Olfa Rahmouni with her daughters Taysir, 11 and Aya, 13. Her older daughters Rahma, 17, and Ghofran, 18, joined Isis and were later captured by a Libyan militia. Photo / Washington Post
Olfa Rahmouni with her daughters Taysir, 11 and Aya, 13. Her older daughters Rahma, 17, and Ghofran, 18, joined Isis and were later captured by a Libyan militia. Photo / Washington Post
In a small box in her bedroom, Oulfa Hamrounni keeps the photo she treasures most.
It shows one of her daughters, brown hair flowing, a smile on her round face. The photo was taken before the girl and her sister left home to join the affiliate of Isis (Islamic State) in Libya.
Today, Hamrounni is struggling to bring her teenage daughters back to Tunisia. She's also trying to prevent two others from joining them.
"I am afraid for my younger daughters," she said. "They still have the same ideology of my older daughters."
Hundreds of foreign female radical Islamists, including many Westerners, have journeyed to the battlegrounds of Syria and Iraq to begin new lives under Isis.
Now, there are signs that they are being encouraged to travel to Libya as well, signifying a shift in the strategy of the terrorist network as it faces growing threats and constraints to its operations in the Middle East.
Most radicalised women and girls join Isis to marry fighters and bear their children, which helps the group's arm in Libya build a state, mirroring its strategy in Syria, experts who monitor jihadist activity have said.
The creation of family structures deepens Isis' reach and ideology in its territory, which makes it more difficult for Western and regional governments to eradicate the militants and defuse their threat in North Africa.
"Official propaganda showcases Libya as the new frontier of the self-proclaimed caliphate," said Melanie Smith, a researcher with the London-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue, which focuses on violent extremism. "Hence the encouragement of foreign females signifies a need to consolidate the land they have managed to acquire."
When he announced the "caliphate" in 2014, Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi specifically invited women alongside male engineers, doctors, lawyers and architects, signifying that the women's "primary responsibility is to physically build and populate territory," Smith said. As wives, their role is to be dutiful and obedient to their militant husbands. As mothers, they nurture the next generation of fighters. Some women also have combat duties.
Rahma, 17, became the wife of Noureddine Chouchane, a senior Tunisian Isis commander who is believed to have been killed in a US airstrike on the Libyan city of Sabratha on February 19. Her 18-year-old sister, Ghofran, was married to an Isis militant who was killed after the attack. Six months ago, she gave birth.
Both sisters are now in the custody of an anti-Isis militia in Tripoli, the Libyan capital.
On a recent day, their mother sat in her small rented house in Mornag, a gritty town 25km south of the capital, Tunis. In front of her was the photo of Rahma.
"They used to be the opposite of this," she said in a low, resigned voice.
The sisters loved hard rock music.
Rahma played the guitar. She and Ghofran often wore T-shirts and mingled with boys in cafes. They eschewed headscarves, favoured by many Muslim women, their mother said.
But their family life was troubled. Their father struggled to find work and often came home drunk, Hamrounni said. In 2011, the couple divorced, and he disappeared.
By then, Tunisia was in the midst of its Arab Spring revolution. With the toppling of its dictator Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, and the new openness that followed, religious extremists made inroads with disaffected youth frustrated by the lack of jobs and opportunities. One group set up an Islamic education camp across the street from Hamrounni's home in the central city of Sousse.
From a loudspeaker, the imam implored young people to give up their Western influences, warning of catastrophic consequences.
First Ghofran joined the camp, then Rahma.
"I was happy that my daughters were respecting Islam," Hamrounni recalled.
They began wearing a niqab - a black veil with an opening for their eyes. They stopped watching television, save for religious programmes. They avoided shaking hands with males. They urged their two younger sisters to leave school because it was secular and taught by "non-believers".
One day, Rahma threw her guitar and CDs into the rubbish. Western music was now taboo. On another day, the sisters tossed out their hard-rock T-shirts. They burned pictures of themselves playing music, the ones with their faces uncovered.
All except the photo their mother keeps in her box.
Rahma Sheikhawi, 17, left her family's home in Tunisia to join Isis in Libya. Photo / Washington Post
More than 700 Tunisian women have joined Isis and other militant groups in Syria and Iraq, according to the nation's Ministry of Women. Badra Gaaloul, a researcher with the Tunis-based International Centre of Strategic, Security and Military Studies, estimates there are more than 1000 female foreign radical Islamists in Libya, including 300 Tunisians. Others are from Sudan, Syria, Egypt and Morocco, as well as Western European nations.
"They serve as wives, mothers, as religious instructors to teach the laws of the Islamic State," Gaaloul said. "They also police areas and train to be fighters and suicide bombers."
Researchers are noticing efforts on social media to lure more female radical Islamists to the Libyan coastal city of Sirte, which Isis seized in the chaos that followed the death of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi five years ago. In tweets, monitored last northern autumn by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, female radical Islamists urged followers to head to Libya, noting that routes from Turkey into Syria were blocked.
"How many brothers & sisters rn in Turkey cannot go back home, and cannot enter in . . . Make your visa and go to #IS in #Libya," wrote an extremist named "Zawjah Shahid," or "martyr's wife" in Arabic.
By 2014, Rahma and Ghofran were attending ceremonies celebrating the martyrdom of Tunisian Islamist extremists killed in Syria. Through social media and websites, they learned about the armed groups fighting there. They placed the black Isis flags in their bedrooms.
"By then, I had lost control of my daughters," Hamrounni said.
They also began to radicalise their younger sisters, Taysin and Aya. They bought a toy Kalashnikov rifle and showed them how to operate it. They showed them videos of how the Islamic State trained children to use weapons.
"We used to watch how they taught children to become snipers," said 11-year-old Taysin.
"They always told me to join Isis and go into the field and fight," said 13-year-old Aya.
In late 2014, Hamrounni crossed the border with her family to the Libyan city of Zawiyah to find work. The war's violence had not reached there.
Within weeks, Ghofran had fled the house. Two days later, the family returned to Tunisia. Hamrounni restricted Rahma's movements, but it didn't stop her aspirations.
In Libya, while her sister was a dutiful wife of a militant, Rahma trained in weapons. Her mother thinks she was in Sabratha with other Tunisian Islamist extremists to launch an attack in Tunisia. After the US airstrike, the sisters were captured.
In a phone interview, Ahmed Omran, a spokesman for the Libyan militia, acknowledged that the girls were in their custody but declined to comment further.
Hamrounni has gone on national television, chastising the Tunisian Government for not doing more to get her daughters released, even though she is aware they will be thrown in jail. Tunisia's Interior Ministry did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Hamrounni no longer allows her two younger daughters to access Facebook. She doesn't let them speak to their older sisters the rare times they call.
"I am not with the Islamic State now," said Taysin, a precocious girl dressed in pink with a black headscarf.
