DUSHANBE, April 27, 2015, Asia-Plus – An article “How an IS Militant Wooed a Tajik Woman Online” by Joanna Paraszczuk posted on Radio Liberty’s website on April tells of Tajik IS (Islamic State) militant inviting a young Tajik woman to join him in Syria.
Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, Radio Ozodi, spoke to a 20-year-old Tajik woman named as Manzoura (her name has been changed to protect her identity) from the city of Kulob, who described how she had started to chat to a young man she met on the Russian social-networking site Odnoklassniki.
Manzoura talked to the young man, who went under the name Firouzi Mujohid (“jihadi fighter”), every day, but he would not tell her his exact location. Firouz would only say that he was “in a country that is like paradise,” Manzoura recalls.
After some time, Firouz admitted to Manzoura that he was in Syria and that he was “waging jihad” there.
Firouz invited Manzoura to join him so that she could “find a path to paradise,” a chat-up line that in this case was likely a euphemism for joining the Islamic State (IS) group and becoming a “jihadi bride,” the wife of a militant.
“During our chats, he asked for my details so he could buy me a ticket to come to him,” Manzoura told Radio Ozodi.
At this point, as things seemed to be getting serious, Manzoura asked Firouz to tell her his real name. Manzoura”s young admirer turned out to be Umar from Dushanbe.
Firouz/Umar sent Manzoura some photographs of himself that had been taken before he went to Syria and some other snaps showing him in Syria posing under an IS flag. Trust was growing between the young pair.
But while Umar was a militant fighting in Syria, his Internet dating style appears to have been fairly standard. When Manzoura didn”t log into Odnoklassniki for a while, Umar invited another girl — a 21-year-old from his hometown, Dushanbe — to join him in Syria.
The budding friendship between Manzoura and Umar came to an abrupt halt when the “other woman” flew to Syria and apparently married her prize. Umar”s new bride took down her husband”s Odnoklassniki page and warned Manzoura to stop communicating with her spouse.
But even after his marriage, Umar was not deterred from attempting to pursue his romance with Manzoura.
“Even after that, this man proposed that I come to Syria and become his second wife,” Manzoura says.
Was Umar an IS “honey trap” who was recruiting young Tajik women to come to Syria and join the militants? Manzoura thinks her young man might have used his courtship skills to recruit other women.
Tajik psychologist Zarina Kenjayeva tells Radio Ozodi that extremists are recruiting girls who have “lost hope and meaning in life.” “Basically, they quickly believe what they are told and do not have their own clear opinions. They think that this is the only way out for them,” Kenjayeva says.
But there is evidence to suggest that some of the Tajik women who have been recruited by IS to join the militants in Syria are not those who have “lost hope” but are well-educated young professionals. These young women are likely targeted deliberately.
