What if the victims of ISIS aren’t solely those targeted by the terror group? What if among the victims of ISIS are women and children who carry their names and the burden of their heinous life choices? Too young to be called “women”, these young girls find themselves wives to atrocious terrorists and mothers to innocent babies. Meanwhile, they are shunned and rejected by the world and targeted by the “bombs that fall from the sky”.
Extremely naive to understand what will become of their lives, these young girls are bestowed to ISIS fighters by their fathers and suddenly become wives, servants, mothers, and caregivers. With little comprehension of the lifestyle they will inevitably embrace or the stigma that will undoubtedly haunt them and their children for the rest of their lives, these young girls adopt an ideology of extremism, radicalism, violence, and terror.
The “Daesh wives” from the Afghan branch of ISIS look very young. Most are already mothers. Hundreds of them have fled combat, airstrikes and near-starvation in eastern Afghanistan where the faction of ISIS known as Islamic State in Khorasan (ISK) has been under fierce bombardment from Afghan and US special forces. In Jalalabad city, separated from the male fighters who were taken to other detention centers or prisons, the women were first housed by local authorities in a makeshift accommodation center, awaiting transfer to Kabul or back to the remote Afghan and Pakistani tribal areas where most originated.
Lyla Schwartz, a psychologist supporting some of the girls in the Kabul juvenile detention center, says that these girls had no choice in whether they joined the group or not. Scared and unsure, they believe in an Islamic State where people practice certain things and believe in ideas they have been taught, but they do not agree with the fighting or the war and the trauma they witnessed.
