Two American wives of ISIS militants want to return home

AL HAWL CAMP, SYRIA (NYTIMES) - She was a 20-year-old college student in Alabama who had become convinced of the righteousness of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS). So she duped her parents into thinking she was going on a college trip and instead bought a plane ticket to Turkey with her tuition money.

After being smuggled into the caliphate, student Hoda Muthana posted a photograph on Twitter showing her gloved hands holding her American passport. "Bonfire soon," she promised.

That was more than four years ago. Now, after being married to three ISIS fighters and witnessing executions such as those she had once cheered on social media, Muthana says she is deeply sorry and wants to return home to the United States.

She surrendered last month to the coalition forces fighting ISIS and now spends her days as a detainee in a refugee camp in north-eastern Syria. She was joined there by another woman, Kimberly Gwen Polman, 46, who had studied legal administration in Canada before joining the caliphate and possesses dual US and Canadian citizenship.

Both women, interviewed by The New York Times at the camp, said they were trying to figure out how to have their passports reissued and how to win the sympathy of the two nations they scorned.

"I don't have words for how much regret I have," said Polman, who was born into a Reformed Mennonite community in Hamilton, Ontario, to an American mother and Canadian father, and who has three adult children.

Muthana, who attended high school in Hoover, Alabama, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said she was first drawn to the ISIS in high school reading Twitter and other social media posts.

"Once I look back on it, I can't stress how much of a crazy idea it was," she said. "I can't believe it. I ruined my life. I ruined my future."

In a tweet this weekend, US President Donald Trump criticised allies including Britain, France and Germany for not taking back hundreds of ISIS prisoners captured on the battlefield. "The alternative is not a good one in that we will be forced to release them," he warned.

He made no mention of American women who had married ISIS fighters and whom the US had not brought home. Both Muthana and Polman said they had not been visited by US officials since their capture last month.

A small number of Americans - as few as 59, according to data tracked by the George Washington University Programme on Extremism - are known to have travelled to Syria to join ISIS.

Nearly all the American men captured in battle have been repatriated, but it is unclear why some of the American women and their children - at least 13 known to The Times - have not been.

A spokesman for the FBI declined to comment on the two cases, but said agents would typically work to build a criminal case against any American who joined ISIS, a designated terrorist organisation.

Mr Robert Palladino, a spokesman for the State Department, on Tuesday (Feb 19) described the situation for Americans in Syria as "extremely complicated". He said, "We're looking into these cases to better understand the details", but declined to comment further, citing privacy and security concerns.

A Canadian government official said it could be difficult for Canadians detained in Syria to leave the region because they were likely to face serious charges in neighbouring countries.

Citing the many crimes committed by ISIS, Mr Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington programme, said there were "thousands of legitimate reasons to question the sincerity" of appeals like those of Muthana and Polman.

"The foreign women of the Islamic State, while often reduced to simplistic narratives about 'jihadi brides', 'brainwashing' and 'online grooming', aided and abetted many of these atrocities and in some cases directly perpetrated them," he said.

Muthana and Polman acknowledged in the interview here that many Americans would question whether they deserved to be brought back home after joining one of the world's deadliest terrorist groups.

"How do you go from burning a passport to crying yourself to sleep because you have so much deep regret? How do you do that?" Polman asked. "How do you show people that?"

The two women, a generation apart, met and befriended each other in the final pocket of the caliphate, which by January consisted of less than 15 sq km.

Encircled, the area faced severe shortages.

"Seeing a potato," Muthana said, "was like seeing a Lamborghini."

They began talking about making a run for it, and they said they shared their growing horror over the choices they had made.

"It's hard to change your mindset when you have lost everything and sacrificed everything. Even if you feel a tug that tells you something's not right here, this isn't OK, and that there's too many holes here, something's wrong, I think it's very, very difficult when you feel like you have burned bridges, to know how to shift," Polman said.

ISIS forbade anyone to leave, planting land mines and using snipers to shoot down anyone who tried. But last month, Muthana said, she decided to give it a try by latching on to a Syrian family who left Shafa at dusk.

All she took was her baby and his stroller, she said. When darkness fell, the group got lost and spent the night in the frigid cold, she said.

The next day, Jan 10, she completed the journey and surrendered to American troops in the Syrian desert, who fingerprinted her.

Days later, Polman followed the same route and surrendered as well. Weeks later, after having no contact from the American or Canadian authorities, she and Muthana reached out to the Red Cross to get help. They are also in touch with a lawyer who is trying to help navigate their return to North America.

Muthana gave a handwritten note to the lawyer.

"I realised how I didn't appreciate or maybe even really understand how important the freedoms that we have in America are. I do now," she wrote. "To say that I regret my past words, any pain that I caused my family and any concerns I would cause my country would be hard for me to really express properly."

Mr Hughes, deputy director of the George Washington programme, said the US has an obligation to bring her home - "albeit in handcuffs".