US law enforcement is investigating a new phenomenon of women from the American heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants’ recruiting at home.
At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis – St Paul area have female relatives who have gone missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the families to contact police.
In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St Paul snuck away from her parents on August 25 saying she was going to a bridal shower. Instead, she flew to Turkey and joined IS in Syria.
Home to the biggest Somali community in the United States, the Twin Cities area of Minnesota has been plagued by terrorist recruiting since the Somali group al-Shabaab began enlisting in America around 2007.
This year, law enforcement officials say they learned of 15-20 men with connections to the Minnesota Somali community fighting for extremist groups in Syria. They included Douglas McAuthur McCain, a convert to Islam, who was killed in battle this summer.
The St Paul woman is the first case of an area female joining IS that has been made public although her family have asked for her name to be kept private because it fears retaliation from Islamists.
The authorities would offer “tailored domestic programs to prevent violent extremism
Greg Boosalis, FBI division counsel in Minneapolis, said law enforcement was investigating the possible recruitment in the area by Islamist extremists of other females, as well as males, but refused to comment on specific cases.
Somali leaders and sources close to police worry that the reports of female would-be jihadist from the region could mark a new trend. The St Paul woman is highly likely to have been recruited by IS through Islamist sympathizers in the United States, rather than joining the group on her own, they said. At least one other woman is suspected of helping her leave the United States. Another US teenager, nurse’s aide Shannon Conley, 19, from Colorado, pleaded guilty this week to trying to travel to the Middle East to enrol in IS. She was arrested at Denver International Airport in April with a one-way ticket and had been recruited online by a male militant in Syria.
Nipping domestic extremism in the bud before Americans try to join terrorist groups is part of Obama’s strategy against Islamic State announced in a televised address last week.
Along with an aerial bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, Obama pledged that the government would “intervene with at-risk individuals before they become radicalised toward violence and decide to travel abroad to Syria and Iraq to join Isil.”
He said authorities would offer “tailored domestic programs to prevent violent extremism and radicalisation” but gave no more details.