Iraq News Now

ISIS’s recruitment and use of women to support its extremist

cause could pave the way for more front-line roles for women in jihadi groups

in the future, the European Union’s police agency said in a report published

Friday.

In the 34-page report entitled “Women in Islamic State

Propaganda,” Europol said “female jihadis are as ideologically motivated as

their male counterparts and their sense of empowerment lies in contributing to

the building of an Islamic state.”

It concludes that “numerous examples” of women, who either

carried out extremist attacks or were arrested preventively, “prove that women

are willing to use violence if the ideology allows them to do so. For now, it

is not yet their role, but this balance may easily shift according to the

organization’s strategic needs and developments on the ground,”

The report comes amid concerns about the risk posed by

foreign fighters, including women, returning to their homes in Europe after the

fall of the self-styled ISIS caliphate in Syria and Iraq.

Europol Executive Director Catherine De Bolle said that 15%

people convicted on “jihadi terrorism charges” in the EU in 2018 were women.

The report’s authors studied propaganda targeting women, but

also mentioned women who take active roles in Islamist combat, saying they were

sometimes used to shame men into taking part in the group’s armed struggle.

The report cited an example from an ISIS publication that

praised three women who attacked a police station in Mombasa, Kenya, in 2016

and asked what was wrong with men who had “laid down their swords.”

At its peak, in 2014-15, ISIS controlled an area the size of

Britain across Syria and Iraq and launched a series of attacks around the

world.

In March, US-backed forces declared victory over ISIS, but

the group’s affiliates in Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula, Afghanistan and other

countries continue to pose a threat, and the group’s ideology has inspired

so-called lone-wolf attacks that had little if any connection to its

leadership.