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

by Åsne Seierstad

  The following day, five suicide bombers attacked a large arms depot in Mosul, the third-largest city in Iraq, allowing the jihadists to seize control of the materials inside. The assault was well coordinated. ISIS had been infiltrating the metropolis for months beforehand. Sleeper cells were activated and joined the offensive. The suicide bombings, as well as the attacks coming from all sides, from within their own ranks too, created the illusion of there being many more jihadists than there were. In fact there were only just over a thousand men, while Mosul, at least on paper, was held by a force fifteen times larger. The Iraqi government had prioritized the defense of the cities nearer Baghdad, and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki had ignored Kurdish leaders’ warnings of an imminent attack on Mosul.

  The international community watched in shock as American-trained Iraqi soldiers discarded their uniforms and fled. The generals were the first to abandon their posts, leaving their officers without orders. Those at the top knew what a poor state the army was in, since they had helped themselves to the funds that should have gone to ammunition and had sent soldiers home with a small remuneration, pocketing their monthly salaries. Corruption pervaded Iraq under al-Maliki, who implemented policies that granted all real power in the country to the Shias, pushing away the Sunni tribes and driving them into the open arms of the Islamists.

  By June 9, the Islamists had taken control of the police headquarters, the airport, and numerous public buildings in Mosul. They captured tanks, armored vehicles, pickups, and hundreds of weapons systems, many of them labeled MADE IN USA. Within a few hours, the military booty had been safely driven across the border into Syria. The city’s largest prison was emptied of its inmates. Six hundred Shia Muslims were executed in a nearby ravine; Sunnis were offered the chance to fight alongside ISIS. The next day ISIS had control over all of Mosul.

  Within a few days, the Sunni jihadists were approaching Tikrit, which up until the Middle Ages had been an important center of the Syriac Orthodox Church. It was also the birthplace of the Kurdish military commander Saladin, who had captured Jerusalem from the Crusaders. And of Saddam Hussein. Many of his trusted men, both in the army and the party, bore the name al-Tikriti—members of his own tribe. Following the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Tikrit had formed the northern angle of the so-called Sunni Triangle, where insurgency was at its most intense.

  Here too the generals were the first to flee the battlefield. Lack of leadership led to panic among the soldiers at the local air base. Close to three thousand young men tore off their uniforms and fled on foot. They did not make it far before the Islamists caught up with them, calling out, “Are you heading to Baghdad? We can drive you to the capital, hop in!” Those who did not come willingly were forced on board. The trucks stopped at a spot in the middle of the desert.

  Eight hundred soldiers were executed over the next few days. ISIS posted video footage of rows of young men, all Shias, lying facedown in the sand. One after another, they were shot in the head. Some were placed on a bridge over the Tigris and shot through the back of the head before falling into the river. Others were forced to lie in freshly dug graves before being peppered with bullets, whereupon more of the young men were ordered to lie on their dead comrades to meet the same fate. Layer upon layer, in the same way that Saddam Hussein had ordered the Kurds shot a generation before in the purge that had been given the name al-Anfal after a chapter in the Koran describing God’s order to Muhammad on fighting unbelievers.

  Recordings of the mass killings were soon edited and publicized by ISIS’s propaganda machine.

  * * *

  The same day as the massacre in Tikrit, Ayan was in Raqqa trying to access her bank account online. She made several attempts without succeeding. She sent her brother a message.

  “Important. Where are you?”

  “At home. What’s up?”

  “I need you to log on to my bank account.”

  “????????????????????”

  “I can’t log on to my current account or my savings account.”

  She read out the passwords to Ismael, who entered them along with her personal password on his computer. When he saw the bank statements, he was shocked.

  “You have a MEGA loan,” he wrote. “Good luck with that!”

  All her credit card loans were due and were listed as unpaid.

  “Not a big deal. The state will take care of that,” his sister answered.

