[House Hearing, 114 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
WOMEN UNDER ISIS RULE:
FROM BRUTALITY TO RECRUITMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 29 2015
__________
Serial No. 114-85
__________
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COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California, Chairman
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida BRAD SHERMAN, California
DANA ROHRABACHER, California GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
JOE WILSON, South Carolina GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia
MICHAEL T. McCAUL, Texas THEODORE E. DEUTCH, Florida
TED POE, Texas BRIAN HIGGINS, New York
MATT SALMON, Arizona KAREN BASS, California
DARRELL E. ISSA, California WILLIAM KEATING, Massachusetts
TOM MARINO, Pennsylvania DAVID CICILLINE, Rhode Island
JEFF DUNCAN, South Carolina ALAN GRAYSON, Florida
MO BROOKS, Alabama AMI BERA, California
PAUL COOK, California ALAN S. LOWENTHAL, California
RANDY K. WEBER SR., Texas GRACE MENG, New York
SCOTT PERRY, Pennsylvania LOIS FRANKEL, Florida
RON DeSANTIS, Florida TULSI GABBARD, Hawaii
MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina JOAQUIN CASTRO, Texas
TED S. YOHO, Florida ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois
CURT CLAWSON, Florida BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania
SCOTT DesJARLAIS, Tennessee
REID J. RIBBLE, Wisconsin
DAVID A. TROTT, Michigan
LEE M. ZELDIN, New York
DANIEL DONOVAN, New York
Amy Porter, Chief of Staff Thomas Sheehy, Staff Director
Jason Steinbaum, Democratic Staff Director
C O N T E N T S
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Page
WITNESSES
Ms. Sasha Havlicek, chief executive officer, Institute for
Strategic Dialogue............................................. 4
Mr. Edward Watts, director and producer, Escaping ISIS........... 26
Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D., director, Gender and Peacebuilding,
Center for Governance, Law and Society, United States Institute
of Peace....................................................... 30
Ariel Ahram, Ph.D., assistant professor, Virginia Tech School of
Public and International Affairs............................... 39
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
Ms. Sasha Havlicek: Prepared statement........................... 8
Mr. Edward Watts: Prepared statement............................. 28
Kathleen Kuehnast, Ph.D.: Prepared statement..................... 33
Ariel Ahram, Ph.D.: Prepared statement........................... 41
APPENDIX
Hearing notice................................................... 68
Hearing minutes.................................................. 69
The Honorable Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a Representative in Congress
from the State of Florida: Prepared statement.................. 71
The Honorable Gerald E. Connolly, a Representative in Congress
from the Commonwealth of Virginia: Prepared statement.......... 72
Written responses from Ms. Sasha Havlicek to questions submitted
for the record by the Honorable Edward R. Royce, a
Representative in Congress from the State of California, and
chairman, Committee on Foreign Affairs......................... 73
Written responses from Ms. Sasha Havlicek and Ariel Ahram, Ph.D.
to questions submitted for the record by the Honorable Ileana
Ros-Lehtinen................................................... 75
WOMEN UNDER ISIS RULE:
FROM BRUTALITY TO RECRUITMENT
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WEDNESDAY, JULY 29, 2015
House of Representatives,
Committee on Foreign Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 o'clock a.m.,
in room 2172 Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Edward Royce
(chairman of the committee) presiding.
Chairman Royce. This hearing will come to order.
I am pleased to announce that this will be the first of
several hearings on the status of women around the world. The
committee has worked on a bipartisan basis to promote women in
our development efforts through a number of bills that we
passed out of this committee, and I believe these hearings will
allow us to build on that good work.
Today, we look at the brutalization and oppression of women
living under ISIS. This violence against women is almost
without parallel, from widespread rape and trafficking to
forced marriage and murder. Female captives, including
thousands of Yazidi women and girls, are sold as slaves in
modern day slave markets. One U.N. official described meeting
with a woman in ISIS-occupied territory who was forced to marry
15 different men in 1 year. Some of these so-called
``marriages'' lasted only 3 days.
That is life under ISIS for these women today. As one
witness will testify, much of this seemingly crazed and
indiscriminate violence against women is in fact a sinister and
quite calculated strategy that goes to the heart of ISIS's
survival. By forcing local women to marry into ISIS, the group
expands its demographic base while reducing the population of
those diverse communities it seeks to eradicate and to replace.
Simply put, ISIS needs women--needs to control them--to
establish its ``caliphate'' and give rise to the next
generation of ISIS. That is why ISIS is investing heavily in
recruiting foreign women to join its ranks. And with each girl
who becomes brainwashed, ISIS has a new poster child for its
jihadi girl-power propaganda.
Sometimes it can seem like all we do is look at the worst
of humanity. So I appreciate the efforts of Mr. Watts, one of
our witnesses with us today. I appreciate his efforts to
elevate the voices of those courageous individuals who are
working to counter ISIS, often at great personal risk.
For all the horrible atrocities being committed in this
region, there are those incredible stories of strength and
integrity, many of them from women and girls with the most to
lose: From the Kurdish woman on the front lines against ISIS,
who declares that she fights ``to take back the role of women
in society.''
We appreciate the fact that so many of these Kurdish women,
30 percent of those battalions that you see, Kurdish
battalions, are all-women battalions, fighting on the front
lines. By the way, only with small arms and rifles, because
they can't get access. We have not given them or sold them to
the Kurds, the long-range artillery or mortars or anti-tank
weapons that they say they need. But they stand and they fight
as they say to protect all women in society and they protect
others besides the Kurdish behind their lines.
And we have the female responders pulling victims from the
rubble in Syria. These female units go out and take on that
role. And we have the captured Yazidi girl described by Mr.
Watts, who walked right past her would-be rescuers when she
realized ISIS had staged an ambush for those rescuers, thus
saving their lives at the expense of her own life.
These stories inspire us to act. Credible voices need to be
heard. They need to hear the fact that ISIS land is not a
utopia.
We must prioritize the physical and psychological welfare
of those women and girls who have escaped from ISIS, many of
whom have been subjected to unbelievable trauma, and we need to
support leaders in the region who are confronting the stigma of
sexual violence head on and calling on families to welcome back
male and female survivors with open arms.
Although we focused today on ISIS, we know full well that
Assad's brutality against Syrians includes not only barrel
bombs and starvation, but also widespread sexual violence.
Ranking Member Engel and I have pressed for the consideration
of no-fly or safe zones in the region, and we are pleased to
hear of Turkey's recently increased cooperation with the United
States on this issue.
I had lunch with the Turkish Ambassador last week to
discuss this issue. I think this is a very important step. I
also just for a moment wanted to thank Mr. Engel for his long-
time support over many years of trying to get a focus on what
was likely to be the blowback in Syria as a consequence of the
violence there, and also his efforts where he worked with me
and others on this committee when ISIS first came out of the
desert and called for air strikes.
We went a year without doing that, and we watched ISIS take
city after city after city, across Syria and then across Iraq,
and now have some 5 million souls under the control of ISIS. I
think our air power should have been used back then in order to
degrade and slow or defeat them when they were targets out on
the open desert.
But I now turn to Ranking Member Engel, whose passionate
leadership on the crisis in Iraq and Syria has been of great
benefit I think. And thank you, Mr. Engel.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for convening
this hearing and, as always, thank you for your leadership on
this issue, and all the other issues that this committee
confronts.
To our witnesses, welcome to the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Thank you for your time, and I look forward to your testimony.
None of the issues that this committee deals with are
simple, and the fight against ISIS is certainly no exception.
Just this week we see two of our partners, Turkish and Kurdish
fighters, battling each other. This situation is a mess, and
there is no other way to put it. That doesn't mean we should
look the other way. On the contrary, we need to dig deep, look
at all of the aspects of this crisis, and keep working toward a
viable strategy.
Today, we are addressing a particular concern of mine, the
way women have been victimized in ISIS's brutal rampage. In
ISIS-controlled areas, women have suffered horrendous violence,
they have been separated from their families, and they have
been bought, sold, and gifted as if they were property.
Nearly a year ago, ISIS began its deadly offensive on the
Yazidi population in the Sinjar area of northern Iraq. As many
as 50,000 Yazidis were forced to flee. Five thousand Yazidi men
were massacred, and between 5,000 and 7,000 women and girls
became ISIS slaves. We have heard the horrifying stories from
survivors, accounts of systematic rape, torture, forced
marriage, and other abuses. Girls as young as 12 have been
raped, often multiple times and by different fighters.
Sexual violence has a long, dark history as a tool of war,
yet it seems that this type of violence is central to ISIS
ideology. ISIS terrorists are using rape in an effort to wipe
away cultural diversity, religious minorities, and killing LGBT
persons in order to realize their twisted vision of a
homogeneous caliphate. Sounds a lot like the Nazis to me.
It is also troubling that more than 500 women from Western
countries have chosen to join ISIS. Lured by online
glorification of life in Daesh, women from the UK, France,
Sweden, and other countries have been encouraged to abandon
their communities and join ISIS. It really perplexes me. These
women recruited to ISIS are then funneled into domestic roles,
recruitment jobs, or all-women patrol brigades to enforce the
group's perverted world view.
So today I am hoping our witnesses can shed more light on
this problem and share their ideas on how to meet this
challenge. What motivates the women who join the ranks of ISIS?
What motivates anyone who joins the ranks of ISIS? An
organization with such a brutal record of violence against
women and girls, why would women want to join them? How do we
disrupt these recruitment and radicalization efforts? And how
can we assist women to be part of a solution?
We know that with the right tools and opportunities women
can be tremendous agents of change in preventing violent
extremism. How can we adapt our policies, integrating women to
address some of the tactics ISIS uses to recruit and
radicalize?
So I look forward to the testimony, to learning more about
the specific challenges women face in confronting ISIS, and how
we can best address the recruitment of women who join this
heinous organization in Iraq and Syria.
