Parallel women's network within Islamic State used for recruiting, sex slavery, reveals captive

The widow of a senior member of the terror group Islamic State, who was captured by US military personnel, has made shocking revelations about the existence of a parallel women’s network within the Islamic State which is largely responsible for the working of the terror group. [caption id=“attachment_2331776” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] There is a parallel women’s network working within the Islamic State. Reuters[/caption] The US military personnel captured Umm Sayyaf, wife of Islamic State’s chief financier, during a raid in May, according to The Daily Beast. Sayyaf, the top female Islamic State captive in US custody, revealed that an entire hierarchy existed among women in the Islamic State in which a woman’s rank was decided on the basis of her husband’s rank. The report said that Sayyaf revealed that on the lower rungs of the Islamic State, women are “tasked primarily with serving the sexual needs of ISIS’s male members, maintaining a home and producing future ISIS fighters.” Moreover, there were women in the terror group who worked for the religious police ‘Al-Khanssaa Brigade’ to make sure that other women in Islamic State-controlled areas were following the strict religious and social rules set by the terror group. “There are female spies there to make sure other women stay in line. And still others facilitate a sex slave trade, assessing other women or arranging temporary marriages for them,” said the report. The report added that the promise of a bride was also used as an incentive by Islamic State to recruit men, adding that a recently arrested American Islamic State recruit was told that he could have four wives. In April, another _Reuters_ report had said that women travelling to join Islamic State militants were no longer just seeking to become “jihadi brides” but are taking on new roles, on the frontline, in logistics and intelligence and as medics, according to military and expert sources. “A number of Western women who travelled to (Islamic State) have expressed their willingness to fight and to be in combat. They want to become Jihad Jane types,” Jayne Huckerby, director of the International Human Rights Clinic at Duke University’s School of Law in North Carolina, had said. (With inputs from Reuters)