Two Sisters: A Father, His Daughters, and Their Journey Into the Syrian Jihad

by Åsne Seierstad

  physically?

  yeah, she’s been shot

  ohmygod

  is it on the news?

  yeah

  Amal told me a week ago that Leila had been shot but I didn’t believe it

  VG reports that their father found them

  thank god

  their father found them, one of them had gunshot wounds and it was Leila

  No! Are you serious?

  What?!

  Not exactly a bombshell

  Play on words?

  No … oh, shit

  Soon after his arrival back in the country, Sadiq was debriefed by the Police Security Service. They wanted to get an overview of the different militias in Syria, of how and where they operated. Sadiq had gained some insight in the time he spent with Osman, as well as intimate knowledge of the conditions in an ISIS prison. PST was particularly interested in Norwegian jihadists in Syria. Had he spoken to any?

  When the girls had left, Sadiq had sought advice from Geir Lippestad, who had come into the public eye as defense counsel for the right-wing terrorist Anders Behring Breivik. Lippestad was the only lawyer Sadiq had heard of, so therefore he contacted him. The lawyer now spoke to the media on behalf of the family. He told NRK, the state broadcaster, that the girls would be leaving Syria as soon as the younger one was on her feet again.

  A young Somali, a good friend of Hisham, was surprised to hear this. Was Ayan going to leave his friend after only a month of marriage?

  The young man knew both Ayan and Hisham well, and was also a friend of the Koran teacher, Mustafa, who had exchanged letters with Ayan before she had left, letters he assumed had been about the trip to Syria. Now, was Ayan and Leila’s stay coming to an end already?

  He called Hisham in Syria to ask if it was true.

  “Chill out, brother,” Hisham replied. “Don’t believe everything you hear!”

  “What happened?” his friend in Oslo asked. He had wanted to travel to Syria himself but had remained behind in Norway, first when Hisham left, and then when Ayan departed. He was among the few who had been privy to Ayan’s plans and had urged her to reconsider. Not because he did not support jihad—he did—but because he believed women should not go until the fighting was over. War was no place for them. But Ayan had taken umbrage at that.

  He told her, “No matter how much I may want to go, I just can’t do that to my mom.”

  Ayan had merely smiled and said she was doing it as much for her parents as for herself.

  Hisham’s friend knew it would destroy his mother if he left. Like Sara, she was a traditional Somali woman, devout but not an extremist. The trip was Ayan’s business, she was of age, but he had been caught off guard when it emerged that she had taken her younger sister along with her.

  “Hisham, akhi, what happened? Tell me!”

  “Her father came and began threatening her,” Hisham told him. “If she didn’t return with him, then this and that and the other were going to happen. Ayan had to tell him over and over that they wanted to stay in Syria and weren’t coming back to Norway.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “So what he’s coming out with now are lies.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “He lost it when she refused to go with him. He threatened to kill her. He said he’d strangle her with his own hands. The guards had to pull him away from her. Then he shouted that the punishment for disobeying your parents was death.”

  “Whoa!” his friend said. “So they’re not coming back, then?”

  “Not planning on it, no,” Hisham replied.

  “Okay, have fun!”

  * * *

  In Atmeh, the young men in Osman’s group were disappointed in Sadiq for going home without rescuing his daughters. How could he just leave them with ISIS? He should have stayed longer, tried harder, and not, as they saw it, given up. He had failed in his task, they thought.

  In mid-November, just after Sadiq had been imprisoned, fighting had broken out in the border town. The bone of contention had been seven truckloads of weapons sent by the FSA general staff in Turkey. The trucks were to travel on from Atmeh and distribute the shipment across the whole region. But Suqur al-Islam, a moderate Islamist movement that had split from the FSA, demanded its share.