And I want to add to what the chairman said. Three years
ago, I put in a bill which would have authorized the aiding and
equipping of the Free Syria Army. And I said this 3 years ago,
and I say it now, I can't help but thinking if we had been
there and had done it when it should have been done, might
things have been different now in Syria? It is the Syrian
people who are bearing the brunt of all of the atrocities that
are happening, and I think the United States needs to be more
than just a passive bystander.
So I thank all of our witnesses, and I look forward to your
testimony.
Thank you.
Chairman Royce. Thank you, Mr. Engel.
We are joined this morning by Ms. Sasha Havlicek. She is
co-founder and CEO at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue
where she works closely on counter extremism. She also co-
founded the Women and Extremism Initiative.
We have Mr. Edward Watts. He is the director and producer
of the film Escaping ISIS, which features firsthand accounts of
women and girls who escaped from the terror group. Mr. Watts
has also produced other critically acclaimed documentaries.
We have Dr. Kathleen Kuehnast. She is director of the
Gender and Peacebuilding Program at the U.S. Institute of
Peace. Prior to this position, Dr. Kuehnast worked for 15 years
in the international development field, including time with The
World Bank.
Dr. Ariel Ahram is associate professor of government and
international affairs at Virginia Tech. He has written
extensively on Syria and on Iraq and on ISIS.
Without objection, the witnesses' full prepared statements
will be made part of the record. Members will have 5 calendar
days to submit statements and questions and extraneous material
for the record.
Ms. Havlicek, if you could summarize your remarks. You will
have 5 minutes each, and then we will go to the questions.
STATEMENT OF MS. SASHA HAVLICEK, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER,
INSTITUTE FOR STRATEGIC DIALOGUE
Ms. Havlicek. Thank you so much Mr. Chairman and
distinguished members of the committee. I am very honored to
have been invited here today and to be part of this extremely
important discussion.
My testimony is looking at the part of this challenge that
you have already raised but that has been I think largely
overlooked despite the extraordinary, unprecedented numbers of
women that are flocking to join ISIS, that are leaving in
particular Western countries and migrating to ISIS territory.
Girls and women are--and I think this is difficult to
comprehend--it feels counter intuitive--choosing of their own
volition to join ISIS and subscribing, submitting voluntarily,
to their ideology and to their rule. Women in extremist and
terrorist organizations of course is not a new phenomenon, but
the numbers here are indeed unprecedented. There are now
thousands of women worldwide that have emigrated to ISIS
territory, just from Western countries.
The numbers that official estimates have suggested are well
over 550. That number is taken from estimates at the beginning
of 2015 and will have grown substantially by now. It is
important to know that these are not foreign fighters. We tend
to hear the media categorize them that way.
For now, ISIS prohibits women from entering the
battlefield, but that does not reflect the violent narratives
that these women project in their social media lives--social
media lives that we have been watching and analyzing over the
last year, with a dataset, a unique dataset that has been
tracking the developments of girls who have left Western
countries and joined ISIS territory.
So they are, despite the fact of not being combatants,
proving to be as much agents of the group and its ideology as
men: As propagandists and recruiters--as we have heard, they
are prolific online--in particular Western girls--as part of
peer-to-peer, very sophisticated marketing and recruitment
strategies, goading men into action--that is also important to
note: For a 15-year-old girl to be able to say, ``I have made
it out here on my own. Why haven't you?''--but also as inciters
to violence. And they are, again, goading people who cannot
make it out to the battlefield to do as much damage as they can
at home.
They are also, as we have heard, enforcers of strict pre-
modern Islamic codes, penal codes, as part of the Al-Khansa
all-female moral police brigade. And of course, as mothers of
the next generation of jihadists, a role that is held in high
esteem for ISIS, but also other jihadi groups.
The violence of their online narratives is striking, and my
written testimony is scattered with evidence of what they hope
to be doing in the longer term. There is a wishful thinking
there that they will be enabled to join the violence at some
stage later.
I think it is important we understand that this is not a
sideshow. This is very much a core part of ISIS's strategy, and
it is a part of the evolving terrorist landscape. It is a core
tactic of jihadist groups, well before in fact ISIS emerged on
the scene as the predominant group. And as such, they should
matter to us more than they have to date among security and
intelligence circles.
Why are they important to ISIS? They are in part PR, in
part troop morale, and in part, and most importantly perhaps,
state-building strategy.
Why are these girls going? For a long time, in looking at
the challenge of radicalization, Western authorities and
governments I think have been viewing this problem primarily
through an equalities and socioeconomic lens. That has not
borne out in our minds to be true by the data. Women in our
dataset in particular defy easy categorization on socioeconomic
lines. I think that is the case across the board, female and
male recruitment.
It is true that the grievances that are articulated in
these women's accounts, not dissimilar to the male grievance
narrative around identity, around the Muslim community globally
being oppressed and there being no intervention to stop it
happening, specifically, on the identity side of things, these
women talk about the Western emancipation project as a ruse, as
a means to sexualize women.
ISIS, absurdly, is seen as freeing women from that
``tyranny.'' And so this jihadi girl-power subculture has
emerged. There is a meme that I have included in the testimony,
which is a parody of a beauty industry set of advertisements.
It is a woman fully covered, and it says, ``Covered girl,
because you are worth it.'' And so rooted in Western culture,
this propaganda is quite clearly coming out of it but rejecting
it.
But what has been largely ignored--and I think to our
detriment--is what I see as the pull factors. The pull factors
are a combination of an ideology that has been seeded over
three decades--a Wahhabi Salafist ideology that is essentially
the intellectual foundations for the movements that we see in
play today, including, but not only, ISIS.
And ``Brand Caliphate'' has done more for the
diversification of recruitment around the world than anything
else, including the recruitment of women. There has been a
major spike in female recruitment, because ``Brand Caliphate''
is more than just about fighting. It is about building--
building a utopian vision of a pure Islamic state.
And so we need to be looking at how ``Brand Caliphate'' is
succeeding to reach around the world through a digital era
hypercharging of the narratives, extremely successful
propaganda recruitment machinery that has essentially gone
unchallenged, a recruitment machinery that combines iconic
memes, apps that have been developed, an extremely
sophisticated, very evolved, decentralized communication
strategy that would be the envy of many social media marketing
companies and organizations at large.
What to do? Just very, very briefly. We cannot beat the
radicalization problem, the conveyor belt challenge, through
drones or border measures. We need a proportional soft power
strategy, a machinery that can close the gap we have allowed to
emerge between their propaganda recruitment machinery on the
one hand and our response, which has not been professionalized
to date.
The objective cannot simply be to reduce the number of
recruits, female or otherwise. It must be to undermine the
underlying ideology if we are going to have a long-term impact
on this challenge. Credible counter narratives are absolutely
key. In our minds, we need to be undermining, in the first
place, ``Brand Caliphate.'' And those that can speak to the
heresy, the inauthenticity, of that Brand are vital.
We of course have been working with the largest global
network of former extremists, survivors of extremism. Those
voices, as we know, are particularly credible and important. We
need more women in this space. We need to be growing those
networks, so that we can incorporate women. Women, female-
focused counter narratives are to date entirely lacking in the
counter extremism space.
And so just as a last point, we need counter narratives and
we need to be getting ahead of the curve with inoculation
strategies, tools for those at the front line, whether teachers
or social workers that are seeing the first signs of young
people being groomed or young people being approached by
radicalizers. And so we need a compelling set of tools, some of
which we have started to develop, to get ahead of that problem.
We need more female practitioners in the CVE space. This is
vital, because we need to be addressing this from a gender
perspective. And we need a human rights approach that is
consistent and sustained. We need to be upholding female human
rights around the world in ways that perhaps we have grown lazy
about and relativist in our approaches.
They have a massive head start, massive resourcing. We need
to now scale up what we know works. We do know that a number of
things work. We have data to prove that in the experiments that
my Institute has undertaken in the counter narrative space we
can reach the individuals who are at risk very directly, and we
can have an impact by engaging with them.
So we need to implement that competition strategy, so that
we can drown out ISIS both on and offline.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Havlicek follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you.
To begin Mr. Watts' testimony, I think we are going to show
a brief clip from his documentary Escaping ISIS. So we will see
if that works.
[Video played.]
STATEMENT OF MR. EDWARD WATTS, DIRECTOR AND PRODUCER, ESCAPING
ISIS
Mr. Watts. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and distinguished
members of the committee, for the opportunity to testify today.
For the last 6 months, as has been said, I have been working on
this film called Escaping ISIS in the U.S., Escape from ISIS in
the UK, that explores what life is like for an estimated 4
million women living under the rule of this Islamic State
group.
I believe it is the most important subject I have covered
in my career, and I am very glad the committee has made it the
focus of this special hearing.
The treatment of women by ISIS is sometimes overshadowed by
the terror group's more spectacular atrocities, yet I would
argue no other section of society suffers more on a day-to-day
basis at their hands. In the course of my work, I documented
ISIS's abduction of thousands of non-Muslim women and girls,
their sexual enslavement, and even the rape of girls as young
as nine.
I gathered testimony that described markets where ISIS
trade young women like cattle, or even rent them to each other
for a few hundred dollars. They crimes are condoned, even
celebrated, by ISIS's official publications. And it is
important to remember that Muslim women, too, endure terrible
oppression.
They are subject to severe limitations on their freedom of
movement and right to education and work. They must abide by a
strict dress code enforced through harsh physical punishments.
Some are coerced into marriage to ISIS fighters; others have
been stoned to death on trumped up charges of adultery. This
should be the stuff of history books, not contemporary news
reports.
It is worth noting as well that ISIS's extreme
interpretation of Islam is not shared by the majority of
Muslims in the territory under their control. Yet disturbingly
I met a woman who had been forced to join the organization and
then subsequently so thoroughly brainwashed that she now shared
ISIS's vision for society, even to the point of punishing
others who defied it. And we know, as Ms. Havlicek said, that
young women from our own nations have been targeted for similar
indoctrination and lured to the territory under the extremist
control.
Such stories show that this is a struggle not only with the
terrorist organization but also a system of ideas, one that
threatens the principles on which our modern society is based.
It is understandable that from afar we may feel powerless to
stop these atrocities, but there is action we could take.