  The state was indeed wealthy. Over the last few days, ISIS had conquered large areas of land and millions of new inhabitants. The money from the vault in the central bank in Mosul, several hundred million dollars, was now in the hands of the Islamists, as were oil installations, oil wells, and military materials.

  Ismael then asked if his sister could do him a favor.

  “Depends,” she answered.

  “Can you and Leila make a video explaining why you left?”

  “For the family?” Ayan asked.

  “For the MEDIA! And soon, I need mon-nay! It would really help me out.”

  Ayan told him she would have to discuss it with Leila first.

  Ismael persisted. “It would put both of you in a good light, you could show you aren’t idiots being manipulated but that you’re doing this for a reason.”

  “That’s true, I don’t like people thinking we were fooled and that we’re morons who came here to risk our lives.”

  “$_$ now we’re on the same page, girl,” Ismael replied.

  “Quit thinking of me as cash, okay.”

  * * *

  ISIS continued its advance in the latter half of June. The group took control of a chemical factory, the country’s largest oil refinery, and two border stations between Syria and Iraq. Sykes-Picot, the agreement drawn up by Britain and France in 1916, allocating “spheres of influence” among Britain, France, and Russia, now existed only on paper—the Islamists held a single territory spanning Syria and Iraq. It was an enormous admission of failure for the government in Iraq to lose so much land—and an international border—to a nonstate actor. By the end of the month, the authorities in Baghdad had lost control over several more stretches of territory bordering Syria and Jordan.

  June 29, 2014, was to be a memorable day for ISIS. Three important videos were posted via al-Hayat Media Center.

  The first was fifteen minutes long and titled The End of Sykes-Picot. It showed a dark, bearded man swaggering around a captured Iraqi border station.

  It was the Chilean from Norway, the enfant terrible of the Prophet’s Ummah and the man who’d been charged with uploading the video threatening the Norwegian government: Bastian Vasquez.

  He strutted casually around abandoned buildings, past torn-down signs, stopping now and again to show discarded emblems from uniforms or point out rows of SUVs.

  “Keep sending vehicles,” he addressed Obama. “They end up in our hands anyway!”

  He displayed a row of prominent teeth with large gaps between them.

  “And don’t forget diapers for your soldiers,” laughed a man behind the wheel of a white pickup with IRAQI BORDER CONTROL still written on the side.

  Bastian spoke relaxedly and confidently in English. He peppered his sentences with Arabic words, every statement ending in “inshallah” or “wallahi,” and he made small talk in Arabic with the ISIS fighters who had taken the border station. They were dressed in desert fatigues, whereas Bastian sauntered around in a long tunic over short Salafi trousers. With a faded baseball cap on his head, he resembled a young Fidel Castro. Toward the end of the video he entered a room where a dozen or so men were imprisoned.

  “Yazidis,” he spat in the direction of the men on the floor. “They worship Lucifer.” He looked briefly into the camera before leaving the room.

  A viewer could assume the men were killed shortly afterward. ISIS did not keep prisoners of war. At the conclusion of the video, a police station near the border post is rigged with explosives and blown up. The dust settles and nasheeds—a cappella religious songs concer
ning battle and martyrdom—replace Bastian’s guided tour.

  Another video posted that day, Breaking the Border, showed American-made military vehicles that had been seized by ISIS passing freely over yet another stretch of border, while bulldozers leveled the sand heaps demarcating Syrian and Iraqi territory.

  The most important video was a speech by ISIS spokesman Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, the sole Syrian in the upper leadership of the organization.

  “The time has come for those generations that were drowning in oceans of disgrace, being nursed on the milk of humiliation, and being ruled by the vilest of all people, after their long slumber in the darkness of neglect—the time has come for them to rise,” he said. “The sun of jihad has risen. The glad tidings of good are shining … Support your state, which grows every day!”

  ISIS had become IS—the Islamic State.

  “Listen to your caliph and obey him!” the Syrian urged. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was now the self-appointed leader of all the world’s Muslims.

  The caliphate had been declared.

