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

by Åsne Seierstad

  Young girls were to be raised to “build our ummah, produce men, and send them to do fierce battle,” according to the IS publication Dabiq. The children of the caliph were to be drilled from an early age to obey the caliph and despise nonbelievers, to be inured to violence and ready for war.

  * * *

  “I know someone … they could rescue them … they could drive in…”

  It was Osman. “Hide them in the car … drive them out … over the border … let me speak to them.”

  Osman warned Sadiq not to get ahead of himself. “If the Kurds take Raqqa they’re done for. The Kurds are like devils … they won’t spare two black women in niqabs. Nor their children … now, listen…”

  Their children.

  Two little girls experiencing things for the first time. They toddled around. Held on to the edges of tables. They laughed. Cried. They had both turned one over the summer.

  Humans are social animals. From birth a child seeks out human contact. In the very first weeks of life, a child’s brain begins storing expectations, while the mother produces hormones reinforcing her capacity to offer care, intimacy, and attention.

  Osman had written to Sadiq: “When they have children they will come to their senses.”

  But not Ayan and Leila.

  In the eye of the storm, life went on. When the men were at the front, the women stayed at home. At mealtimes they sat around large plastic sheets, eating from the same platter, with children playing around them.

  For infants and toddlers it is the small world around them that matters. Even under extreme conditions, children can feel safe as long as their routines are maintained, as long as the grown-ups are not out of whack.

  At the same time, a child’s brain is vulnerable. Dramatic events and fear are stored in the mind as fragmented images, scary pieces, which return as nightmares and trauma. Experience influences that part of the brain where thoughts and belief systems are formed, where reason is constructed.

  For the time being the two cousins were living among their playmates.

  But a stolen house is not a safe one. It would soon come to an end. The caliphate would be history.

  Two cousins.

  With a heavy legacy.

  The jewelry box will break open, the silk will tear.

  They will discover that hell is here. Hell is us.

  If they survive.

  THE BASIS OF THE BOOK

  It was Sadiq Juma who wanted the story of his daughters told.

  “I want people to recognize the danger signs,” he said. “We were blind. We thought it would pass. Now we know better.”

  He was seeking better cooperation among parents, schools, mosques, and the police.

  For me, the most important question was: How could this happen?

  The title came easily. Two sisters. Everything centered around them.

  The first thing I did was listen to the family and write down their stories. I then interviewed friends and classmates, teachers, principals, and other adults whom the girls had been in contact with in early adolescence. I subsequently attempted to trace the path that led Ayan and Leila to radical Islam, to try to understand what inspired the two sisters to travel to Syria.

  Their parents allowed me access to the papers the sisters left behind. From these I selected essays, report cards, and class photographs, as well as notes from Koran lessons and evening courses at Islam Net, in addition to the minutes of the committee meetings, the missionary instructions, the niqab petition, and printouts of e-mails. Ayan’s orderliness was a benefit to me—she made lengthy lists of volunteers she had recruited to Islam Net, complete with telephone numbers and e-mail addresses. I was consequently able to contact a wide number of people who knew her. Similarly, I got in touch with all her friends on Facebook, all her followers on Twitter, some of those following her friend Aisha, and several of the people featured in the class photographs.

  I went to meetings at mosques in Oslo, of Islam Net, and of other religious youth organizations, looking for traces of the girls. I got in touch with Somali associations and approached Muslim Facebook groups seeking information about the sisters.

  In this way, a network of friends and acquaintances slowly emerged. Together with the parents, and written sources, it provided the most important basis for information.

  Because the sisters did not contribute directly to the book, e-mail exchanges and written conversations they participated in proved invaluable. Not least, the logs of conversations between them and their brother on Messenger, Viber, and WhatsApp gave important insight into how the girls think and what judgments they made along the way. What they communicated was an echo of IS propaganda, but the sisters do not seem to have felt they were individually supervised. Had they thought they were being monitored, a number of things they told their brother in confidence, which I have not put in the book, would not have been said. I view their words as the picture the sisters wished to paint of the caliphate.

  I sent several requests to the girls asking them to provide background of their own on their decision to journey to Syria and to present how life is there. I received no answer. I also attempted to reach them via other parties with contacts in Raqqa. The sisters responded with silence.

  There may be any number of reasons for this. One is purely procedural: IS members were not allowed to be interviewed unless they cleared it with the communications department of the Islamic State. IS conveyed information either through spokesmen or by controlled interviews with representatives of the leadership. Interviews with rank-and-file members not approved by the leadership were carried out only anonymously. The sisters could not utilize anonymity; they were completely identifiable to IS.

  When their father came to take his daughters home in November 2013, the sisters made a clear choice: They decided to remain in the Islamic State. They said they believed in the project and have since said, written, and demonstrated that they stand by that point of view.