As you have seen, during the course of filming I met a
number of local activists who with almost no outside support
were risking their lives to undermine ISIS's rule and save the
women and girls they can reach. Those activists could use our
help, and we could do more to support the rehabilitation of
women who come back, often with severe psychological and
physical trauma.
The example of those survivors and activists should inspire
us to reevaluate our policies and ask what more we can do.
Renewed action is not only necessary but urgent. Every day that
ISIS exists, more women will suffer horrendous violence or
sexual assault, and more people will be subject to
indoctrination in their ideas.
The fight against ISIS is all of our fight. It will require
time, effort, and sacrifice on our part, too. But in ending
their regime, we all stand to gain.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Watts follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you, Edward.
Dr. Kuehnast.
STATEMENT OF KATHLEEN KUEHNAST, PH.D., DIRECTOR, GENDER AND
PEACEBUILDING, CENTER FOR GOVERNANCE, LAW AND SOCIETY, UNITED
STATES INSTITUTE OF PEACE
Ms. Kuehnast. Good morning, and thank you, Chairman Royce
and Ranking Member Engel, for this opportunity to testify
before you today on an important and timely subject.
As ISIS captures land, resources, and people, it has
borrowed a page out of the history book of other wars where
deploying sexual violence destroyed families, communities, and
the very moral fiber of a society.
When sexual violence is used in war, or by extremist groups
to achieve their ends, it can be even more devastating than a
gun. Major General Patrick Cammaert, a retired U.N. force
commander in Eastern Congo, said that sexual violence is
cheaper than a bullet and far more effective in its efforts to
destroy an individual, a group, or a society.
How best should the United States Government respond to
these horrifying accounts out of ISIS-controlled areas? Sexual
violence and conflict must be seen by Congress and in U.S.
foreign policy as a security issue. It is not simply a women's
issue, even though many of its victims are women. It cannot be
solved by women alone, nor can prevention happen in isolation.
Through U.N. security resolutions like 1325 and 1820, and
our own U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and
Security, sexual violence is framed as a peace and security
issue. For the sake of this testimony, sexual violence includes
acts of individual rape, gang rape, sexual slavery, sexual
torture, genital mutilation, and sexual humiliation. Its
victims are all ages, men and women, boys and girls.
For women and girls, the results of sexual violence
perpetrated individually or on mass scale by ISIS results in
isolation, exclusion, suicide, and, in the case of some parts
of Iraq, murder by a family member in order to ``preserve the
family's honor.'' There is no easy path to healing from rape
and sexual violence and conflict. It is a long-term process and
must be an integral and formal part of reconciliation in post-
conflict situation.
A year ago, I testified before this committee on engaging
and educating women and girls in the prevention of violent
extremism. I emphasized, in addition to supporting girls going
to school, we must strategically engage fathers, brothers, and
sons in learning about gender equality to further enable a more
capable and inclusive state, and to help end violence as a
means of resolving conflict.
In the same way, policymaking community needs analysis and
programming on how to help societies that have fused manhood
and violence together as we see going on in ISIS today. Truly,
this is a rite of passage issue. If the only way to become an
adult male in your society is through a right of passage
involving violence and war, then the chances for peace and
security are significantly reduced.
It is alarming the way ISIS is reaching into the hearts and
minds of very young people even under the age of 14 years of
age, to entice them with promises of belonging and a violent
sense of power over women and girls. This issue is why I
believe the next security and peacebuilding challenge deserving
our full attention is on children, peace, and security. It
identifies both the humanitarian services and protections
needed for boys and girls in war and in refugee camps.
Over the past year, reports have emerged that ISIS is
setting their sights on young children. In March of this year,
the London-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for
Human Rights, reported that ISIS had recruited at least 400
children this year. They refer to them as ``tiny terrorists.''
Children are used in combat missions to execute prisoners and
spies, families and neighborhoods, and markets and schools.
Yes, it does remind us of another era of the Nazi generation of
young recruits.
Because we are not collecting complete datasets on boys and
girls, we are not fully tracking ISIS recruitment efforts. The
Observatory reports boys as young as six are recruited into the
``Cubs of the Lions'' of the Caliphate. The boys are lured with
the idea of money and weapons, shipped off to camps where they
learn to shoot rifles. First, they learn to behead dolls, and
then they execute human hostages.
For girls, the tactic of sexual violence takes the form of
kidnapping girls, enslaving them, reselling them as ``child
brides.'' There is nothing childlike about these brides, and
there is nothing bridelike about an enslaved girl.
The reality of ISIS trolling for children is something that
should cause us great anxiety. We have inadequate data to fully
understand what is happening in front of our very eyes. If we
are to fight this trend, we need better data, how many children
are being recruited, what is happening to them in the camps,
can they be rescued and returned to society.
Years ago, I spent a summer working with 5- and 6-year-
olds, Protestants and Catholics, in Northern Ireland during the
troubles. I learned every night how early hatred is taught. I
learned that vengeance even helps children rationalize the kind
of violence that they have lived through. Such narratives of
hate are now easily conveyed through social media.
At a recent conference at USIP on women encountering
violent extremism, Mrs. Bangura with the U.N. stated that ISIS
is using modern communications in the service of a Medieval
agenda. She stressed, ``Information is ISIS's oxygen, and we
must suffocate them.''
By employing the best of the free world's technology,
ironically, ISIS has infiltrated social platforms like Facebook
and Twitter. And, believe me, I am the mom of twin girls who
are 14, and they have access to all of this information. It is
startling. It is not just happening over there.
Indeed, a greater emphasis must be placed on children,
especially those growing up in refugee crisis. It is worth
remembering that there are more displaced people in the world
today than anytime since World War II. The U.N. refugee agency
reported last year that it has exceeded 50 million people. This
includes many, many children.
ISIS is paying families for their boys to pick up a gun and
their girls for sexual slavery. What kind of alternatives can
be offered to the families so that children can pick up a
pencil and learn while they are in these camps? We need to
teach critical thinking skills. It is not enough to read; we
need to help them understand how to think through the
challenges that they face at a very young age.
Finally, we need age-sensitive ``exit ramps'' for children
and youth who have been entangled in the web of ISIS control
and brainwashing. We need to recognize that refugee children
need food for their minds as well as food for their bodies. We
need to encourage greater education at these refugee camps.
Ideally, the very, very best trauma counseling and healing
assistance is necessary for victims of sexual violence and
witnesses of that sexual violence. Otherwise, we stitch the
violent experiences and memories into the DNA of this very
young generation.
As the largest age cohort of children living on this planet
approach their adolescent rights of passage to adulthood, we
need to find ways to inspire and expand the free world as ISIS
tries to offer shortcuts to a violent adulthood. We know all
too well that violence is the shortest path to losing a
childhood, a vision, and the way forward.
Thank you very much for your time.
[The prepared statement of Ms. Kuehnast follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you.
Dr. Ahram, you have 5 minutes.
STATEMENT OF ARIEL AHRAM, PH.D., ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, VIRGINIA
TECH SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS
Mr. Ahram. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and the committee, for
the opportunity to speak about the catastrophic sexual violence
occurring in Syria and Iraq today. I use the word
``catastrophic'' to stress to you the magnitude of the crisis.
The Islamic State has systematically abducted, enslaved, and
sexually terrorized thousands, and likely tens of thousands, of
women and girls.
There are two common but equally unhelpful perspectives on
this situation. The first is to see ISIS as a unique collection
of religiously crazed thugs. The second is to dismiss sexual
violence as a natural and inevitable byproduct of the civil war
enveloping Syria and Iraq today.
Research by Dara Cohen and Ragnhild Nordas show that sexual
violence is common in many but hardly all civil wars. Rape is
particularly prevalent when fighting groups have trouble
recruiting combatants or rely on contraband to finance their
operations. Rape can be part of an operational culture, even if
it is not specifically ordered by commanders. With that in
mind, it is important to consider ISIS's sexual violence not
just in the context of the war that ISIS is fighting but also
the kind of state that ISIS is building.
Three types of sexual violence are especially noteworthy.
The first is sexual enslavement of women and girls. Sexual
enslavement is uniquely reserved for sectarian groups, which
ISIS considers to be apostate or heretical to Islam--Shi'is,
Alawais, Yazidis, Druze, Shabak, Baha'is, and Sunni Muslims
that differ from ISIS's religious interpretations.
ISIS selectively cites Islamic jurists to justify treating
people from these groups as spoils, essentially property. They
are raped at will. Captured women are enslaved in brothels and
sold on the street, yielding a revenue stream to ISIS. Sexual
enslavement is also part of a process of ethno-sectarian
annihilation.
Besides immense physical harm, sexual violence induces
dishonor and shame among its victims. Even if they escape,
former captives are often considered despoiled and ineligible
for marriage, in effect preventing whole generations from
procreating.
There are many reports of suicide and honor killings.
Perversely, this type of sexual violence yields another
strategic benefit to ISIS. Children born from such rape are
generally considered to be Sunni Muslims and, therefore,
augment ISIS's demographic base.
The second type of sexual violence is forced marriage of
women and girls. Unlike sexual enslavement, marriage entails
reciprocal obligations through dowries. These marriages turn
ISIS members into ``one of the family,'' so to speak. ISIS's
predecessor, al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, tried to extort tribal
sheikhs in western Iraq to marry their daughters to ISIS
fighters. Many sheikhs apparently resisted this, a factor which
motivated tribes to join the Awakening movement.
Keeping in mind that ISIS permits polygamy and child
marriage, we have no idea about the wishes of the women
themselves. Today, ISIS continues to build networks through
forced marriage and operates marriage bureaus to find spouses
for male fighters. Foreign fighters are reputed to offer bridal
prices in the tens of thousands of dollars.
The promise of finding an eligible spouse has been an
element in ISIS's effort to attract foreigners, both men and
women. For those caught in the war zone, marrying into ISIS may
seem a way to ensure protection for themselves and their
families.
Thirdly is ISIS's sexual violence against men and boys.