  The skirmishes had lasted a few hours, until a solution was found. When the shooting died down and the various factions were licking their wounds, a group of ISIS soldiers drove quietly into town. They parked outside the headquarters of Suqur al-Islam, stormed inside, and following a brief exchange of fire, arrested the local militia leader along with a couple dozen of his men, then drove them to al-Dana, where Sadiq was imprisoned. In Atmeh, the heavily equipped ISIS fighters set about putting checkpoints in place.

  Al-Nusra stood watching, because ISIS had seized only Suqur al-Islam territory. But then al-Nusra was attacked and soon ISIS had control of the routes in and out of Atmeh, including the roundabout, while al-Nusra was left in possession of unimportant parts of the town. For ISIS’s rivals, Atmeh, which had been spared Assad’s rockets due to its proximity to the Turkish border, was a big strategic loss.

  After seizing control, the extreme Islamists began their purge. Men were arrested, women warned not to venture outside without a mahram, a male family member. ISIS trawled the shops for prohibited goods like cigarettes and alcohol. Everyone knew what these new authorities were capable of and bowed to their demands.

  Only a few hours after taking control of the population, ISIS proceeded to take action against nature. An oak tree with a girth that exceeded the arm span of four men was a source of annoyance. The jihadists were of the opinion the tree seemed proud and overbearing, and they accused the inhabitants of worshipping it. The same afternoon they took over the town, they felled the tree. The growth rings were counted at 150.

  “Thank God, the Almighty, that this old tree is removed, after people were worshipping it instead of God,” a jihadist posted on the Our Call Is Our Jihad Twitter account. There was a picture of a masked man dressed in black posing proudly with a chain saw and the felled tree beneath. A black flag had been planted in the enormous stump.

  * * *

  Shortly after Sadiq arrived back in Bærum, a text appeared on the site Justpaste.it, written by one of the young men who had accompanied him during his stay. The piece was titled “The untold story of the 2 Somali-Norwegian girls who joined ISIS,” and it was attributed to Mujahid Jazrawi.

  You may have read in the media how two young Somali girls (who’re sisters) from Norway left their family to join ISIS a few months ago, how their father went after them, how at one point we thought they were being held by gangs (well, they were, sort of, by gangs who use the cloak of Islam). Many questions were left unanswered and details remained sketchy. However today we present to you the true untold story of their fate, and we hope that this serves as a warning and a wake-up call to ALL of our sisters insha’ Allah.

  The soldier wrote that Sadiq’s daughters had left behind a note at home in Norway that read: “You have taught us jihad in theory, we will now apply it in practice.”

  “We began asking around, and the emirs of the battalions ordered their people to keep an eye out. The father told us the girls were being held hostage. After a while he received a telephone call from his daughter.”

  Jazrawi wrote that the brothers, as he called his cosoldiers, had turned up at a prearranged location, thinking they were to negotiate a ransom for the release of the girls. They had been caught off guard when a black man—a Nigerian, the soldier wrote—turned up with the girls in the backseat of his vehicle. “The brothers stopped him and a heated conversation ensued. The Nigerian turned his car around and the brothers opened fire. The car stopped at an ISIS checkpoint in Atmeh where the driver sought help as he was one of them. The ISIS fighters surrounded the brothers and the shooting began.”

  After one of the daughters was hit in the leg, everyone went to the court in Atmeh, only to be told that the case would be heard at the cou
rt in al-Dana. “Upon arriving at the court he was informed that his eldest daughter had married an ISIS fighter through a sharia contract at that very court! He was then put in prison for twelve days, nine of which he spent in solitary confinement and was also accused of being a spy for Turkey! He was humiliated and tortured and the director of the ISIS prison threatened to kill him.”

  The Nusra soldier wrote that “a judge called an-Najdi something or other” was to decide the father’s fate.

  “The judge asked the prosecutors to bring evidence against him but they were unable to show anything that proved his apostasy or that he was a spy. The judge ruled he was innocent and that he be released. This enraged the director of the prison and he protested the verdict!”

  Back in Atmeh, the fighter had met Sadiq at Osman’s.

  “I asked, ‘What about your daughters?’ He said, ‘I couldn’t do anything for them, they even refused to let me sit with them!’

