Currently viewing the tag: "Syria"

If you journey to a town, entering through a valley into a warren of backstreets, your view of the location is very different than if you had taken the mountain road, approaching the town with a vista that enabled you to see its entirety, stretched out along a river, covering the expanse of a valley and wandering up […]

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Critics of either U.S. or Russian policy would prefer the rhetorical simplicity of merely pointing out flaws in the other’s position. What is really the problem is that both want war.

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I spent ten years working on issues related to contemporary genocide at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, including developing an exhibition on genocide that presented brief histories of Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Darfur, Sudan. Needless to say, I have seen a lot of images and video of the impact of violence on the human body. What […]

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ISIL’s message: Where the world “denies” potential recruits their masculinity, the Islamic State is ready to confer. The group promises these young men that by immigrating to the combat zones of Iraq and Syria, they will “reclaim” their masculinity by assuming their idealized gender roles of fighter and protector.

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Why would these girls and women, some of whom bring their own young children, decide to journey to one of the world’s most dangerous warzones under the control of a violent insurgent group? Of course, not all women and girls under ISIL control have had any choice whatsoever in their circumstances, perhaps the most dramatic and well-documented examples stem from ISIL’s treatment of Yazidi women, who have been sold as sex slaves, as discussed below. But for the growing group of older girls and women who have responded to ISIL recruitment efforts, a range of promises draw them towards the group.

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By Dyan Mazurana, Dallin Van Leuven and Rachel Gordon–ISIL’s propaganda gives the illusion that ISIL-controlled areas offer a safe and holy haven, where Shari’a law reigns. It is this ideal that, in part, attracts Muslim males and females with promises of opportunities to directly or indirectly wage jihad and practice their idealized masculine (the fighter/husband/father/protector) and feminine (the wife/mother/protected) gender roles within this contrived society.

But their materials go even further to tailor their message for different audiences. What follows are two blog posts separately discussing ISIL recruitment materials and tactics for older girls and women, and for boys and men.

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