ISIS has tortured and killed accused homosexuals in especially
horrifying ways. There are also sketchy reports of ISIS
sodomizing adolescent boys as part of an initiation or
induction of child soldiers. This is consistent with other
cases where sexual violence induces shame, and, therefore,
increases barriers to exit should a recruit try to flee.
ISIS's brazen and systematic campaign of sexual violence
represents a crime against humanity and is widely reviled in
the West and in the Islamic world. However, ISIS is not the
only belligerent to carry out sexual violence. Other rebel
groups, as well as Iraqi, Kurdish, and Syrian security forces,
have also used sexual violence, including rape and sexual
torture.
Recognizing this gives a better appreciation of how Sunni
Arabs might view ISIS as a defender of their interests. It also
underscores the point that ISIS is not the sole cause of the
crisis.
What can be done to help the situation? I fear that a
military response will likely produce even more population
displacement and leave more women and children vulnerable to
sexual exploitation, at least in the short term.
There are, instead, a number of non-military measures that
can help ameliorate the crisis. The first is to aid neighboring
states to stop the flow of human trafficking in their
countries. The second is to pressure Syria and Iraq to stop
using sexual violence themselves. This would include the
activities of pro-government militias like the Popular
Mobilization Forces and the National Defense Units in Syria.
Finally, the U.S. must support the United Nations and NGOs
working directly with victims of sexual violence. These efforts
will be crucial in assisting victims reintegrate with their
communities.
Thank you.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Ahram follows:]
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Chairman Royce. Thank you. I was going to ask you a
question, Doctor, just about the reality that, despite the
brutality, you read these cases where they actually convince
local girls to adopt their extremist views. Can you maybe
explain that process to me?
Mr. Ahram. ISIS relies a great deal on knowledge of the
local conditions for its operations. The core of ISIS is
derived from Sunni Arab tries in western Iraq. They understand
the local mores, and often those local mores are quite
conservative to begin with. And so the proposition that women
should remain covered, that they should stay in the house, that
does not seem as alien to people in those areas as they
necessarily would to us.
That said, we don't know the inner wishes of the women
involved. Especially when we talk about marriages, we are
talking essentially about deals that are struck between men
regarding the fate of women. And so we often find cases where
people are put into marriage relationships where they may not
want to be, but they feel like they have obligations to their
family or they feel like they have no other choice, or not know
any different.
Chairman Royce. I will just ask Mr. Watts if you observed
the same thing in your interviews with these girls, and then I
will follow that up, if I could, with another question.
Mr. Watts. Yeah, I did. I met three women who had been
essentially, as Dr. Ahram described, sold effectively to ISIS
fighters through a deal with their family. ISIS targeted the
poorest families. They were married to foreign fighters, all
three of these girls, and in the process of indoctrination I
think just is one of slow, day to day, as they described it to
me. Literally slowly, slowly they began to persuade me about
the force of their ideas. And I think that is one of the most
important things to understand is that they are able to
convince people that this is the correct way in which Islam is
to be practiced, even women who don't agree.
Chairman Royce. Well, that was one of the points that Sasha
had made in her written testimony. I didn't hear you say it
here, but you had laid out this thesis that over time there had
been sort of a movement of radicalization that, despite all the
diversity around these continents, increasingly there was a new
world view here being pushed. I don't know if that's in the
Deobandi schools, or where it is. But this ideology, maybe you
could articulate that, Sasha.
Ms. Havlicek. Yes. Absolutely. In my view, there has been
an aggressive and very well-resourced, very well-funded export
of a specific stream of thinking that is the intellectual
underpinning for these movements, making it of course much
easier in many senses to recruit to groups like ISIS.
Thirty years of export I have seen directly in regions like
the Balkans where this Wahhabi Salafi ideology is absolutely
alien to the local cultural traditions and practices of Islam.
And they were sown insidiously in the aftermath of the war,
when there was enormous desperation, economic and other, and
Saudi charities setting up shop, providing handouts to families
if they are--if they were to adopt stricter pre-modern Islamic
codes.
This was done to some extent tongue in cheek by
communities. It seemed sort of unimportant at the time, but it
has had an absolutely insidious effect over the last 20 years
and has shifted cultural norms. We really desperately need to
be upholding those groups and individuals who usually with next
to no support are trying to protect the very diverse cultural
heritage and the practices of Islam in places of course as
diverse, you know, as South Asia to the Balkans.
Chairman Royce. Do you see a role for mothers here? Because
I can just tell you in West Africa, North Africa, Central Asia,
I have heard this argument over and over and over again that
they are changing our culture, they are changing my culture,
from parents about what is happening to their children. And
this has been going on now for maybe 20 years. I am trying to
remember the first time I have heard it, but I have heard it so
many times in so many communities.
Ms. Havlicek. I mean, women, as the primary vectors of
cultural and religious transmission, are extremely important
for extremists. Since well before ISIS, extremist organizations
had propaganda targeting women. They know that if they have got
women in their camp, the extremist project is much more likely
to succeed, and so the cultural shifts will come through those
women.
And so to some extent the shifts, as you have said, have
been decades long, decades in the making. And so ISIS, in my
view, is a kind of cherry on the cake but not the cake.
Chairman Royce. Mr. Engel.
Thank you.
Mr. Engel. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Dr. Kuehnast, let me ask you this. In your work in
countering violent extremism, I understand that your
organization has completed several assessments on women's
programming in both Iraq and Afghanistan. And correct me if I
am wrong, you found three areas in need of focus, which is
reaching out to rural women, not just those in urban areas,
engaging religious leaders, and working with men and boys.
Can you tell us--first of all, am I correct in the way I
describe it? And can you tell us why these areas you have been
working on and working in are important in countering violent
extremism?
Ms. Kuehnast. Yes. Thank you very much for the question.
First of all, these were assessments that we did both on our
work with the U.S. Government on women's programming in Iraq
and in Afghanistan, but also engaged Iraqi and Afghan women.
Key issues that they identified are that because so much of
the populations--and this would be true in parts of Africa as
well--live in rural regions, whatever is happening among
perhaps elite, educated women in the urban areas is not
necessarily the same world that rural women live in. The access
to information, certainly television, other forms of ways to
learn what is going on in the world, is very reduced, and their
worlds are reduced and much more hierarchical in terms of their
status in the family.
That is why they recommended that no women's programming
should be done in isolation or in a silo without engaging the
men in their lives--the fathers, the brothers, the sons--as I
mentioned in my testimony, that it is very key to begin
engaging with a full gendered perspective, since men are, too,
gendered beings. And we see, and ISIS has mentioned in other
testimonies here today, that the concept of what it means to be
a real man is being used very strategically, by women, by men,
to influence young men. And so, again, it is important to bring
men into this picture.
And, finally, of course, there are religious leaders, who
for the most part in our world today are men. We must engage
them in--certainly, in their perspectives on the role of women,
both in the home and in public life, and also in the role that
they can play in preventing violence.
I did want to comment just very briefly on the Soviet-
Central Asia space, particularly in Kyrgyzstan. A year ago, we
did a session with young university students in Kyrgyzstan, and
they identified this issue of violent extremism, which they
felt was growing, especially in the south of their country. It
was related to the fact that for 70 years they were a secular
country. They knew nothing about what Islam was. And, indeed,
the very first propaganda, if you will, was the Wahhabis, who
entered into South Central Asia.
And so part of the dilemma that they recommended to us was
that we need to have much more engaged religious dialogue
between religious experts on Islam and secular populations, so
that people are understanding what is real Islam versus what is
being promoted or propagated by extremist groups.
Thank you very much.
Mr. Engel. What have you found is the major difference
between women in urban areas and women in rural areas? What
have you found in your work that makes it harder for one group
or another?
Ms. Kuehnast. Very simply, time. Women living in rural
regions often are having to access water, food, any kind of
efforts on behalf of their children or parents, by foot. It is
not like urban settings where there is transportation options
available to them.
So time is of the essence, and the number of commitments
that they have to make sure that there is food, that there is
care for children and elderly, all of that very much limits
their bandwidth in an everyday world. Radio is the best access,
and we have found great success in our programs in South Sudan,
in Iraq, in Afghanistan, using radio as a way to help shape
positive messages.
Mr. Engel. Thank you.
Let me quickly, Mr. Watts, ask you--we saw a little clip of
your film. It seemed extraordinary to me. It seems to me that
the Yazidi lawyer could be living in a comfortable place, a
comfortable life somewhere else in the world, and yet he risks
everything to save these women and these girls.
I would like you to tell us a little more about that. What
do you think drives him to do this? And how can he inspire
others to help? What is the Iraqi Government doing about the
situation, the missions this lawyer undertakes? Can it be
cheap? How much do they cost? And who is funding them?
Mr. Watts. Yeah. Well, he is an extraordinary individual,
because, as you say, he has taken this on pretty much
individually. There are about six guys, six or seven guys, who
are actually involved in trying to organize these rescues. And
they have essentially come up with a methodology completely off
their own back, gathering information from women who have
returned, making contact with people inside ISIS territory who
don't agree with their views, or who are willing to help the
network for money, as you say.
So he is an extraordinary character. There aren't many
people like him necessarily, and I think he is doing it simply
because this atrocity is so devastating to his community. It is
an extremely conservative community, the Yazidis, where honor
is very important, men and women live very separate lives, and
ISIS has crashed in and essentially really hit the foundation
of their community and their future of their community, because
a lot of young boys have also been taken and are now being
indoctrinated in ISIS's ideas.
In terms of the support they are getting, the Kurdish
region of government has set up an office for the affairs of
kidnapped people, which does, in a slightly ad hoc way, provide
funds toward these rescue missions. Sometimes those missions
occur for free, because there are people inside ISIS territory
who are so opposed to ISIS's ideas they are willing to do it
for humanitarian reasons.
There are other people who are so impoverished by the
blockade of ISIS territory they are willing to help. There was
a shepherd that was--I knew about who for $100 guided something
like 20 people through the mountains.
