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

by Åsne Seierstad

  Christmas was approaching and the shifts at the supermarket increased. Ismael stocked the refrigerated counter with ribs, herring, and head cheese. He packed the biscuit aisle with ginger cookies, confectionary, and doughnuts. He filled up the fruit section with oranges, dates, and figs. Christmas beer. Mulled wine. Advent wreath candles for hope, peace, and joy. Lines of traditional marzipan pigs stretching from here to hell.

  In the Juma household, neither father nor son lit any Advent candles. They never had. There was no calendar or decorations. There never had been. Sara had always made a point of not serving anything special at Christmas; it was important to make a distinction between Christian festivities and Islamic festivities. This year, she was in a Christmas-free zone in Somaliland anyway, and the blessed sisters were in a land purged of Christmas spirit.

  From there, Ayan suddenly replied: “I believe 110% that DAWLA is going to crush and humiliate this coalition that is in league against them if ALLAH SWT grants it.”

  “Allah doesn’t exist,” Ismael replied. “I can also sit here and convince myself I am able to fly if I just believe hard enough. But it’s still not going to happen.”

  The wall of silence again, but Ismael continued. “God is so great while at the same time he is such a self-obsessed asshole that he wants the people he ‘created’ to pray to him five times a day and for those who don’t believe in him to be killed. He is all-powerful and yet he’s too lazy to send them straight to hell himself.”

  Ayan started typing.

  “You’re playing with your life,” his sister wrote. “Instead of talking crap and being offensive try finding the truth or shut up and respect other people’s choices.”

  “You. Are you here?” Ismael wrote.

  “I refuse to speak to you when all you do is badmouth ALLAH swt. You may discuss, but with respect.”

  “The truth isn’t always as pretty as you think.”

  “It’s possible to express yourself with respect. Without deriding the other person’s choices. Wondering whether or not God exists is something else entirely.”

  “I don’t believe God exists, but I find it odd your not realizing that dawla are going to lose in the long run and that it is not jihad but suicide. It’s like lying down on a train track and saying ‘I’ll survive if allah swt wills it’ and you die. Nuff said.”

  Silence from his sister.

  Ismael logged off as well.

  On Christmas Eve, he sent her a thumbs-up icon.

  On Christmas Day, Ayan responded: “Tell Mom that she must forgive me.”

  She would never write to her brother again.

  27

  NEW YEAR, NEW OPPORTUNITIES

  Syria had become a dump, Osman complained. “Nusra is squeezing me,” he wrote to Sadiq in January.

  Osman had become entangled in the strings he had once pulled, as if someone was standing by to draw them taut, throttle him, and take over his business and operations. Being an independent player was no longer possible and even smugglers had to submit to circumstances. The war was brutalizing people, and the struggle for resources was becoming fiercer.

  The traditional power structures from Assad’s time, when Idlib province was ruled by a network of party careerists and local clan leaders, were gone. Atmeh had become a quagmire of organized crime, strict Islamic control—and anarchy. There was no authority with a monopoly on violence; it was the survival of the fittest. Many sank to the bottom and disappeared, first threatened and then killed. Abductions were rife, the victims often ordinary people, anyone, as long as they could pay. A nephew, a cousin, or a father might be kidnapped in an attempt to squeeze cash out of a family. Whether on the front line or in a dispute over a dollar, a life had little value.

  Al-Qaida’s Syrian arm had the most clout in the province and demanded others submit to it. Al-Nusra was attempting to establish a proto-emirate—putting its own area under strict Islamist rule and increasingly stealing features from IS. It engaged in extensive taxation of its territories, levying charges, tariffs, and fines for any infringement of the new rules. Smugglers were no exception. On the contrary, al-Nusra closely followed their activities and wanted a share of the profits.

  “Things are tough. I’m exhausted. I feel like I’m at the end of my tether,” Osman wrote.

  “No, brother, don’t say that. What happened to Nusra?”

  “Nusra has become like IS,” Osman replied. “Any friends I had in Nusra are all martyrs now.”

  “May God receive them. How did Nusra become like IS?”

  Al-Nusra issued laws and decrees and sent them out to towns and villages under their control. Infidelity and homosexuality meant death by stoning, Assad loyalists could expect execution by gunshot to the head. “All entertainment stores that feature billiards, table football, and computer games” were ordered closed, an edict read. The store owners were responsible for looking for another form of livelihood, which it was pointed out had to be legitimate according to sharia. Shops had to close during prayer time because God the Almighty had said, “Bow with those who bow.” Written at the bottom of each edict were the words: “And God is the one behind this intention.”

  Al-Nusra was one of the wealthiest rebel groups in Syria. In the beginning, half of its resources had come directly from al-Qaida, the rest from donors abroad, mostly from the Gulf, and Qatar in particular. Over time the group captured military matériel from Assad and also financed its activities with income from the oil fields they had taken. They also earned millions from abducting people and holding them for ransom. If you were a foreigner who had the misfortune to be kidnapped in Syria, being taken by al-Nusra was a blessing in disguise. They were more interested in the money they could get for you than your head on a plate.

  * * *

  “Brother, have you spoken to your daughters? Is there any news?”