  “I tried to get him to change his mind, promised we would protect him and do everything in our power to secure his daughters’ release, but he refused and insisted on leaving. Whereupon he left to save himself from being killed.”

  The young soldier had later met the “Nigerian.”

  “We discussed his marriage to the elder daughter, and I said to him: ‘How can you marry a girl without permission from her father?’ He responded: ‘Her father has no guardianship, al-Baghdadi is her guardian! And we were wed by legal sharia contract!’ I wore myself out trying to make him understand the concept of paternal authority. I left the man, with the impression he lacked skill in the Arabic language and was quite simply ignorant.”

  This incident was one of many. “A result of the ISIS leaders inciting women to come here. Forcing them to leave the lands of the infidels to travel to ‘the house of Islam’ and their headquarters in Raqqa, by saying it is one’s duty.”

  * * *

  Christmas was drawing near.

  Sadiq and Sara were living in a daze. Sadiq slept all day. Sara cried all night. They puttered around, shutting themselves off, each living in solitary sorrow. The days came to a standstill, they would go to the supermarket only to find themselves wondering, What are we doing here?

  Their lives had fallen apart, the simplest things seemed insurmountable, and when they emerged now and again from the isolated chaos of their own minds, they were short-tempered. They had always pulled in the same direction, but now they were beginning to pull at either end.

  Sara heard about some youths who had traveled to Syria and returned home. She heard about children being rescued. Her friends told her about parents in Sweden who had received assistance from the state to get their children out, been given money, tickets, passports. The Swedish authorities paid for the parents’ stay in Turkey while they looked for their children, one of her friends said.

  “I want to hand in my Norwegian passport and move to Sweden,” Sara announced, and blamed the state for not having done enough, the officials at border control for not stopping the girls, the police for being too passive.

  Her daughters were blameless. Because her daughters would never have gone.

  * * *

  His body was in Norway, his mind in Syria. He was still on sick leave, still unable to work, and now not only on account of his shoulder.

  He lay awake at night. He smoked. Sometimes he collapsed, only to snap awake drenched in sweat from a nightmare. He dreamed he was back in the cell, he felt the knife against his throat, or he was racing after his daughters as they ran away from him. Ikhlaque Chan, the integration officer for Bærum county, saw him standing in a corner at Sandvika shopping center talking to himself. Chan recognized Sadiq from meetings he had arranged for immigrant fathers and went over. Sadiq looked right through him as though he were glass, gazing instead at some point in the middle distance and continuing to talk to himself. He spoke in Somali, with a few Norwegian words peppering his mother tongue, before abruptly leaving the mall. A short time later, Chan ran into Sadiq in the parking lot. He was now himself again and gave Chan a friendly greeting. The integration officer stopped to ask him how things were going. Sadiq told him about the dramatic trip to Syria.

  They went their separate ways. Chan told him not to hesitate to get in touch.

  An acquaintance from the mosque in Sandvika approached Sadiq and praised his daughters’ actions.

  “Such a gift they have given you!” he said. “Their sacrifice paves the way to paradise for your whole family.”

  Sadiq exploded. “Send your sons, then! Send them!”

  The other man changed the subject, but Sadiq would not relent. “Until you send your own children to Syria, keep your opinions to yourself!”

  Snow started falling. A white blanket soon rested on the Kolsås ridge. The year was nearing an end, and Sadiq went into hibernation.

  22

  A KIND, WONDERFUL MAN

  “Ismael, no we did not. The whole thing was a misunderstanding. How are you and the rest of the family? We don’t have much time so answer quickly!!!”

  Two weeks had passed since Ismael had asked Ayan if she and Leila had sent someone to kill their father.

  Finally she was online! Ismael sent another question. “ARE YOU GETTING MARRIED?!!!! In Syria?”

  Ayan replied right away. “I am married ☺. Go on Skype! Where are you?”