But the problem is, this is all, as Khalil himself
described it to me, it is a DIY operation. And that is one of
the messages that I am hoping to get across to all of you
today, is that these guys are doing extraordinary work inside
ISIS territory. And through their work, we learn a much more
realistic picture about what it is actually like inside ISIS
territory.
There are people opposed to their rule. It is a
dictatorship, enforcing a certain system of rules on a local
population. And I think that their efforts could be supported
in that way, and their work is also potentially giving us
important intelligence that could guide a broader strategy as
well.
Chairman Royce. We will go to--thank you. We will go to
Chris Smith of New Jersey.
Mr. Smith. Thank you so very much, Mr. Chairman. And I want
to thank all of you for bearing expert witness to this
pervasive, systematic exploitation against women, this violence
against women, and for your policy recommendations, which will
be very, very helpful.
Let me ask you, first, Ms. Havlicek, in your testimony, you
point out that there is a shifting terrorist landscape,
understanding women not just as victims but as perpetrators of
extremism.
And, as we all know, all around the world, in human
trafficking, syndicates often use women as the leaders in the
subjugation of their victims. And the level of violence and
gross indifference to the plight of those victims often equals
that of their male trafficking partners.
And I am wondering if you could tell us, is that what it is
like--is that what it is--are they using these women, ISIS, the
ones that are becoming radicalized in that regard?
Let me also ask, you said with regards to our response that
we need to reach the at-risk people directly, and all of you
have pretty much cited some of the ways that that can be done
through social media, and the like. But I am just wondering, in
the counter strategy, what role do elementary and secondary
schools, particularly in the West, have to play to try to
provide a defense there?
Mr. Watts, you have pointed out that non-Muslim women are
enslaved and raped. And I am wondering, you say how Muslim
women are also oppressed and treated extremely harshly. But are
they also sold? And what happens when a Muslim woman speaks out
in some way, tries to defend other women who don't happen to be
Muslim? Is she then really selected out for extreme punishment?
Dr. Kuehnast, if I could ask you, you made an excellent
point about the focus on children. You point out that in March
of this year the London-based monitoring group, the Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights, found that ISIS had recruited at
least 400 children, and that is in 3 months, you know, from the
beginning of the year to March. At least--I am not sure what
the time period is.
And I am wondering, is this parallel to child soldiers of
Joseph Kony, Charles Taylor, that we saw in Africa? And then
you talked about how they are shipped off to camps. Is that
boys and girls? And where are those camps? What do they look
like? If you could maybe elaborate a bit on that.
And, Dr. Ahram, you mentioned that ISIS selectively cites
Medieval Islamic jurists to justify treating people from these
groups as spoils, essentially property, and that they are raped
at will, and you go on. Maybe you could elaborate on those
Medieval texts and who these scholars are, and jurists, and
that would be very helpful to the committee. And anything you
can provide additionally for the record on that would also I
think be very helpful.
[The information referred to follows:]
Written Response Received from Ariel Ahram, Ph.D. to Question Asked
During the Hearing by the HonorableChristopher H. Smith
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
Mr. Smith. Ms. Havlicek.
Ms. Havlicek. Thank you so much. In terms of the first
question about how they are being used, I think it is very
clear that ISIS has had a targeted strategy to recruit women,
so they value them as part of the operation on a number of
different fronts.
They are using Western women in particular in the
propaganda recruitment machinery that they have developed so
successfully. Western women are prolific in social media
spaces. They are providing both practical advice to women and
men as to how to get out there, how to avoid security services,
their parents, and so on, and then of course ideological advice
and propagandizing.
They are very important from a PR perspective, because the
fact of a young Western woman leaving all of the so-called
freedoms of the Western world and choosing of her own volition
to travel to ISIS territory and to adopt this new life and
world, is extremely compelling. And, of course, the PR value is
also in the fact that media has disproportionately covered this
story of Western girls, so they know that they are high PR
value.
The piece of this which is really troop morale strategy is
about making sure that fighters, foreign fighters writ large,
who like the idea of Western brides are getting a steady stream
of these girls in. There is a functional dimension to this.
And then, of course, the question of building the next
generation. That is I think key. They are taking a long-term
view on the life of ISIS. This is the state-building piece of
the strategy, which is really about rearing the next generation
of jihadis. And so in so many ways that radicalization is
absolutely intrinsic for the success of the long-term project.
On the second point, you asked about what we could be doing
in schools for instance. I think that there is an absolutely
critical job to be done on inoculating young people in two
ways. One, we need a much, much better, a stronger approach to
sensitizing young people to extremist propaganda. And we need
critical thinking skills specifically in terms of how young
people are using the internet.
We have developed a program which combines extremely--and I
should say, you know, myth-busting doesn't work for young
people in this space. What is drawing them in is the incredibly
emotive material that they are being exposed to on a 24/7 basis
in these social media environments, in the echo chambers that
they are entering into online. It is extremely emotive.
And so we can't come back with a set of facts about what
doesn't work. We need emotive stories to counter that, the sort
of work that Mr. Watts has done, absolutely critical. But,
again, the voices of formers, of survivors, are absolutely
critical.
We have developed a series of films based on those sorts of
testimonies, and accompanied that with a state-of-the-art tool
for teachers, a set of guides for teachers to use that kind of
material interactively in a school setting, in a community
center setting, for parents to start to engage their children
in the difficult conversations that need to be had now with
young people about what they are starting to see or about to
start to see. They need to be inoculated.
Chairman Royce. Ms. Havlicek, we best go to Albio Sires of
New Jersey. Thanks.
Mr. Sires. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for holding this
hearing, and thank you for being here.
Mr. Watts, that is pretty powerful in just a few minutes. I
am just wondering when these survivors--or when you reunite
some of these children and women, how damaged are they? Do they
make it back? I mean----
Mr. Watts. The damage is incredibly severe. It is the worst
I have seen, having covered conflicts and sexual violence in a
number of places around the world. If you see the film, there
is one example of a 21-year-old girl who suffered a physical
traumatic flashback as she was describing what she had been
through, where she physically struggled for breath, she
collapsed, she effectively passed out and had to be brought
around with medical assistance. And her case is not isolated.
I spoke to a doctor who is dealing with the women coming
back who said that that was actually quite a common phenomenon.
I think partly because of these girls--they are very young,
they are from a conservative society that has had no real
education about sex, and then they are taken into the worst
possible sexual atrocities imaginable, and the effect on their
mind is quite severe.
Physically, though, as well, there was a case of a 9-year-
old girl. I didn't meet her myself. She had been raped multiple
times and was now pregnant. And, you know, it is really the
most extreme physical and psychological trauma that you can
imagine, and they are pretty understaffed as well to handle it.
Mr. Sires. Do they have any kind of normal life after this?
Not just you; anybody else that wants to. Doctor?
Mr. Watts. Well, I would say that I--I met an 18-year-old
girl who had been raped. During her testimony to me, she
described being gang-raped on two occasions and raped in total
by up to 30 different fighters. And she is 18. I met her for
dinner the other day to give her her first pizza. And if you
saw her in the street, you would not believe what happened to
her. She seemed like a normal 18-year-old girl, laughing,
joking.
So I believe that these young women and girls have such
incredible strength. They show amazing powers of recovery. But
it is incredibly difficult to overcome what they have been
through.
Mr. Sires. I find that hard to believe, but I take your
word for it.
Ms. Kuehnast. Thank you. I would just add a couple of
thoughts here. There are neurologists and neuroscientists who
are studying the impact of extreme trauma on the human brain.
And I think that is why in my testimony I am advocating for
more data. We know that it affects literally the brain, and
that is why this type of trauma happening to a child could
affect them the rest of their lives.
There is no doubt, though, that one of the other major
findings that we are seeing is that the vulnerability of this
next generation as a result of trauma sets us up for more
concerns. There is a phenomenal researcher, Dr. Wendy Lower,
who studied the role of women in the Nazi killing fields. And
one of her premises is, what happened in World War I, and what
they witnessed, helped set up the situation and the
vulnerability for the engagement of women and children in these
efforts. We should learn from our history as well.
Mr. Sires. You know, Muslim scholars and imams from around
the world have called ISIL members un-Islamic and have
condemned the treatment of women they have captured. Some
believe that the battle against ISIS can be won by winning the
hearts and minds of these fighters through transforming their
view of women as part of the Islam faith. Would you agree with
that assessment? Doctor?
Mr. Ahram. I think this relates both to your question and
to Congressman Smith, and I will have to offer commitments for
the record in more detail.
Mr. Sires. Doctor, would you just hit that button there?
Mr. Ahram. I will have to offer comments for the record in
more detail. But I think that one of the most important things
about ISIS is that they have looked at Islamic history through
a lens really fashioned by a thinker, an Egyptian thinker named
Sayyid Qutb offered the idea that in certain circumstances
Muslims were in a position to declare other Muslims to be
apostate, to be un-Islamic. That was really an innovation that
came about in the 1940s and 1950s.
That ability to say that ``We are real Muslims and you are
not,'' had never really existed in the Islamic world before.
ISIS is very aggressive in declaring that other groups that
consider themselves to be Muslim, that they are not legitimate.
And because they are not legitimate, they can be targeted.
So I think that it really is a battle of ideas within the
Muslim world, just as much as it is a competition between what
Dr. Havlicek described as a battle between the West and the
Islamic world. There very much is a great deal of contention
about who has the right to determine what is Islamically
permissible.
Mr. Sires. Thank you very much.
Chairman Royce. Thank you.
Mr. Jeff Duncan of South Carolina. Will pass.
Mr. Ted Yoho of Florida.
Mr. Yoho. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I appreciate your
testimonies here. If you guys could kind of give me the outline
of a person, what makes a person want to go over there from a
Western culture? What is the demographics you see? Age?
Financial background? Religious background? Family structure,
if you have that, that would draw somebody to that? I just--I
find it unfathomable that somebody would do that by choice.
Ms. Havlicek. Perhaps I could take that up. Based on the
dataset that we have just of Western women joining ISIS, what
is interesting is that they don't lend themselves easily to
profiling, to actionable profiling. They are very diverse in
terms of their socioeconomic backgrounds, in terms even of
their religious backgrounds, and in terms of their educational
attainment. We do see girls, in general, more educated than
boys, some as educated as doctors.
