Bethoncourt, France – There is an increase in adolescent girls joining Islamic jihadists after being lured by Internet recruiters, European government officials say.
The New York Times reports that while authorities are concerned over the young girls’ well-being in Syria and Iraq, they’re also concerned they could become real threats in their European home countries, especially as they do not draw the attention that young males do.
In October, a 15-year-old French Muslim girl from Bethoncourt, France, named Soukaïna recently fled to Istanbul and then to Gaziantep – a Turkish city known as the gateway to Syria for jihadists – after using her sister’s passport to leave from the Mulhouse airport. Authorities approached Soukaïna’s parents to months earlier to alert them to the fact that she had been visiting websites preaching jihad.
Another 15-year-old girl was stopped by authorities when she tried to go to Syria earlier this year. She told them that once her recruiters realized she wouldn’t be able to leave the country, they pushed her to find weapons and targets and strike at home against Jews.
While the recruiting is happening all over Europe, experts say the issue is more severe in France due to a large Muslim population.
Jihadists target the girls by first engaging in seemingly harmless discussions before slowly moving toward discussions about politics. Some recruiters will show the impressionable girls videos of Muslims experiencing violence and will offer them marriage or an opportunity to do humanitarian work.
In Soukaïna’s town, the unemployment rate is more than 24 percent, and she lived in a low-income, somewhat isolated area in housing projects. Many of the older women do not speak French and rarely leave the area. Targeting detached or cutoff young girls and isolating them, in addition to pushing the idea that they live in a culture that that is hostile to their religion, are a few of the ways the recruiters talk them into joining their cause.
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