ICSVE Concerns for the Welfare of a Newborn Child of a Detained Former ISIS Member

This is a letter sent to the government in response to a request of Dr. Abdul Haqq Baker, of STRAP, UK and out of concern for the welfare of the newborn child of UK citizen Shamima Begum and the consequences she may suffer for a decision made as a minor living in the UK.  The letter has been conveyed to the government and we await an answer to it. The newborn has since died.

February 26, 2019

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing this letter in response to a request from Dr
Abdul Haqq Baker, of STRAP, UK, who I am meeting with during the UNODC Cross Regional Workshop on Preventing
Violent Extremism through Rehabilitation and Reintegration of Violent Extremist
and Terrorist Offenders held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Feb 25-29, 2019.  I am the Director of the International Center
for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE), a think tank focused on studying
terrorism and violent extremism, Adjunct Associate Professor of Psychiatry in
the Georgetown University School of Medicine, and a psychologist of 25+ years
experience, treating clinical cases and researching the psychosocial
underpinnings of terrorism. I have spent the last two decades studying the
trajectories of individuals into, and back out of terrorism, having in-depth
interviewed over 650 terrorists, their family members and close associates
around the world. Over the past four years, I have interviewed 141 ISIS
defectors, returnees and prisoners: men, women and minors from many countries
around the world.  In 2006-2007, I
designed for the U.S. Department of Defense the psychological and Islamic
challenge components of the Detainee
Rehabilitation Program, which was applied to 22,000+ detainees and 800
juveniles held by U.S. forces in Iraq. I am also a trained child development
specialist and a mother of three. I have helped to birth babies, have worked
inside prisons, and know what it is to raise children in third world environments.

Along with my ICSVE colleagues, I have been traveling over
the past two years into Iraqi prisons and Kurdish-run camps and detention
centers in Rojava, Northern Syria.  In
that regard, I have interviewed 10 women held in YPG-run detention camps in
Rojava and witnessed the harsh conditions under which these mothers and
children live. The women (and their prison caretakers) that we have interviewed
in these camps have told us that medical care is scarce, medicines are not
available, good food is costly and difficult to procure, vaccinations for
children are not provided, schools and child development services don’t exist, winters
are cold in the tents, dust frequently fills the air, creating breathing
difficulties for their children, fires break out in the tents due to cooking in
them, and some women threaten and bully the others—including threatening with
knives. 

Mothers and children have died in the camps, including three
who reportedly died of Typhoid in Camp Roj last year.  One mother we met told us about her child
having regular asthma attacks due to the dusty air, attacks in which he turns
blue and stops breathing with no medications provided. Another shared her
terror of Pertussis (whooping cough) and others of Typhoid. Mothers told us
they feared the cold winter conditions and illnesses that occur during Syrian
winters. 

Not formally charged with any crimes and totally uncertain
of their futures and unable to advance their cases through a proper legal
system, mothers in YPG camps live under constant uncertainty, stress, fear, and
anxiety. We saw dozens of children in the camps and witnessed that children
literally play with, and on rocks, strewn over the desert ground throughout the
camp. There are, to our knowledge, no playgrounds, toys or books provided, and
we were told that any education provided is very substandard and none provided
for preschoolers.

Shamima Begum surrendered just after our last visit to
northern Syria and we have not yet interviewed her. As far as my knowledge of
her case, which I was aware of since 2015, Shamima left the UK as a 15-year-old
in the company of two class mates purportedly on a “teenage” adventure. Shamima
left the UK at an age when her mature adult thinking would not normally have been
developed yet,  reflected in the fact
that at that age most minors would not normally be tried in court of as an
adult. To my knowledge, her decision to go to Syria at that age seems to now be
the determining factor for currently barring her re-entry. While certainly she
has had many experiences inside ISIS that may make her look dangerous, if she
is like most ISIS women (approximately 30) we have interviewed, she may not be
dangerous at all, and she is still a teenager.

My experience talking to dozens of women who lived inside of
ISIS is that most were wives and mothers, although some did become part of the
ISIS hisbah (Islamic police) and
carried out brutal punishments upon other women. In addition, some were weapons
trained and some served as spies, combatants and suicide cadres. Others became
propagandists and served to incite and seduce others to join the group. Most,
however, did not receive weapons or ideological training and had very little
power inside the group. ISIS was a very male dominated and totalitarian state.

From our interviews of women who left their countries and
traveled to ISIS in the same time period as Shamima, we have found a  significant role of social media and Internet-based
recruiters who were particularly adept at seducing young girls with promises of
significance, dignity, traditional marriages coupled with adventure, wealth and
Islamic living. “Contagion” behavior among teens, particularly girls, is
common.  In Shamima’s case, a schoolmate
had already been seduced by ISIS recruiters into traveling into ISIS territory
and the school that Shamima attended had failed to adequately warn her parents
of this fact, nor take adequate precautions to ensure this ISIS “contagion” did
not spread, as it clearly did to Shamima and her two classmates who followed
the first girl into ISIS.