Mr. Yoho. Let me interrupt you here. Have you done
retrospective studies going backwards, after you have found
people over there that have gone over there, and then gone back
and say, ``All right. You came from this background; you have
done that''?
Ms. Havlicek. That is right. We are looking at the
backgrounds of the girls and women in our dataset who have
migrated from Western countries and are now living in ISIS
territory, as far as we can see it from the data.
And there are some trends. We are seeing on average the age
diminishing in terms of female recruits in line with the fact
that of course the fighters will want untarnished wives,
obviously unmarried girls. We are seeing--we do see a high
proportion of converts within that group, and I think that that
is coming across radicalization, women and men. But essentially
they are not lending themselves to that kind of social
profiling.
In terms of the--what has been interesting is looking at
the narratives that they themselves use to justify their own
departures from the West, their own joining of ISIS. There is a
number of narratives that are quite prevalent, some of which
are common to the male datasets that we look at.
They are about the global Muslim community being under
attack, about the inaction of the international community to do
anything about that, about their own feelings of isolation
within Western societies, and then--and as I mentioned, for the
girls, there is a gendered aspect of that identity questioning,
which is really about whether the Western emancipation project
has resulted in what we thought it would.
Does it in fact free, or does it enslave you in some other
way? And so the narrative is actually about getting away from
the ``tyranny'' of Western female emancipation to some extent
as part of that narrative, and justifies the extremely
puritanical iterations that we see of Islam.
Mr. Yoho. All right. Let me ask Dr. Kuehna--is it Kuehnast?
Ms. Kuehnast. Kuehnast.
Mr. Yoho. Kuehnast. What are you finding? Are the women
that are going over there, are they from an indigenous culture,
born here in a Western society, in Europe? Or are they from a
Middle Eastern background that has migrated there? Maybe first
generation or second generation, and there is a draw on them
bringing them back to that area.
Ms. Kuehnast. I would defer to my colleague, who probably
has the data----
Mr. Yoho. That is fine.
Ms. Kuehnast [continuing]. Set more. But I will speak as a
Central Asianist and what I know about that region. There are
families actually going, so it is not even--they are going in
groups. And some of the motivation is the draw of the income,
especially as the labor migrants to Russia has narrowed, and so
we see a push factor there that is often not necessarily
ideological but an opportunity, if you will, to work.
Mr. Yoho. What country do we see most of them coming from?
Is there one specifically? Is it all over the European area?
Ms. Kuehnast. Tunisia.
Mr. Yoho. Tunisia?
Ms. Kuehnast. Right?
Mr. Yoho. Is that what you are seeing, too?
Ms. Havlicek. Yes. I mean, from across Western countries,
it is--again, it is very, very diverse. Ethnically speaking,
the group is extremely diverse. In terms of our data, it is
very, very poor with regards to recruitment from countries in
the region, and that is one of the challenges that we do see.
It is absolutely true that in a Western context what we are
seeing, and certainly since the announcement of the caliphate,
we tend to see girls going solo, unmarried women and girls
going solo or in small groups.
Mr. Yoho. I am out of time, and I appreciate your
questions--or your answers, and I appreciate the work you are
all doing. Thank you.
I yield back.
Chairman Royce. Thank you. We will go to Brad Sherman of
California.
Mr. Sherman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am glad we are
having a series of hearings on women. There is a tremendous
correlation between a society's development and the
opportunities for women. The more women are given a chance to
expand their horizons, the richer, the more advanced the
society becomes. And the more advanced the society becomes, the
more women are included in it.
We may disagree on some elements of family planning and
some other things that I would like to see as part of
international women's agenda, but I think our overlap would be
quite substantial.
This hearing is also about ISIS, and I think we have got to
remember the enemies of ISIS are more dangerous and more evil
than ISIS. Turkey believes that perhaps in the wrong way. They
are bombing ISIS. They are bombing Kurdish groups that are
fighting ISIS. If you look at Syria where the Shiite alliance
has killed 200,000 people, we can say that is not as evil as
ISIS because they don't put the exploding bodies on YouTube.
They do not show the gruesomeness. They do not delight in the
gruesomeness. But they killed 200,000 people, and those deaths
are every bit as painful. They are just not on YouTube.
The Shiite alliance in Iran where they are developing
nuclear weapons, obviously, the Shiite militias that dominate
the political scene in southern Iraq, Hezbollah, and of course
Assad, should remind us that whatever we do against ISIS it
cannot be for the benefit of the Shiite alliance.
I have spent some time in this room talking about how our
State Department can't possibly respond to the ideological
threat of ISIS, because they refuse to hire anyone on the basis
of their understanding of Islamic law, history, and
jurisprudence. They won't hire anybody who doesn't have a
certain number of Western academic brownie points.
Now, you can be close to the top of your class at
Princeton, or you can be the valedictorian at Cal State
University at Northridge. But if you are just an Islamic
scholar, and that is the only thing on your resume, you will
not be hired. So what does this mean? It means we are fumbling
around in the dark.
We might show pictures of how gruesome and terrible it is
that Yazidi girls are being forced to convert. But I don't know
whether someone who accepts the tenets of the most extreme
versions of Islam regards that as a terrible act or a wonderful
way to help this woman, because I am not an Islamic scholar,
let alone a scholar of extremist Islam.
And I am not saying the State Department should issue
fatwas, but we are doing a lot of unsigned advertising on the
internet, designed to appeal to folks who have an extremist and
deep motivating connection with Islam, and nobody writing these
ads has much knowledge of Islam.
And we occasionally might go to Islamic jurists and ask
them the issue of fatwa, but it would be like writing a brief
for an American judge saying, ``Please issue a ruling. And I am
writing this to you, but I am not a lawyer and I haven't cited
any cases. But the truth of my--the justice of my comments are
so overwhelming.''
Nobody would try to get an American judge to issue a ruling
without hiring a lawyer and convincing that judge not on the
basis of righteous compassion, but also on the basis of the
things that lawyers and judges do.
Dr. Ahram, you say that it wasn't until like the 1940s that
the concept of apostasy was known in Islam. And I had thought
that the Alawites and the Ahmadis had been accused of being
apostates long before that. I mean, you have got, in the case
of the Alawites, people who drink alcohol. You are saying until
the '40s nobody called them apostates?
Mr. Ahram. They had been called apostates, but the primary
consensus had been that since no one was really in a position
to be sure what ``apostasy'' means that no one should really be
in a position to take action based on that consideration.
ISIS, and other groups, have decided that they are in a
position not only to be the judge but also the executioner when
it comes to these decisions. They can make a decision about who
is apostate and to carry out the sentence for apostasy.
Mr. Sherman. Ms. Havlicek, what portion of the Western
women who are going to join ISIS have parents who are Muslims,
and what portion of them are folks with non-Muslim parents who
first converted to Islam and then decided to join ISIS? Any
guess?
Ms. Havlicek. Obviously, ISIS is recruiting among young
Muslims, so it is, in fact, the majority are Muslims. But there
is a----
Mr. Sherman. Well, there are two ways to be--two
histories----
Ms. Havlicek. Right.
Mr. Sherman [continuing]. Of people who become Muslim,
those who convert and those who are born.
Ms. Havlicek. Yeah. So the conversion rate is very high per
capita, within the dataset that we have, in that----
Mr. Sherman. So a significant number of the women going
have non-Muslim parents, were not born Muslim, they converted
to Islam, then in fact converted to extremist Islam, and then
converted to ISIS.
Ms. Havlicek. That is right.
Mr. Sherman. Yield back.
Chairman Royce. We need to go to David Trott of Michigan.
Mr. Trott. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I also want to thank
the ranking member for scheduling this hearing, and I want to
thank all of the witnesses today for coming and sharing your
insight. It is pretty clear from your comments we are not
dealing with the JV team, and it is a little frustrating
because, you know, sitting here listening to the discussion of
the various atrocities, that is certainly productive because it
draws attention to the problem and that needs to happen.
But I can't help but feel that either because of a lack of
understanding, or a general insouciance, that we don't have a
plan. And so my comments--you know, my questions really shift
more from discussing the problem, which all of you will have a
better understanding of the problem than perhaps anyone in
Congress ever will.
So, to that end, I want to ask the entire panel, each of
you, if you could give me a couple ideas, a couple solutions.
And my question is two-fold. First, I would like you each to
speak to how you feel the State Department's response to this
problem has been.
And then, beyond that, specifically, if you each could
offer a couple ideas of things that Congress could work on or
Congress could focus on or Congress could ask the
administration to work on, what you think the resources and
implementation would be required. It would be particularly
helpful if the ideas don't require a lot of money, because we
don't have a lot of extra tax dollars sitting around.
But whatever your--if you were in charge for a day, what
are the two things you would do in Congress or in the
administration to make a difference on these issues? And we
will start with you, Ms. Havlicek.
Ms. Havlicek. Thank you so much. We understand that $26
billion has been spent to date on training the Iraqi army over
the last decade. I mention that figure because in the United
Kingdom this last year we allocated 40 million pounds to the
prevention side of this problem, that is to say, in a way the
soft power side of this problem.
I don't think it is serious. There is a quote of Osama Bin
Laden of 2002 that says,
``It is obvious that the media war in this century is
one of the strongest methods. In fact, its ratio may
reach 90 percent of the total preparation for
battles.''
We have not taken on this soft power piece of the battle in a
serious way. It, of course, does not require the type of
funding that the hard power piece of this battle requires, by
any stretch of the imagination, it will be an enormous amount
cheaper.
But just very quickly, I don't believe that a soft power
strategy can be delivered just through government counter
messaging centers. I don't, in fact, believe that counter
narrative can be delivered by government. It has to be
developed by credible voices. We have talked about a few of
those constituencies here.