  * * *

  The following day, Ayan called her mother in Somaliland. She made no mention of the newly declared caliphate. She only wanted to wish the family well with Ramadan.

  Sara and her sons had arrived in Hargeisa at the start of the month of fasting. Its annual observance was one of the pillars of Islam, an activity all healthy adults had to carry out in order to call themselves practicing Muslims. Everyone in the family home was fasting, except Ismael. He also refused to attend the mosque. Nor would he pray at home.

  Sara had wept. “You’re bringing shame upon us!”

  She threatened him with the wrath of God and the torments of hell.

  “I’ve already lost two daughters, am I to lose you as well?”

  Apostasy in Islam is obvious due to the clear actions required in the practice of the religion; the pillars are the declaration of faith, prayer, charity, fasting, and the pilgrimage to Mecca. Sara threatened to disown him but could not follow through on her threat. Eventually she gave in and allowed him to eat with his little brothers, who were not yet required to fast.

  The rumors had preceded their arrival. Everyone had found out, relatives, neighbors, the whole street: Sara and Sadiq’s daughters have joined IS. In Somaliland, IS was considered a terrorist organization, spreading death and destruction like their own al-Shabaab. Ayan and Leila had joined the terrorists. The extended family mourned the “little girls,” who for the first time did not accompany their mother on the summer holiday.

  The fear of losing more children tormented Sara. It gnawed at her thoughts, requiring ever more space in her mind. Memories of her firstborn resurfaced. She had been a teenager, narrow-hipped, and had spent a day and a night in labor. Eventually he ran out of air and was buried the same day he was born. That was in February 1993. Ayan was born in December of the same year.

  After her daughters had left, she had been overwhelmed by fear of losing her two youngest boys. She did not feel they were safe in Bærum. Someone might lead them astray and away from her at any time. If you grew up in Norway, you became either an extremist or an atheist, that was her experience. She had to save Isaq and Jibril. Give them a sense of belonging in a solid, Muslim culture. Give them a healthy Muslim upbringing.

  Child Welfare Services was what she dreaded the most, an anxiety shared by her friends. Somalis were overrepresented in cases involving custody and care orders. You needed to watch out so the state did not come and take your children. They could take whomever whenever. At any hour of the day or night they could turn up and demand your child. They’d probably been keeping tabs on the family ever since the girls left, her circle of friends told her.

  Horror stories abounded. Everybody knew somebody who’d had a child taken away. One boy, whose mother had refused him candy, had called Child Welfare to tell them his mother and father beat him. The next day the authorities came and took him into custody, Sara had been told. Families going on holidays to their home country had their daughters taken away from them because they were accused of traveling to have them circumcised. One ten-year-old had contacted the authorities because his parents had refused to buy him a computer game. “Buy him the game!” Child Welfare had ordered them, but the parents could not afford to and then Child Welfare took him into care because children had a right to games. Child Welfare lurked online to make contact with children and ask if they had any problems. If a child, for a joke, replied that he or she was being beaten, Child Welfare and the police moved in. These kinds of stories circulated when Sara and her friends met on long afternoons when the children were in school or at kindergarten and the men were out. They themselves did not go anywhere.

  Fear of Jibril and Isaq being next on the list made her feel faint.

  When Sara was seven years old, her mother had died suddenly. Her father found a new wife, and the children from his first marriage were farmed out to different relations. She had been placed in the care of an uncle in Hargeisa who had room and needed help around the house. She was the only child in the home and was brought up to strictly observe Somali customs and practice. She was sent to the mosque several hours a week, where she studied Koran quotations by rote and was instilled with reverence for God and the Prophet, but she never learned to read or write.

  Even though she had friends in the street and outlined games in the sand, she grew up with a great sense of longing. It was not viewed as natural for an uncle to hug a niece. Grief at the loss of a mother and the yearning for her siblings left a deep cut within.

  After a few years she asked her uncle, “Can my little brothers and sisters come and live here too?”

