraia: sister of both Saad Hassan and Majid Hassan called Elkhalawi, involved in the execution of Iraqi soldiers.
8. Nihad Ahmed Ali Saleh Alkarpuli : she was arrested by the Directorate of the Federal police intelligence in the Dora district, a wife, “Ammar Adnan Alkarpuli ” planner to target the Arab summit held in Baghdad in 2012, and she was in charge of arranging his meetings with members of the organization .
9. Wafa Ammar hazim : she was arrested by the Federal Police Intelligence Directorate, and she was a wife of “Ammar Ismail Adman Kahlawi” was known “Abu Abdulrahman Albiloa” , military in the state organization.
10. Yasmin Fawzi Mohammed : she was arrested by the Federal Police Intelligence Directorate in Mahmudiya area, a suicide of Syrian descent and it was found out in her possession of a mobile phone with photos and correspondence between her and the organization.
11. Khadiga dali: she is 22 years old , moved to Syria with her child and husband Abu Bakir , Swedish nationality , A leader in the state organization . to undertake to be the first woman to cut the head of the western hostage in Syria .
12. Bint usama : she was 21 years old , a doctor, left the medicine college in the UK , and practiced a medical profession and she led a medical team of the state organization , and was one of 200 foreign recruited women in the state organization.
13. Shanoon Morleen Konli : she is 19 years old of an American nationality , was arrested by FBI on her way from Turkey to Syria .
14. Suad Hassan Al –Samarai : took part in a combat operations against the citizens of Salah Aldin and today taking part in the execution of the citizens of Tikrit .
15.Ri Ri : her brother is called Ahmad Al-heshan and she was from Tikrit , married one of the leaders of the organization , Tunisian nationality .
Finally, there is a potential repercussions of the phenomenon of women’s involvement in the organization of the state and the flow numbers of women of different nationalities to Iraq and Syria to join the organization of “Islamic state”, in order to play polymorphic roles in areas controlled by the organization – there are a number of repercussions and the most important are:
Contribute to strengthening the pillars of the “Islamic State”; so the coming of jihadists women to the “Islamic state” and appeared carrying the weapon in the media; reflects to the world men and women’s faith of the justice of the case, also it highlights on the image of the intellectual development of the Islamic state in terms of women’s participation in society, not contrary to Islamic law, and in line with the spirit of the times – according to their belief – so it looks like as if the organization gives a role to women in society.
Create a new population reality , due to the the increasing numbers of migrant workers to the “Islamic state”, as a result of advocacy by Daash women , through social networking sites, which often lead to attract additional numbers of women wishing to jihad in the world, leading to a proliferation of practical cases of Mating between them and the foreign fighters in the ranks of the “Daash”, especially of the citizens of one nationality , which leads to the creation of a new population reality in areas controlled by the organization so it will be difficult to change in the future.
The problem of “returning women “; as these women after living in the community in which the principle of violence was rooted in dealing with others , when they returne to their country-whether sooner or later – these principles will be born with them, in addition to the possibility of performing the acts of violence as a form of performing the duty of jihad, which It can lead to a future wave of violence in those countries.
The Daash women , “Aldaashaat” phenomenon is one of the consequences of the bloody situation in Syria and Iraq, and one of the dangers of this phenomenon is in the absence of accurate information about their numbers, due to the confidentiality procedures were taken in mobility and recruitment, and on the other hand, the marriage of Many of the “Aldaashaat” , Daash women , will further complicate the phenomenon; because it will make it difficult for their western families and communities to accept them after that they became wives and mothers of young children, which will push many of them into hiding in the countries out of their countries, or to stay in the smoldering conflict areas, whether in the Middle East or elsewhere, which will pour into the possibility of creating New jihadist generation in the future at the hands of these Majahdat , the strugglers , which would make it difficult to predict the real dangers of the phenomenon.
Rawabet Center for Research and Strategic Studies