  It was night. January had turned to February. Osman had logged on to Viber.

  “The younger is four months pregnant.” Sadiq had just heard the news from Sara.

  “The younger!” Osman exclaimed, and sent a crying emoji.

  Sadiq just wrote KKKKKKKKKK, the Somali way of representing laughter in writing.

  “Ah, you’ll be a granddad, old man!” Osman wrote. “You need to get her now, inshallah. The longer it goes, the more difficult it will become.”

  That was just it. So many harsh words had passed between Sadiq and his daughters. They no longer spoke to him: They called Sara in Somaliland when they wanted to get in touch. When Sadiq had spoken to the Double prior to New Year, the Syrian had stressed that the assignment was extremely dangerous. The daughters had to cooperate.

  Sadiq had been unable to admit to the smuggler that he could not even get in touch with them.

  They must want to leave.

  Sadiq had called the Double back after their initial conversation and reached his voice mail.

  “Can you kidnap them?” he had asked.

  A short time later it was the Double who left a message on Sadiq’s voice mail. “Sorry. If they don’t want to get out then there’s nothing I can do. That’s not a job I’m willing to undertake. It’s impossible.”

  Sadiq had waited, hoping for a miracle: that the girls would call and say, Save us. Then he would have the plan ready: the rescuer, the vehicle, and the film crew. That was why he had let Styrk order the airplane tickets. Let him pack the equipment. They could still call and say: Save us, Dad!

  But they didn’t.

  The day before he and Styrk were to travel to Reyhanlı via Istanbul, he had had to find a way to end the deception. It was too late to tell Styrk the plain truth—that the girls didn’t want to leave the caliphate and that the Double had quite simply refused to take on the job.

  It had been easier to make up a story about his beheading and crucifixion.

  * * *

  “When they have children they’ll wake up and realize what kind of regime they’re living under, that’s what happens with the foreign women. Then th
ey’re forced to regret,” Osman wrote to him late one night. “When the babies arrive they will focus all their emotions on them, then they’ll want to flee Syria.”

  Osman was the only one he had told about the girls not wanting to return home. The two of them could sit for hours chatting online.

  “How are you planning to abduct them?” Sadiq asked.

  “I haven’t found the right people yet.”

  “Try as hard as you can.”

  “As long as there is blood in my veins and breath in my body I will not forget my sisters, your daughters, Abu Ismael. Don’t worry, I’m your proxy in Syria.”

  “You need to think up an exceptional plan. Think of it as the most outstanding operation you have ever carried out. And after that you and your family can be in Norway in a matter of days.”

  Sadiq had promised Osman that he could get him asylum in Norway. “Don’t be afraid, my brother,” he added. “Say hello to your dear wife, whose name you have yet to tell me.”

  “Do the girls speak Arabic?” Osman inquired a few days later.

  After a year and a half in Syria, surely they could make themselves understood? Sadiq had no idea whether the girls were in contact with local Syrians or just hung out with their European clique. The usual pattern of social intercourse was that the French fraternized with other French speakers, Germans with Germans, and Scandinavians with Scandinavians. Ayan spoke Norwegian with Hisham while Leila and Imran communicated in English.

  Sadiq’s nerves were on edge.

  After a few days, Osman called. “Listen. There are two kinds of people that can crisscross the front—from government-controlled areas into IS territory, over to the militias and rebel forces, and back again. Because everyone needs them. The mobile boys—the ones who repair telecommunications, the internet—and then there are those transporting fuel. The tank truck drivers. Without them the war stops.” When he got to the last part, he practically shouted: “We send them out with the oil!”

  Sadiq’s role in the operation was to pay for it. But funds were nonexistent. His friends had no more money to lend him. And he could not ask NAV for more. Sadiq toyed with an idea he thought might be lucrative: Very few foreign fighters from Norway had come forward in the media, the honor code of the milieu forbade it, you did not inform on one another or talk to the kuffar media. Sadiq thought he could sell information that Osman unearthed. They could start up a kind of joint information service, with Osman responsible for seeking it out and Sadiq for selling it.

  Sadiq called a couple of journalists he had been in contact with previously and got a bite. He wrote to Osman. “I have good news. I’ve made a deal with a Norwegian journalist. They’ll give us money for every snippet we can get them on Norwegian foreign fighters, as long as there are photos or videos. Either ISIS or Nusra.”

  “Perfect,” Osman replied on Viber, before sharing more details of his evolving plan for smuggling the girls out. “I know a guy who has a wife in Raqqa. He delivers petrol to IS every third day. He can kidnap the girls and transport them back in the tank truck.”

  “Excellent.”

  “The vehicle first needs to be looked at by a welder and adapted so that the girls aren’t injured. We’ll partition the tank to make a six-foot-by-six-foot area and drill an air hole. The tank is very large. It holds 120 tons. He can take your son-in-law too. Did you understand all that? What do you say, Abu Ismael?”

  “Get started.”

  “Heads will roll…” Osman continued. “That’s what worries me. I swear to God, if they discover what we’re up to they’ll throw us in the tank, pour petrol over us and burn us worse than that Jordanian pilot ☺.”

