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“Swing for rent” instead of religious zeal - What a digital insight into the camp life of IS women shows

2021-07-25T13:44:50.015Z


Some of the women of the Islamic State have been living in prison camps for years. On Telegram, pets, gardening, and corruption battles have replaced religious zeal.


Some of the women of the Islamic State have been living in prison camps for years.

On Telegram, pets, gardening, and corruption battles have replaced religious zeal.

  • Hundreds of female ISIS members are interned in Syrian prison camps.

  • There, too, communication takes place via chat apps such as Telegram.

    The communication there provides information about the camp life of the women.

  • “Front scientist” Verena Mironova is an expert on the structures of the “Islamic State”.

    After an insight into the fate of the IS children *, she has now dealt with the camp life of IS women.

  • This article is available for the first time in German - it was first published on July 8, 2021 by

    Foreign Policy

    magazine

    .

Syria - Hardly anything says more about a group of people than their private communication.

To understand what remains of the Islamic State in Syria, it is worth taking a look at the Telegram chats of female ISIS members currently interned in Syrian prison camps.

Although cell phones are banned there and their possession is severely punished, the text messages find their way out of jail.

Islamic State: Telegram chats offer an insight into the life of IS women - it is mainly about "worldly"

With over 400 members, the Russian-language chats are the largest.

This is where most of the activity takes place, with up to 200 new posts per day.

You will only be accepted into the group chat on the recommendation of an existing chat member.

As in many online chats, members don't use their real names.

The pseudonyms range from Islamic honorable names (Arabic "kunya") such as Umm Yusuf (mother of Yusuf) and Sumaya Uzbeki (Sumaya from Uzbekistan) to Islamic State-inspired nicknames such as Muhajira (foreign group member) and Prisoner_in_Dunya (prisoner in this life) . Many of these pseudonyms such as Rabbani_IS or See_you_in_Dabiq (Dabiq is a northern Syrian village where, according to tradition, the final battle against the infidels is to take place) openly show that the women who bear them still cling to the ideology of the Islamic State. The profile pictures also range from neutral landscapes to lionesses (with which the female members of the Islamic State like to identify) to images of black flags and weapons.

Since the women have been in these internment camps for over two years, the main topics of their online discussions are understandably more secular in nature. The most common topics of conversation include selling food, tents, clothing, jewelry, and medicines, and trading animals. Since many women in the camp have bought pets, a lot of the news is about rabbit breeding: news like “Who has a male rabbit with an interesting color? I would like to borrow it for a day to grow ”are not uncommon. Others are desperately looking for lost or stolen cats. Other articles revolve around the topic of gardening. This summer a woman managed to grow a watermelon from a seed,shared a photo of it and was congratulated on their success by other women.

Syria: IS women do business in the camp - “Caribbean” feelings with non-alcoholic cocktails?

Looking for ways to make money in the camps, many women have opened businesses and are promoting them online.

The services offered include, for example, courses for children, illegal money transfers, laundry services and the rental of children's paddling pools.

There are also ads for aerobics classes (very popular in camps) and even pelvic floor exercises.

The advertisement of a Kyrgyz woman who runs an alcohol-free cocktail bar called “Taste of Caribbean in al-Hol Camp” looks particularly professional.

It attracts its customers with a beautiful sea motif - which is of course in stark contrast to the reality in the warehouses.

Although most of the articles deal with economic issues, religious issues can hardly be excluded even in this context.

The heated discussions usually revolve around prices, especially for items as essential as groceries, tents, and stoves.

Often women who trade are accused of setting prices too high.

It is true that some of the women defend free trade and the freedom of a trader to set the price according to demand.

Others, however, also refer to religion and the duty to help the poor religious sisters, and accuse the traders of not acting in the spirit of Islam.

IS leadership finances women in the camp, corruption dispute ensues

Articles about corruption scandals are also not uncommon. The leadership of the Islamic State and supporters of the group abroad support the women by sending them money through some inmates in the camp. But the women responsible for distributing money are often accused of putting it in their own pockets and neglecting those of them who need it most. These money transfers should actually be kept secret. But when one of these corruption cases comes to light again, some women are so upset that they don't seem to care who gets to see their posts.

The women also often use the chats to warn each other.

For example, they tell each other in real time where the camp guards are so that the women near them can hide their cell phones.

The women also exchange ideas about which journalists and representatives from their home country have visited the camp and what questions they have asked.

IS camp: Insight via Telegram also shows “pride” in the attacker in France

Since the women have been in the internment camp for a very long time and money is slowly becoming scarce, crime has also become an urgent problem. Recently, gangs of little boys have been roaming the camp at night robbing tent residents, which has become a big topic in online forums. Some of the women threaten the thieves online and write that they will ask God to punish the wrongdoers. Others try to catch the intruders in the act themselves or at least hire a guard to protect their few belongings. What to do with caught guys is also discussed online. Nonetheless, the most radical camp residents seem to be more concerned that the night visitors might see them in their sleep without the hijab and niqab,and therefore advise their comrades to sleep in full veils.

The same radical chat members often post messages about catastrophic events in the western world, such as the California wildfires *. Such posts attract comments in which women express their joy, even if they do so with significantly less enthusiasm than in the past. Despite the large number of chats for Russian-speaking women, reports from France have been the most popular since a teacher there was beheaded by a Chechen immigrant. This act made the radical IS women particularly proud.

The fundamentalists also often post lengthy religious advice on a variety of topics, from raising children to the importance of jihad.

However, this advice is often ignored or even criticized by the addressees - some women are of the opinion that these contributions reduce the usefulness of the chats.

Islamic State: Women increasingly avoid “radical issues” in prison camps - several reasons are conceivable

Basically, both the supporters and the opponents of the Islamic State try to remain polite and objective in the chats, as they are aware that they are all in the same boat and should pull together despite their differences of opinion. But under this polite surface there is a huge boiling point. One spark is enough and the trenches appear. The most dangerous topics of conversation therefore include the questions of which clothing is acceptable for women in the camp, which interactions with male warehouse workers are allowed, views about a possible repatriation of women and the question of whether certain personalities of the Islamic State are true Muslims or not. When these topics are broached, the chats break down instantly. To end the argumentsThreads had to be deleted several times and new ones started.

Attempts have also been made to set up their own online marketplace for the two groups, where they could only communicate and trade with one another. Messages like "I rent a giant pink children's swing that looks like a butterfly, but only to a sister who is afraid of Allah" (pro Islamic State) were not uncommon. However, since these separate marketplaces are subject to economic rules that care little about ideological differences, they and similar attempts failed after a short time. In the end, all women come together again on the largest online marketplace, where the offer is greatest.

The evaluation of the online communication of imprisoned members of the Islamic State over several years shows that over time women are less and less interested in radical topics and instead more and more interested in everyday topics. Even children who throw stones at camp overseers are now more likely to meet with criticism than support online.

This could either be because the most radical women have already been returned to their home countries (or they have managed to escape from the camp), or simply because the women in the camp have come to the realization that radicalism is not possible in such a small area is feasible.

The assumption is therefore that it is the salutary consequences of this forced coexistence of the supporters and opponents of the Islamic State that have contributed to the decline of this ideology.

by Vera Mironova

Vera Mironova 

is a visiting fellow at Harvard University.

Twitter: @vera_mironov

This article was first published in English on July 8, 2021 in the magazine “ForeignPolicy.com” - as part of a cooperation, a translation is now also available to the readers of 

Merkur.de *

 .

* Merkur.de is an offer from IPPEN.MEDIA.

+

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Source: merkur

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