In my experience of interviewing women who travelled to join
ISIS, both young and older, women did not understand that once they crossed the
borders into ISIS territory they would literally be deprived of their freedom.
For instance, they would be locked into an ISIS madhafa, i.e. “guest” house and not be allowed to leave until they
agreed to marry an ISIS cadre (in the case of single women).  Every aspect of their life would be
controlled.  In the case of couples, their
husbands would be forced to take ISIS shariah
training—ideologically indoctrinating them into the hateful ISIS ideology
passed off as

supported by Islamic scripture and traditions and to follow
all ISIS orders in their “hear and obey” totalitarian state. Men were to
indoctrinate their female family members and control them in all aspects of
their lives. ISIS men would at pain of death, imprisonment and torture be
forced to serve, and usually also fight for the organization, and would be
punished for their female family members dress or other infringements. There
are many instances of ISIS women being executed and stoned to death. 

At the time Shamima entered ISIS, they had conquered
significant territory and overtaken resources that made them one of, if not the, richest terrorist organization in
history.  She would likely have been
given a home to live in and her husband paid an adequate wage, along with other
resources for living well in the ISIS Caliphate.  If she lived in Raqqa, she may have at first
believed she was living in a true Islamic Caliphate. 

However, as in the case of most we have interviewed, such a belief
would have been quickly shattered, as she witnessed ISIS brutalities,
corruption and un-Islamic behaviors. I am not aware if Shamima tried to escape
ISIS, but do know that many European women we talked with tried repeatedly to
escape but found it too dangerous, with some being shot or witnessing their
husbands and fathers arrested and tortured, and in some cases executed for
attempting to escape. Smugglers who helped Europeans escape were expensive and
at times tricked and raped their female clients. Likewise, ISIS told women that
they would be raped if they tried to escape to YPG territory. Being too afraid
to try to escape would be an understandable behavior for a young girl. I am
also not aware of her media activities but can state that ISIS leaders often
forced minors to take part in its media publications, including videos,
sometimes using extreme violence to ensure their participation. Nine-year-old
Matthew Elhassani’s ISIS father, for example, reportedly brutally beat his
mother for trying to prevent him from being featured in an ISIS propaganda
video threatening Americans.

Shamima has recently given birth to a son in detention. The
YPG detention camps are harsh, dangerous, unsanitary and unhealthy places to
house a newborn, or any child, for that matter. 
The newborn should immediately be removed from the camp to ensure his
best health, and preferably not separated from his mother. I am not aware if
Shamima is breastfeeding but separating a newborn from its lactating mother
would not be in the infant’s best interest, and normally keeping mothers and
children together at that age is crucial to ensure healthy attachment. Shamima
has already lost two children and would not likely do well psychologically with
being separated from her newborn. Moreover, it would certainly disrupt her
attachment and bonding process and likely interfere with successful future
parenting—to the detriment of both.

In my experience working with hundreds of terrorists and
designing programs for their psychological and religious treatment, my
expectation would be that if Shamima was mandated into psychological treatment
and  received religious counseling from a
moderate Muslim teacher, she would likely move away from any radical and
extremists beliefs and overtime recover from her experiences inside the
terrorist group.  Having

survived the demise of the Islamic State and witnessed all
the brutalities of the group in its last throes of survival has been, in my observations,
a significant deradicalization program for many of its previous adherents who
fell away from the group even while continuing to be trapped inside it.  Shamima has likely already been significantly
disappointed in her teenage fantasies of what the group would provide but has
had no good opportunity to recover yet. Family and individual counseling with a
well-informed and well-supervised psychologist, coupled with moderate Islamic
counseling, can likely help her overcome any extremist ideas she still harbors,
come to terms with the fact that she offered herself as material support to a
terrorist organization and the traumas she undoubtedly encountered during her
time inside the group.

Absent any evidence of criminal, violent behavior and conduct
in Syria on her part, I would expect with regular compliance to a UK based
psychological treatment program, coupled with some sort of court-ordered religious
counseling, she would very likely recover and would not pose a future danger in
UK society. 

In my professional opinion, leaving her in the YPG detention
camp with no access to regular and adequate counseling resources and good
medical care simply poses real threats to the life of her newborn, who is
innocent of any terrorist charges, and to her as well.  I would recommend returning her and the
newborn home to the UK as quickly as possible with court-ordered treatment as a
condition of return.

Please let me know if you have any questions or if I can
provide any further information to aid in this case.

Best regards,

Anne Speckhard, Ph.D.