This story in today’s NYT amounts to a vast set of research on how works: ISIS Women and Enforcers in Syria Recount Collaboration, Anguish and Escape. Here’s nuggets:
Raqqa, the Daesh capital, had pretty much nothing to do with the civil war until a little less than two years ago and was a cosmopolitan, modern place:
The women keep pictures of their old lives in Raqqa on their cellphones, scenes from parties and countryside outings. Aws’s gallery includes days on the lakeshore, her friends in bathing suits, dancing in the water.
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Many young women dressed in what they called sport style, baring their knees and arms in the summer and wearing makeup. And while Raqqa’s more conservative residents wore abayas and veils, women were going to college in greater numbers and getting married later. Most men and women chose their own spouses.
To the people of Raqqa, Daesh is experienced not as a government or a fighting force, but as a mafia.
The Islamic State has come to be known around the world by names like ISIS and ISIL. But in Raqqa, residents began calling it Al Tanzeem: The Organization. And it quickly became clear that every spot in the social order, and any chance for a family to survive, was utterly dependent on the group.
Human tradeoffs are everywhere:
In the moment, each choice seemed like the right one, a way to keep life tolerable: marrying fighters to assuage the Organization and keep their families in favor; joining the Khansaa Brigade to win some freedom of movement and an income in a city where women had been stripped of self-determination.
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In the moment, each choice seemed like the right one, a way to keep life tolerable: marrying fighters to assuage the Organization and keep their families in favor; joining the Khansaa Brigade to win some freedom of movement and an income in a city where women had been stripped of self-determination.
Who among us hasn’t done things we were uncomfortable with, just in order get along in the order of our society?
And we see that vast horrible change can often lead to moments of joy and wonder:
“He changed my life completely,” Dua said. “He persuaded me to love him.”
Status is everything:
Not only had Raqqa residents become subjects of the Organization’s mostly Iraqi leadership, but their place in society fell even further overnight. As foreign fighters and other volunteers began streaming into town, answering the call to jihad, they became the leading lights of the shaken-up community. In Raqqa, the Syrians had become second-class citizens — at best.
We make our own rationalizations:
“For me, it was about power and money, mostly power,” Asma said, switching to English to describe those motivations. “Since my relatives had all joined, it didn’t change a great deal to join. I just had more authority.”
Though the women tried to rationalize their enlistment, there was no way to avoid seeing the Organization as the wanton killing machine it was. But all of Syria, it seemed, had become about death.
At night, Aws and Dua heard attempts at self-justification from the husbands they had waited up for and would go to bed with. They had to be savage when taking a town to minimize casualties later, the men insisted. Mr. Assad’s forces were targeting civilians, sweeping into homes in the middle of the night and brutalizing men in front of their wives; the fighters had no choice but to respond with equal brutality, they said.
The article is full of raw intelligence:
Asma’s role in the Khansaa Brigade involved meeting foreign women at the border with Turkey, 50 miles north, and accompanying them into Raqqa at night. With her smattering of English and cosmopolitan air, she was well suited to the task. She would receive a slip of paper with names, and the crew — two or three brigade women, an interpreter and a driver — would start up the highway.
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The Organization had no outlet for grievances. It seemed to operate by stealth, and being married to its fighters offered no real information about its operations and ambitions. Senior figures like the caliph himself, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were never seen in public. Even within Raqqa, he remained a shadow, the women said.
The rationalizations of war go awry:
She tried to console herself with the thought that it was honorable to be a martyr’s wife. But days later, she learned a fact that made things even harder to bear: Abu Soheil had killed himself in an operation not against the hated Syrian Army, but against a competing rebel group that the Islamic State was trying to wipe out.
“I cried for days,” she said. “He died fighting other Muslims.”
And rules get twisted to serve the needs of the moment:
Again, the Organization was twisting Islamic law to its own desires. Under nearly universal interpretations of Islam, a woman must wait three months before remarrying, mainly to establish the paternity of any child that might have been conceived. The waiting period, called idaa, is not only required but is a woman’s right, to allow her to grieve. But even in the realm of divine law, the Islamic State was reformulating everything.
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The Organization had made her a widow and wanted to do so again and again, turning her into a perpetual temporary distraction for suicidal fighters. There was no choice left, no dignity, just the service demanded by the Islamic State’s need to feed men to its front lines.
We’re in a golden age of journalism, and it often looks like intelligence-gathering, and that can lead to danger for those who engage in it.
God bless us all.