  And so it was. One after one they arrived in Hargeisa. This was the first time she gathered her family. Her brothers and sisters were showered with kisses and affection, because if there was one thing Sara had plenty of, it was love.

  She was fourteen when Sadiq first set eyes on her.

  His marriage to a cousin had already been arranged.

  Then he met Sara at a crossroads.

  She came walking toward him, tall, thin as a rake, elegant and graceful, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He was fifteen, and he was sold.

  The next day he knocked on the door of the girl Sara had been walking with to ask if the unknown beauty was promised to anyone. The girl said she would check. She returned and told him that Sara was free.

  Sadiq went to talk to his mother.

  “Mom, I like my cousin, but she’s like a sister to me. And I’ve met someone else.”

  “Who?”

  “Her name’s Sara.”

  His mother mulled it over. She made some inquiries and decided to pay Sara’s uncle a visit. She returned to her youngest son.

  “Okay, my son, then that’s how it will be.”

  Serendipity. The year was 1990.

  Then Sadiq enlisted in the war against the dictator. Sara waited.

  Two years went by before he returned and they could marry; she was sixteen, and he was seventeen. He had never regretted it. Sara was everything to him.

  Now, twenty-five years on, they struggled to pick themselves up, to heal, each in their own way.

  * * *

  Sara had found a new home for them in Hargeisa. “Them” being sixteen people, and she asked Sadiq to send money for the rent.

  The house was constructed so that the wind could blow through, making it airy even when the sun was at its strongest. The terrace, where a soft old armchair took pride of place, was north facing and tiled in a beautiful golden pattern. Flower tendrils wove together up the walls. The portico and fence looking over the yard were painted green. A large water tank stood in the corner.

  Sara had gathered two of her sisters and their families, one brother and his wife, and some unmarried nephews and nieces. The nephews lived in a small dwelling in the corner of the yard, adjacent to the outside toilet, while each family had a room. Except for Sara, who had two. The largest bedroom was hers and there was anot
her room for the boys. After all, she was the one paying the rent.

  The rooms were large with mosquito nets at the windows and screens in front of the doors. Everything they needed lay open or was stacked in piles on the floor. There were no hooks on the wall to hang anything from, no closets to put anything in. Their suitcases lay on top of one another like a temporary wardrobe.

  Both Sadiq and Sara were descended from nomads, their forefathers had had large flocks of animals. With your possessions in a suitcase you could always move on. Putting them away in a wardrobe meant you had decided to stay.

  The parents disagreed on what to do when their daughters came home. They would need to go see a psychologist first, in Sadiq’s opinion. Our family is all they need, Sara said. And an imam. Sadiq thought the girls were brainwashed, Sara called them misguided. They just needed to be led back onto the path of true Islam.

  She had begun to give her husband dribs and drabs of her own plan.

  “They want to live in a Muslim country,” she said over the phone from Somaliland. “So when they leave, wouldn’t it be better for them to move here instead of to Norway? Then we could all start afresh here?”

  “And what are we going to LIVE on in Somaliland?” Sadiq inquired.

  “You can find a job.”

  Finding a job in Somaliland to support a family of seven to the standard they were used to in Norway was close to impossible. This discussion generally concluded with them agreeing: “They need to get out first. We’ll deal with the rest afterward.”

  Sara pictured a life in Hargeisa for the whole family. For Sadiq, his home was in Bærum, in a flat at the foot of the Kolsås ridge. That was where he dreamed of bringing his family together again.

  He had not accompanied the others to Somaliland. He had told Sara he wanted to stay behind in Norway to look for work. The truth was that he wanted to make another attempt at getting the girls out. He could not tell his wife this because they disagreed on the best way to get them home.

  If that dangerous group, as Sara referred to ISIS, got wind of them trying to get their girls back, they would only build higher walls around them and keep an even closer watch. It was better to allow some time to pass, give the girls the chance to realize that no, this life in the desert was not for them.