Networks also of women are important in this, but former
extremists, survivors of extremism, are important, credible
voices. But those voices tend not to have the tools, the skills
to be able to get their messages out at scale in any sustained
way or in any strategic way. They have not been empowered. We
need the power of our communications and tech sector on side to
do that at scale, and that needs to be a combination things. So
that has not happened as yet.
We desperately need to do the intellectual challenging of
``Brand Caliphate,'' and to do that we need to be building the
sorts of networks, really working with the sorts of people that
Mr. Watts is working with to get those ideas and stories out in
a much, much bigger way.
I do think that one of the things--one of the problems has
been that governments, by and large, have focused essentially
on this challenge of propaganda through regulatory response.
That is to say, we want to take that nasty stuff down. That
Whac-A-Mole approach tends in fact not to work. We have now
just seen the establishment of a Europole Referral Center,
which is to say lots of people in a room flagging nasty
material and hoping that the internet companies will take it
down. That happens very slowly.
When accounts are taken down, of course, they go up very
fast, but our research has shown interestingly that the second
accounts of women, for instance, prolific recruiters and
radicalizers, the second accounts of those women, once their
first accounts have been taken down, tend to be more
influential, i.e. more followers.
And so we have to be careful that we are not doing
counterproductive things in the takedown space, and so I would
very much propose that we focus instead in a much, much more
serious way on the counter narrative. I do believe that that
needs to be mainstreamed in government policymaking through aid
and diplomatic efforts.
If we were to combine those efforts and those budgets, we
would finally have the muscle in place to do something in this
space. It does require that extremism, not just the violent
piece of extremism, the non-violent piece of extremism that
lays the intellectual foundations for extremism, is taken
seriously and mainstreamed across policymaking centers.
Chairman Royce. Mr. Gerry Connolly of Virginia.
Mr. Connolly. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just picking up on what you just said, Ms. Havlicek, it
seems to me that if it is going to be efficacious that needs to
be an Islamic message, not a Western message.
Ms. Havlicek. Absolutely. I am sorry if that wasn't clear.
Mr. Connolly. No, no. I wasn't correcting you. I am just
observing based on what you----
Ms. Havlicek. Well, and credible voices as a whole are of
course voices from within the communities, and they can be very
diverse voices----
Mr. Connolly. Yes.
Ms. Havlicek [continuing]. From within the communities. And
when I talk about building the networks, I mean networks of
those front-line voices.
Mr. Connolly. I understand. I am just so horrified,
frankly, at the details of this hearing. For me, it starts with
the whole issue of human autonomy. It is easy to compromise
someone else's autonomy when I objectify them as apostate or
``the other.'' By the way, not at all an Islamic phenomenon. I
mean, that kind of objectifying of human beings has been going
on since human beings arrived on the planet.
I mean, there is a long, sad, tragic Christian tradition of
doing that, Turquemada to wit. Heretics could be burned,
because they were in error, although it seems to me that there
is a contradiction here in this behavior with the Koran itself.
And I would be interested in your observations.
I also find it ironic that we are recruiting with 21st
century Western social media. We are recruiting foot soldiers
for a ninth century caliphate. And I just wonder if the cruel
irony of that has struck anybody in the region.
And then, finally, susceptibility, and I particularly would
like your reaction to that, although the other two as well. It
is very hard for us I think culturally to understand, outside
of brainwashing, how can somebody--how can a culture, how can a
village, how can large numbers of people being recruited
elsewhere be so susceptible to such a barbaric, suppressive
message and culture, whether you are a female or male.
And what does that mean for us going forward as we try to
think about a stable future some day? I know these are broad
questions, but I think we need to better understand the
susceptibility here, and some of it may very well have to do
with, frankly, in some cultures the willingness to suppress
women.
Not like ISIS, but the sort of second-class for women,
clearly not the equal of male, that culture ISIS is preying
upon. I mean, it is taking it to an absurd degree, but--and I
just wondered what your observations are about that, because I
think if we are going to counter it we need to know a lot more
than we know right now. Anyone?
Ms. Kuehnast. Well, I just want to reinforce what you are
asking in this fact that, indeed, I don't think this is
anything new to the human race. It is just we do now have
YouTube and photos and videos that document these atrocities.
And in that fact it is new and it is what you say. We are
seeing the impact of 21st century technology that we thought
was about freedom of expression, about autonomy being used as a
tool for extreme propaganda and violence.
So, indeed, it is ironic, and it is troubling. But it is
not necessarily a regulation issue. It is--we have been at this
juncture as a human race before in moments of great
technological shift. And we know we can also address it.
Your comments about women and their role in society, there
is a professor at Texas A&M, Valerie Hudson, who is basically
working on a project, called Women Stats, where very convincing
evidence is showing that those states that have gender
equality, the chances for violence and conflict are much lower;
that it is correlated, statistically speaking.
Chairman Royce. We will go to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen from
Florida.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Thank
you for convening this important hearing on a crucial subject
that is often overlooked. I regret that I have to get back to
the floor. I would like my statement to be made a part of the
record.
Chairman Royce. Without objection.
Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. But I am pleased to yield my time to
Chris Smith, so that Congressman Smith can get the answers
about the camps.
Thank you.
Chairman Royce. The gentleman is recognized.
Mr. Smith. Thank you very much. I thank my good friend for
yielding.
You know, you just mentioned, Doctor, Valerie Hudson. I
actually had Valerie Hudson testify at a hearing that I held on
the consequences of gendercide in China. She wrote the
unbelievably ground-breaking book, ``Bare Branches,'' about
what sex election abortion has done to China, and the missing
daughters who have been at 5 months or so gestation, as babies,
forcibly aborted.
They are only allowed one, so they choose the male, and the
impact it is having on an increasingly male and older society,
and China is in a terrible, terrible demographic meltdown that
could lead to violence. She even said--Valerie Hudson--that it
could lead to war because of the missing females in that
country, again underscoring the need for--and the absolutely
indispensable role that we all know--we take it for granted
here--that women play in society. But when they are missing and
they are dead, then that is not the case. But Valerie Hudson is
an extraordinary academic and writer.
Let me just ask--I had asked those earlier questions to you
about the tiny terrorists that you talked about, the child
soldiers maybe is another way of putting it, how any of that
compares with the LRA or Charles Taylor. The camps I don't have
a sense--I don't think any of us perhaps do--what those camps
really look like. And let me--and you did compare it to the
Hitler Youth, which certainly is a staggering comparison.
Mr. Watts, again, if you could get to the issue of the
women who might step up and help another woman who is--Muslim
helps a non-Muslim, what happens to her.
You also talked about the brainwashing. If any of you could
speak to what is being done for any child or person who needs
to go through the deprogramming of the hate. In Africa,
obviously, there are a number of programs for child soldiers
that do work, not perfectly, but I have met many of them. We
have had them here testifying.
Lastly, before I run out of time again, for the second
time, if I could just ask about, Dr. Ahram, on the Medievals.
And if you could provide that for the record, we all want to
read that, and I thank you for your answer, if you could
elaborate on that, please.
Ms. Kuehnast. I will just basically say, in terms of this
relevant information with the LRA and Uganda with Joseph Kony,
absolutely, I think, you know, the Lost Boys, we see that. But
I think what is different, if you will, is Joseph Kony, as a
renegade armed actor in a war, certainly did not have the
advantage of YouTube.
And I do think that that is, as our colleagues here have so
well put, the PR value of making these video clips of little
boys carrying guns that are bigger than them, any of these
visualizations have enormous emotional impact, as Sasha
mentioned earlier.
I would add South Sudan to this mix, because we know for a
fact that the number of children being kidnapped, both boys and
girls, to be armed actors in this civil conflict is rising, and
the use of sexual violence there is really tipping the charts.
So ISIS is not the only actor here who has figured out that
sexual violence is cheaper than a bullet. And it is so much
more effective; it is terror at its deepest level. And it does
destroy people, and it destroys the ties that bond people
together.
And when you have to witness a child being raped, a mother
being raped, as many of these things are public spectacles,
then you are on the edge of what we call in the genocide
prevention work, on the edge of an atrocity, a human atrocity.
This is one of the key indicators of genocidal behavior is gang
rape.
Mr. Smith. The camps--because I am running out of time
again--the camps, what do they look like, and where are they?
Ms. Kuehnast. What we see on the videos and photos and
YouTubes, they are basic. They are very basic, but they give
them an identity, a uniform, a gun, and they practice, as I
mentioned, cutting off first doll heads, so that they are
prepared to do the next.
And as Dr. Ahram said, sexual violence among--against boys
is very high. Very, very high, because it creates shame and it
creates belonging in an ironic manner.
Chairman Royce. Well, we had better go to Lois Frankel now.
But perhaps when we get back at the end of some of the
questioning, maybe by Judge Poe, we can get to that.
Thank you.
Ms. Frankel. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you for this
hearing, and thank you to the panel. I will--I am like
everybody else sitting here. This is just an appalling
situation, and to me you have just been describing the lowest
form of humanity. And I am not sure what we can do. I am going
to--I want to follow up on Mr. Trott's questions, but I know
one thing. We cannot turn our back on this.
Mr. Trott asked you for some examples--or some concrete
suggestions, and I think, Ms. Havlicek, you have had--I know
you gave us your ideas. I would like to hear the ideas from
some of you. And if you could just also take into account--you
know, you said there were 4 million women living under ISIS
control or contested areas.
So, obviously, there are a lot of these areas, they are war
zones, so I am not sure--how do you infiltrate these areas?
And, you know, what are the--I think you talked about the
radio, the internet. I don't know. Are we talking about NGOs,
civil society? Could you give us some really concrete examples?
Mr. Watts. I think there is a very specific example, and it
is one of the things I was going to say in answer to Mr.
Trott's question, which is we need to remember the lessons of
previously when America was directly engaged against al-Qaeda
in Iraq, as it was called then, which was the awakening which
did so much to end their reign of terror then was based on
personal relationships, on a particular Sunni tribal sheikh who
walked into the American base at the end of his road and said,
``I know where these guys are hiding. I know where they keep
their guns.'' And from that point on, in a matter of days, he
was able to--they were able to transform the military
situation.