  Apart from their father’s first rescue attempt, which they refused to join, they did not know of or participate in his plans. This is clearly evident from the log of communications between Sadiq and Osman. Kidnapping the daughters against their will was always the intention. On the logs with Ismael, the sisters also appear to stand completely behind the caliphate. They have never, either verbally or in writing, expressed any negative views of the Islamic State. They have, as is patently obvious from this book, broken with their father politically and religiously. His remarks about them or the Islamic State should therefore in no way be a burden for them in IS-controlled Syria.

  * * *

  How should you portray people you have never met, who do not want to tell you their side of a story?

  One guiding rule is to begin with actions: What did they do? When? What do we know from written sources? What do people around them say they said, wrote, or did?

  A book within the genre of literary journalism is composed of scenes that build upon one another. These scenes are reconstructions. The better the sources, the more accurate the scenes will be. Where I describe a person’s thoughts, they are based on what that person said he or she was thinking in a given situation, or what people in the book told others that the individual was thinking.

  I did my best to find as much information as I could about the lead-up to the sisters’ departure and about life in Raqqa. But only they know their thoughts and motivations.

  The names of the sisters have not appeared in the media and so I gave them fictitious ones. If they return to Norway, wishing to live a life here, they will have their names intact. I also changed the names of their brothers, while their parents, in accordance with their wishes, retained their true names.

  Sadiq chose to reveal his name and picture to the media, in addition to openly relating his family’s story at talks and in interviews.

  Several friends of the sisters who contributed did not want their real names to appear and themselves chose the names they are known by in the book. It became cl
ear to me at an early stage that the sisters’ decision to travel to Syria was a vulnerable subject for many of them. A number of the girls were also concerned they would be identified as holding extremist views or of having ties to a terror organization, which the Islamic State is defined as by Norwegian law.

  With regard to the employees of the schools the sisters attended, some wished to appear under their full names, while others are simply referred to as “the Norwegian teacher” or “the math teacher.”

  I made copies of their interviews available to all the individuals to allow them the opportunity to correct any errors.

  When the sisters departed on October 17, 2013, the family first contacted Asker and Bærum police station. Parts of their case were subsequently transferred to PST. I was granted access to the police station log from the first days and got statements from PST on how they handled the case.

  In addition, I used sources in the diplomatic services regarding the consular assistance provided in Turkey in March 2015.

  * * *

  Is it ethically defensible to focus on the lives of two girls when they have not granted their consent?

  My answer is yes. The entire world is trying to understand the reasons for radicalization among Muslim youth. Researchers, politicians, and youth workers are attempting to understand why some teenagers reject education and a life in peaceful surroundings to join a terror organization. There is no single explanation, but one can point to several factors, including the search for identity, meaning, and status; the desire to belong; the influence of others; excitement; the need to rebel; and romantic notions. In the girls’ case, elements of a profound religious awakening can be added. Push-and-pull factors feature prominently when researchers talk about radicalization. Something pushed them out, something pulled them in.

  An examination of those involved in extreme Islamist milieus found radicalization to be “a multiethnic phenomenon, typified by young men with low education, criminal backgrounds, and lack of involvement in working life,” PST stated in a report in autumn 2016. Six of ten had immigrated to Norway in childhood or when they were young. The milieu was characterized by a high dropout rate from secondary schools and unemployment. As long as the same number of youths continued to live with these challenges, the potential for recruitment remained.

  As a journalist, it is my task to put my finger on problematic aspects of our society. Confronted with this story, we must ask: Is this merely to do with them, or does it also have something to do with us?

  I offer no explanation, neither of what attracted them to Islamic radicalism nor what propelled them out of Norway. I relate my findings. It is up to each reader to draw his or her own conclusions. Where did it start? What were the underlying reasons? When could they have taken different choices? How could an aspiring diplomat choose to become a housewife in Raqqa? Why did they become more interested in life after death than this life?

  To understand the choices people make in their lives, we need to know something about those people. A religious choice is personal. It does not stand in isolation from a person’s private life; on the contrary, it is closely tied up with what he or she has experienced, the circumstances in which the person has lived, and the environment the person grew up in.

  I therefore also decided to focus upon individuals other than the sisters, as closely as I found justifiable.

  Two Sisters introduces a number of Norwegian nationals who travel to Syria. The descriptions are dramatic. They deal with childhood, internal family relations, abuse, fraud, betrayal, murder—and love.

  Allow me to present examples of choices I made concerning the publication of personal information. One important individual in the book is Aisha Shezadi. I used her full name, as she herself has opted to be in the public eye through her own texts and interviews prior to her departure for Syria, and afterward through Facebook posts open to the public about life in Raqqa. Neither she nor her parents have responded to my requests to talk to them. Aisha’s story is written as related by her friends and written sources. I quoted the verdict against her father that was made by Oslo District Court in May 2016, which is accessible to the public and casts light on her childhood.

