War with Isis: The brides brainwashed into becoming suicide bombers

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In part one of this special series of dispatches, Patrick Cockburn hears the harrowing stories of women who have escaped from the jihadist state

May 16, 2015

It was when Isis issued a fatwa saying a wife should obey her husband in all matters, including becoming a suicide bomber, that Aysha, a 32-year-old mother of two children, decided to flee her home in Mosul. She recalls that her husband did not ask her directly to be a suicide bomber, but gradually started talking about it. “He was coming home once a week,” she told The Independent, “but recently he came home every day, and finally asked me to attend a new course showing how a Muslim woman could support Muslim society with her soul and body”.

Aysha, which is not her real name, attended the course for two days along with many other women. She was appalled by what she heard. She says “the course was a sort of brainwashing, teaching women to sacrifice cheap worldly things – blood, flesh, soul – for the victory of more precious things – religion, Allah, the Prophet, and, most importantly, the eternal afterlife”.

But instead of being persuaded by these teachings, Aysha was thinking about her children and how to rescue them from the situation she found herself in. On the third day of the course she pretended to be ill and claimed that her son had flu so she had to stay at home. She says that on 3 April “at the time of the Friday prayers I took my children and told them that we were going to visit their aunt in the same district, al-Rifa’ey, that we lived in, but in fact I had already arranged what to do through my cousin. He lives in Zakho [in north-west of the Kurdistan Regional Government zone] and he has helped many people to escape Mosul”. She added that the cousin knew many smugglers in Mosul and KRG. “It cost me about $1,200 (£760) to flee with my son and daughter,” she says.

snip*Noura, on the contrary, believes that Isis will be defeated because it is running out of money and becoming more corrupt. She says bribery has become rampant but she does not think that US air strikes will defeat Isis. “The devastating factor internally is corruption – bribery, nepotism, favouritism – that will be the final blow.” Significantly, neither woman speaks of any armed resistance to Isis despite its moves to recruit women and children as suicide bombers.

in full: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/war-with-isis-the-brides-brainwashed-into-becoming-suicide-bombers-10254617.html