And what I am saying is that the network that I came across
in the Yazidi territory that also exists in parts of Syria,
there are people on the ground. There is a huge, I think,
population. Some of the people out there say to me 60 percent
of the population in ISIS territory are opposed to them. There
are assassinations that these groups carry out against ISIS
members of their own volition.
If we can just expand on the contacts that already exist,
build up the personal relationships, follow the line of the
network, then perhaps we can begin to make contact with people
inside who oppose ISIS's views and are in a position to help
direct our efforts, you know, whether they have been military
or humanitarian, better.
And I think that is my second point in answer to Mr.
Trott's. He asked for two things, which is that if we are going
to do something we should do it right, like the air strikes are
happening, and I get an email every day reporting what has been
destroyed.
But on the front line, I was with Kurdish fighters, and we
saw trucks passing within 100 meters on the highway between
Mosul and Al-Hasakah and Raqqah. And I said, ``What is going on
with these trucks?'' And they said, ``We don't have any
spotters that are authorized to call in strikes on this
stuff.'' So I think that small steps can be taken that would
just make the effort more effective.
Ms. Kuehnast. I mentioned in my comments that refugee camps
are there. They have information. They know about what is
going. They have fleed, and they have opportunities now, one,
to try to heal from what they have seen and experienced, and we
should be right there, because this will be the next generation
if we don't engage them.
We can't leave them to be idle, because the opportunity to
intersect with idleness and the opportunity for engaging in the
extremist efforts are provocative because they provide money,
identity, and opportunity. So refugee camps are key, focusing
on young people, very young people, under 10.
We just should take the playbook from ISIS. They are
focusing on young people. Why aren't we? And in the same light,
we need to pay attention to what Edward said here. Focus on the
relationships. They are doing it one person at a time. They
don't have this massive campaign. They do it one person at a
time, and they spend a lot of time on just one. Individuals
count. In the same way, we need to make those networks and
relationships matter.
Mr. Ahram. There are, at present, 36 different local and
international NGOs and U.S. agencies involved specifically on
gender violence in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Turkey, and Iraq. I
think those would be the agencies that have the most direct
access to victims and are in a position to try and assist their
reintegration back into society.
I think also, though, it is worth cautioning about the
impact of military intervention. Military interventions are
going to produce more population displacement, and population
displacement, people who are displaced--and there are already
13 million displaced people in Syria and Iraq today. Those are
the people that are most vulnerable to all kinds of sexual
trafficking, to sexual exploitation and to rape.
And so I think that while there is certainly a purpose in
destroying ISIS, I would caution that there will be a
humanitarian blowback as well, and there will be humanitarian
costs to those kinds of activities.
Chairman Royce. We will go to Judge Ted Poe of Texas.
Mr. Poe. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being
here.
I want to center in on specifically the issue of women
being trafficked by ISIS, human trafficking. Do we have any
estimates about how much money is made by ISIS in the
trafficking of women and girls? Does anybody know?
Ms. Kuehnast. I was just going to say this is an absolutely
important point, to see that this is a huge criminal network.
It is very entrepreneurial, and it is making a lot of money.
The numbers----
Mr. Poe. Does anybody know how much money? Any estimate at
all?
Mr. Watts. I don't have an estimate on the exact figure,
but the trafficking is primarily within--when we are talking
about sex slaves, for example, the women and girls from the
Yazidi community, it is within ISIS. So----
Mr. Poe. Right. How many women are we talking about there
would be in trafficking?
Mr. Watts. In terms of the sex, there----
Mr. Poe. Sex trafficking, yes.
Mr. Watts. Sex slaves, it is over 3,000, is what we think.
Mr. Poe. How does ISIS justify sex trafficking?
Mr. Watts. By its definition of this particular religious
minority, the Yazidis. Specifically, they are the only group
that we know for certain have been----
Mr. Poe. Tell me how they justify it. They do justify it, I
agree. How do they justify it?
Mr. Watts. They say they are pagans, and they judge them by
the treatment of pagans back in the--1,300 years ago.
Mr. Poe. And a pagan is what?
Mr. Watts. A pagan is someone who----
Mr. Poe. In their eyes, under their definition.
Mr. Watts. Like an animist, basically, someone who worships
rocks or animals or, you know, sees gods all over the place,
sees a multitude of gods. The Yazidis, for example, they use
the sun. They are actually monotheistic, so actually ISIS have
got their interpretation of the Yazidi religion wrong, but the
Yazidis view the sun or they use the sun as a particular symbol
to symbolize God.
And in ISIS's interpretation, that means that they are
worshiping something other than Allah, a clear--you know, an
animist symbol.
Mr. Poe. Then that would include everybody that doesn't
agree with their specific religious doctrine. Is that correct
or not?
Mr. Watts. That is not correct in the sense that the Koran
does have certain outlines for the treatment of the people of
the book, i.e. Christians and Jews. And so there aren't--you
know, it doesn't apply to everybody.
Mr. Poe. Well, does it apply to Jews and Christians?
Mr. Watts. It doesn't, as far as we know, as far as--to the
best of my knowledge. Though Christians have been abducted,
they haven't been subjected to this kind of sexual enslavement
as the Yazidis have. That is the only group, to the best of my
knowledge, that has been treated in that way.
Mr. Poe. But none of you have any numbers, any kind of
numbers that we are talking about?
Mr. Watts. Well, we are talking about over 3,000, as I say,
women and girls. And the price for a girl, if she is a virgin,
can be up to $2,000, I heard in testimony. But after she has
been subjected to multiple sexual assaults, the price can go
down to as low as $100 to $50.
And what is happening is that girls are being--one girl
literally described it to me. She was rented out. So she would
be passed around for 50 bucks here, 100 bucks there, and so--
but, again, that money is all being transmitted internally
within ISIS. To the best of our knowledge, they are not
trafficking outside their boundaries.
Mr. Poe. I understand.
Ms. Havlicek, let me ask you something about countering
violent extremism. We have a program, supposedly, through the
State Department to counter violent extremism. This is just my
opinion. We are--it seems we are losing that battle with
countering violent extremism and the results.
Can you weigh in on that issue, U.S. countering violent
extremism, as it deals with sex trafficking of women? Would you
like to weigh in on that?
Ms. Havlicek. I am not in a position to speak about the sex
trafficking piece of that question. But if I might just respond
on the U.S. CVE structure.
Mr. Poe. Sure.
Ms. Havlicek. I do think that we have tended to view this
battle in a slightly narrow way. The idea that you are going to
beat this enormous propaganda recruitment machinery, this
movement through a sort of hashtag war, is just too narrow a
perspective.
As I mentioned earlier, I don't think that counter
messaging can be done--counter narrative work can credibly be
done if led by government. I think governments have a job to do
on their own strategic communications. No question. But during
the Cold War, there was a serious investment in the battle of
ideas, an investment that understood the need to build civil
society networks in all sorts of different ways through
educational outreach, through NGOs, and in so many different
ways.
And those were the people, of course, that were at the
front line of the transition processes when, in fact, there was
an opportunity to see that happen. That kind of investment I
think has not happened in this particular case, and I would
hope we could. I think one of the problems is that we are also
always seeing governments running after the fact.
We are responsive and certainly not proactive. I would make
a plea for us to look at the displaced populations. The refugee
situation, as you well know, it is the single largest
humanitarian crisis of our time. We need, for both moral
imperative reasons, and from a practical perspective, to be
getting to grips with that population: 5 million, 6 million
people, 4 million outside of the country.
That is going to be the pool from which extremists recruit.
That is going to be our biggest challenge and threat over the
next generation. We are seeing absolutely nothing being done in
the prevention space on those communities and populations right
now. That would be a way for us to get a little bit ahead of
the curve. Also, we have said the same thing about women. Here
is an emerging threat, a trend, that hasn't really been--that
hasn't really gone up the food chain in terms of priorities for
policymakers.
And I must say, though, that the State Department has been
proactive in looking at ways in which to partner with civil
society organizations through the ECA's convening power,
bringing women from around the world together to start to think
about how they can push back on this phenomenon. But ultimately
we need more proaction.
Mr. Poe. Thank you very much.
Chairman?
Chairman Royce. Mr. Smith, did you have a follow-up
question?
Mr. Smith. Again, Mr. Watts, I think you wanted to answer
the question about a Muslim woman who might defend a non-Muslim
woman. Do they use coercive peer pressure against her? Does she
become, you know, just like the non-Muslim, raped and abused
and exploited?
Mr. Watts. Well, very simply, she would be subject to the
most severe physical punishments. I mean, women receive--Muslim
women can receive severe beatings for wearing perfume, for
speaking too loudly in public. I met one housewife who, when
she had been crossing the street, her big toe slipped out
underneath her gown, and she received 50 lashes, she told us,
on that big toe for it being revealed. So you can imagine.
I mean, what we did come across was stories where kind of
privately and in secret Muslim women from inside ISIS areas had
assisted with rescues of non-Muslim women of the Yazidis,
either as part of the network or on an individual basis taking
extreme risks. But the punishments can be more severe.
Mr. Smith. And forced conversions, is that a serious
problem with the Christians and others?
Mr. Watts. Yeah. I mean, all the Yazidis, as I think has
been mentioned, you know, effectively that was one of the only
ways that you could survive in these first few days when a lot
of the Yazidis were being captured. There were the mass graves
that the chairman mentioned. Men were offered the chance to
convert and effectively spare their lives.
Chairman Royce. We just want to thank all of our witnesses
today. Also, thank you for the time you have put into your
prepared testimony.
By the way, that is online. If people want to go to
foreignaffairs.house.gov, we will have the Institute for
Strategic Dialogue, Sasha, we will have that information and,
as a matter of fact, all of your testimony up, if anybody wants
to go through your analysis.
And also, I just wanted to say we have several witnesses
here who came a continent away to testify before the committee
today. Thank you so much. And you have given the committee a
lot to think about, and your testimony is going to be very,
very valuable to us going forward. So thank you all.
We stand adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 11:55 a.m., the committee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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