  Research on those traveling to Syria, from both Norway and other European countries, shows that young men with backgrounds in violent or broken homes, and youths with an unstable childhood and a criminal past are overrepresented. It is during the vulnerable teenage years that most European foreign fighters are radicalized. With regard to the two sisters, I found that in addition to being a quest for meaning and identity, their actions were born of a religious awakening, a protest, and rebellion.

  In order to shed light on all this, I focused more closely on some people than they themselves would want. One of these is Arfan Bhatti, who features in the book due to his marriage to one of the sisters’ friends. He made it clear to me in person, both face-to-face and in writing, that he did not wish his private life to appear in print. I did not comply with that wish, on the basis that he has been, and remains, a central figure among radicalized Muslims in Norway. His personal actions cannot be viewed as distinct from his leadership role. As Aisha put it, he is “the glue” of the Prophet’s Ummah. In May 2017, he was arrested and accused of storing weapons, but he was released after a few months.

  Ubaydullah Hussain likewise did not wish to contribute. I met him during Ramadan in summer 2015 to arrange an interview and was asked to contact him again after the fasting was over. I informed him, via messages and letters—the last two addressed to him in prison—about the topics I was interested in and requested his version of the story. He declined to respond. In April 2017, he was convicted of recruiting others to IS and received a sentence of nine years in prison.

  The third man who appears in this book through marriage to the sisters’ friends is now dead. I carefully trawled all the information on, and accusations against, Bastian Vasquez, given that he can no longer defend himself. The information I chose to use was confirmed by several sources in statements independent of one another. I also reviewed police documents and other case papers from the period prior to his departure for Syria.

  Consequently, I based the portrayals of Bastian Vasquez, Arfan Bhatti, and Ubaydullah Hussain in their entirety on what others have said about them, in addition to written sources. I made my depictions of these individuals available to their lawyer, John Christian Elden.

  * * *

  The religious trail led to several places. First, to Islam Net.

  The organization confirmed Ayan’s central position in the organization in the years 2011 and 2012. Descriptions of Islam Net are based on observations made during conferences I attended and on recordings of debate meetings available on their website, as well as on written sources. I also interviewed members and the leader, Fahad Qureshi.

  The trail led to the young Koran teacher in the Somali-dominated Tawfiiq Mosque in Oslo. He operates under the name Mustafa but is known to the police by another name, the moniker he has also used in his employment as a security guard. I know his real name but chose to use the name he goes by in the mosque milieu and among friends.

  He repeatedly rejected all my approaches. On several occasions I informed him of my desire for his version of the content of his Koran lessons and to what degree he was involved in the sisters’ trip to Syria.

  In my attempts to track him down I also visited the Tawfiiq Mosque. On my initial meeting with the leader, Abdibasid Ali Mohammed, he told me he had never heard of any Koran teacher named Mustafa. Neither did he know him under his real name. When I mentioned the speculation in the media over the role of the Koran teacher in the wake of the sisters’ departure and expressed surprise at the name being unfamiliar to him, he informed me that “this conversation can only continue with lawyers present.” When he later accepted to meet me at the mosque, a lawyer from the In Solidum law firm was present. The reason given was that I had made “serious accusations” and had “behaved aggressively” during our previous
conversation. The answer was nevertheless the same: The leader had never heard of any Koran teacher named Mustafa. Even though he was a well-known figure in the mosque.

  The appeal for information about Ayan and Leila that I posted on the mosque’s open website for women—Tawfiiq Sisterhood—was deleted soon after.

  I also interviewed Basim Ghozlan, leader of the Rabita Mosque, in relation to the death of a young woman on the mosque premises. He stressed that the mosque does not endorse exorcism and that it took place without the knowledge or permission of the leadership.

  * * *

  Sara and Sadiq’s stories are based mainly on what they themselves related to me about their childhoods, youth, and lives in Norway. I have only Sadiq’s version of large parts of his dramatic accounts of his trips to Syria. I went through the details of his story with him numerous times, double-checking and asking him to confirm earlier statements, and attempted to find secondary sources for times, places, and events. The accounts of the prison cell in al-Dana, torture, and interrogation are, in their entirety, Sadiq’s version, as are the days he spent in Hatay prior to his initial entry into Syria. The story of the sisters as described by two al-Nusra fighters on the website Justpaste.it agrees with Sadiq’s account. In addition, the filmmakers Styrk Jansen and Veslemøy Hvidsteen interviewed one of Sadiq’s fellow captives, who confirmed the parts of the story he was witness to. Sadiq’s experiences also follow a pattern consistent with what others have told of their own time in IS detention. Other people who have made the same journey across the border to search for their children, prior to Sadiq’s trip and subsequent to it, also were asked to enlist in IS and then imprisoned as spies and tortured before their eventual release.