  “I’m at school. Don’t know whether to feel happy or let down.”

  “The problem is everyone knows about our situation.”

  “What do you mean??”

  “We didn’t send anyone to kill Dad. He said he was cooperating with PST and the police on the news. The whole world knows. Espionage against Muslims is a very serious matter so the court here brought him in for a hearing. They asked him a lot of questions and tried to find out if he was a spy or not. It had nothing to do with us, we didn’t send anyone. He was then acquitted and let go. No one was out to kill him. It’s just like when the police in Norway take you in because they’re investigating a case. It doesn’t mean that they’re trying to lock you up or kill you. They thought he was a spy because of all the messages between him and the police.”

  “He said he was beaten, but anyway I don’t care about that. I’m more worried about you.”

  “Did he tell you that Leila was shot because of him?”

  “Yes, in the foot?”

  “Because he said we had been kidnapped, which was a lie. In the leg. Where was he beaten?”

  “In the cell.”

  “Where on his body? With what?”

  “On his stomach, with rifle butts, why can’t you just go to Somalia?”

  “We could but we don’t want to go to a country where Islam isn’t practiced properly and where sharia doesn’t exist. BTW you should be happy I got married, he’s a good man.”

  “I knew this would happen.”

  “What?”

  “That you’d both get married down there.”

  “Haha, listen, we had nothing to do with what happened to Dad. Because of him my husband’s car is wrecked, our clothes are destroyed and Leila was shot, so it’s only natural the authorities here wanted to look into the matter.”

  “To be honest, I’d be more than happy to go to Syria myself and die for something I don’t believe in if it meant you coming home.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so hard for you. How’s school going?”

  “Not good.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m so distracted. Can’t sleep. I want you home.”

  “Concentrate, Ismael, we’re fine here! We live in a nice big house with a nice big garden. And I’ve learned how to drive. And you mustn’t believe that I or my husband want to kill Dad.”

  “Who is your husband? Where did you meet him?”

  “Through friends.”

  “How could you get married, just like that?”

  “He’s a good man, that’s why I married him.”

  “Do Mom&Dad think it’s okay?”

  “No, un
fortunately not.”

  “Is he on Facebook? Is he from Syria?”

  “No. From BÆRUM”

  “Has he been married before?”

  “No. He’s here, do you want to talk to him?”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Did he go to Rabita Mosque? What’s his ethnic background?”

  “Do you want to talk to him?”

  “Just ask him, I’m in class, can’t talk.”

  “Hisham is from Eritrea, and he didn’t go to Rabita.”

  “Hisham…?”

  “Yep.”

  “Surname?”

  “Hisham Abdiqadir. Is Mom unwell? How are things with her?”

  “Both her wrists are injured, nothing else.”

  “Have you any more questions about my husband?”

  “Why the … are you in Syria and not Eritrea?”

  “Because the jihad in Eritrea is finished hahaha.”

  “Or Somalia?”

  “I didn’t come here to get married.”

  “Yes you did.”

  “Wallahi I did not.”

  “I think you know the truth yourself … it’s pretty obvious.”

  “Believe what you want, the truth is I came here to be in the country of jihad.”

  “Is your husband going to go out and wage jihad then? Eh?”

  “He came long before I did.”

  “Yes/no?”

  “We’re both engaged in jihad and he goes out to fight sometimes. It’s very quiet where we’re living but we can hear the fighting in the distance.”

  “So you’re pregnant … and he’s off waging jihad part time. Sounds nice.”

  “I’m not pregnant.”

  “Imagine something happens to him, what then?”

  “Then I’ll wait until I can get married again.”

  “You’ll just marry the next mujahid? That sounds disgusting.”

  “Don’t people get married, divorced, and married again in Norway? Don’t think of it as disgusting, Ismael, we’re trying to live a normal life here.”

  “They’re going to die and you’re going to satisfy the next one after this first one is dead.”

  “I came here to die myself. Not to be anyone’s whore. Don’t insult me by calling me that!!”