  On Christmas Eve 2014, a Jordanian F-16 fighter plane had crashed outside of Raqqa. Twenty-six-year-old Muaz al-Kasasbeh ejected but came down in IS territory. The scenes of jubilant soldiers manhandling the captured pilot had been shown around the world. IS began negotiations with Jordan to trade the aviator for the female terrorist Sajida al-Rishawi, whose suicide belt had failed to explode in an attack in Amman in 2005.

  The leading jihadist ideologue Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi was released from a Jordanian prison in order to act as an intermediary. Al-Maqdisi, who in the 1980s had been too extreme for Osama bin Laden, soon established contact. The Jordanian authorities required photographic evidence that the pilot was still alive before they would release Sajida. IS sent an electronic file to al-Maqdisi, but it was password protected. After several days of intense dialogue, he was sent the code to open the file. Once he received it the old Islamist understood he had been fooled. The password was “Maqdisi is a pimp, the sole of the tyrant’s shoe, son of the English whore.”

  When he typed in the sentence, a video appeared on the screen. He watched as an IS soldier forced the pilot into a cage, doused him in gasoline, and set him alight. Osama bin Laden’s old teacher was enraged. Fire could not be used as a punishment. That right was reserved by God exclusively for those who were condemned to eternal torment in hell.

  IS posted the video online three hours later. The criticism of Islamist scholars was lost on them. The pilot had bombed a brick factory and his victims had been burned alive, they said, so he received the punishment he deserved, according to the sharia principle of qisas—retribution.

  “I’m not afraid of my own group, they cannot betray me,” Osman wrote. “But I am afraid of IS, they terrify me. Heads will roll … if we mess up.”

  “I know, my dear friend.”

  “And you need to find money,” the Syrian went on. “A sponsor, someone to cover the costs. And soon. Remember—don’t tell anyone the details, absolutely no one.”

  “I would sooner risk my daughters’ lives than risk the safety of you or other Syrians. If you want me to bring your entire family to Norway I will. I’m more than prepared to do it. I can guarantee you. You and Syria have become a part of my life and part of the very meaning of it.”

  A couple of days later Sadiq sent him a reminder, not about the rescue operation but about the means of financing it—information on Norwegian jihadists.

  “Find information for me, whatever you can on migrants from Norway. No matter how trivial. Please concentrate on that. It will yield a profit.”

  “What kind of information do they need?” Osman asked.

  “Their names or whereabouts for example, if they’re leaders or ordinary foot soldiers. Any kind of information that can accompany a photo. We can sell the photos and buy what we need with the money.”

  “Will I take pictures? Without talking to them?”

  “It’s not necessary to talk to them. Just the information, no matter how trivial. Confirmed or unconfirmed, with photos!”

  “Will I take a picture on my mobile phone? The quality might not be the best.”

  It would be good enough, Sadiq assured him.

  The next day Osman went in search of Norwegian jihadists. He sent back word of what he had found.

  “British mujahideen, from London, other foreigners, French, there are four Somalis staying nearby. Women. Their children are with them. I can take pictures of the kids. Do you want me to? They have a play area where the women take the children.”

  “I just need the Norwegian ones!”

  Osman did not get it. This was not really his thing.

  “To be honest at the moment my mind is pretty occupied with the operation to rescue your girls. We were up until two last night planning, and now we’re all set but you have to send us the money.”

  “Seek out information, no matter how insignificant, about Norwegian foreign fighters, make that your focus, bit by bit. It will yield a profit,” Sadiq replied.

  When it came to his son-in-law, other tipsters stole a march on him.

  On February 16, 2015, the online edition of Dagbladet reported: “IS leader from Bærum reported killed last autumn. But he was never dead. In actual fact he was badly wounded—but after receiving treatment at a hospital, where he managed to remain under the radar of Western authorities,
Dagbladet can confirm that the twenty-four-year-old has been discharged and has returned to active service for IS.”

  Sadiq’s son-in-law had, according to the newspaper, been promoted to a “midlevel command position, equivalent to the rank of sergeant in Norway.” According to the report, the twenty-four-year-old from Bærum, who went by the name Abu Siddiq in Syria, had been appointed to collect taxes on the Syrian oil IS exported via informal channels over the border into Turkey.

  Sadiq had to pull himself together. He had known about this for a long time. Information was his new currency.

  28

  HOUSEWIVES OF RAQQA

  Amanifesto appeared that spring. It was distributed in the way jihadists in 2015 preferred—online. Posted by the women’s brigade al-Khansa, it was titled “Women in the Islamic State: Manifesto and Case Study.”

  Usually articles and documents were quickly translated into English, French, and Russian, but the women’s statement was published only in Arabic. Consequently, it escaped the notice of Western women considering a life in the Islamic State. It was aimed at women in the Arab world, particularly women in the Gulf, who were living lives not so dissimilar from what they could expect in the caliphate, minus the bombing. The manifesto urged all the women of Saudi Arabia to abandon that stronghold of hypocrisy in favor of the caliphate, in order to fulfill God’s plan for women as wives and mothers. Living for her family was a woman’s “divine right.”