Undercover Jihadi Bride: Inside Islamic State’s Recruitment Networks

“Of course. I’ll be here. I promise.” Then, a minute later:

“You converted, so . . . you should get ready for your hijrah. I’ll take care of you, Mélodie.”

First Skype, now hijrah! Abu Bilel didn’t lose any time! This was our first encounter. We’d only exchanged a few lines. He didn’t know anything about this girl, except that she’d converted to Islam, and he was already asking her to join him in the bloodiest country on earth. He was shamelessly inviting her to abandon her past, her home, and her family—that is, unless they perhaps wanted to join her on her spiritual journey? He was asking her to be reborn in a new land and wait for God to open his doors to her. After an initial shock, I felt a mix of feelings. I had trouble distinguishing them all, but I was sure of one thing: I was disgusted. Bilel was targeting the weak, and whenever they took his bait, he and others like him from the Islamic State tried as hard as they could to reformat them, erasing their pasts as one would clean up a disk before recording new information. Thinking about this process and the girls he preyed on infuriated me. Going after a girl like Mélodie was so easy—and so unfair. I’d met a thousand girls like her. They hadn’t had stable upbringings. Nor had they received a proper education. They didn’t have any guidance, so they were prone to believing rumors. It was the same for boys. It made me so angry, I wanted to punch him.

What was I getting myself involved in? I sensed it would go much further. But I never imagined that six months later, at the present moment of writing, Abu Bilel would continue to impact my life. For the time being, all I could think of was the fact that if I wanted to glean information from this terrorist, Mélodie would really have to exist. As in spy stories, I needed to craft a story for her. She would step through the looking glass, and perhaps even be sacrificed in the end. I would give her traits from all the kids I’d met who’d succumbed to jihadism. She would be a melting pot of Norah, Clara, Leila, Élodie, the Bon brothers, Karim, and Karim’s best friend. Their families had to go to the border between Turkey and Syria just to obtain proof that they were alive. Most returned empty-handed. If Mélodie began corresponding with this man, who seemed experienced, given his age, perhaps he would reveal useful pieces of information. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, I had too many unanswered questions. Any answers I could obtain would be precious for future stories. I undertook this project as an anthropological study. For now, however, it was getting late, and I wanted to stop thinking about Abu Bilel.

My boyfriend was due to arrive. I called to tell him I wanted to spend the night at his apartment. I didn’t say anything about how I’d spent the evening, only that I wanted to sleep next to him.

Saturday morning (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

Milan handed me a Diet Coke, M, which is a weekly magazine published by Le Monde, and his iPad. Coke is my morning coffee; I still haven’t learned to drink grown-up beverages at their designated times. Milan is familiar with my routine, and his tablet is always connected to Mélodie’s Facebook account. That way I can keep an eye on her News Feed. While we were sleeping, Abu Souleyman,

a young Alsatian in Syria, died. A picture of his body, a faint smile on his lips, was being widely shared and commented on by dozens of users. Milan cuddled up to me and sipped his coffee. He looked at me tenderly, shaking his head. “Is this going to take long?” he asked, still half asleep. I smiled and kissed him. He flipped through a magazine on French cinema while I scanned the day’s comments on the “martyr.” Nothing original. Apparently Souleyman was in a better place. God was proud of him. And we should be “proud he died for his cause” at the age of twenty-one.

Other conversations interested me more. Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of the Islamic State, was said to have almost fallen into an ambush by Jabhat al-Nusra. The al-Nusra Front is one of the principal armed terrorist groups associated with al-Qaeda in Syria. This group is often wrongly conflated with ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham. Although the groups’ relations were once cordial, and even harmonious, that is no longer the case. Their goals and adversaries are not the same. Al-Qaeda’s enemy continues to be the West—those of the cross. ISIS seeks to create an Islamic State, a Sunni caliphate somewhere between Iraq and Syria. ISIS’s aim is to eliminate from power all those directly or indirectly related to Shiites, starting with the minority Alawite branch, which runs the country, before dislodging Shiite power in Iraq. A return to the Middle Ages, a triumphant Islam, and territories seized through force: those are the methods and aims of the Islamic State. Al-Qaeda shares this same ideology but first seeks to diminish Western power and demonstrate its own force, as in the attacks of September 11, 2001. To simplify matters, ISIS seeks to eliminate heretics from its geographical area, while al-Qaeda targets infidels.

Whenever my interviews lead me to a jihadist, I question him on his ambitions in the event the organization manages to achieve its goals and conquer the Middle East. I usually get the same story: “The Islamic State will wage war on the United States and force its people to submit to God’s will. Then we’ll abolish all borders, and the earth will be one Islamic State under sharia law.” By creating a territorial seat for its utopia, ISIS has succeeded where al-Qaeda has failed. While the latter has tediously built cells throughout the world, ISIS has waged war, implemented real policies, and grown an army of fanatics—officially in Syria and unofficially in Iraq. ISIS’s army first consisted of Sunnis hostile to the American invasion of Iraq; later thousands of foreign fighters swelled the ranks. Meanwhile, the terrorist organization has also refined its favorite weapon: digital propaganda. The image of Afghanis in caves doesn’t entice. Jihadism 2.0’s new communication strategy has hit the mark. The Islamic State has inundated YouTube with ultraviolent videos that stick in the minds of thousands of Westerners lobotomized by the group’s swiftness of action and execution of threats. Promises bind only those who listen to them, it is said. Sadly, that truism especially applies to these young jihadists. Desperate for attention, the majority leave for the front with the ultimate ambition of posting pictures online of themselves dressed as soldiers. There they are sure to be noticed and feel important, and they can also express their exploits over Facebook and Twitter. Andy Warhol’s 1968 pronouncement, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes,” has never been so apt.

I was born in the early eighties. Religion was already an issue for teens back then, but it didn’t motivate them to act the way it does today, even if some young men did become jihadists. These days, would-be jihadists aren’t drawn by easy money, guns, or drug dealing. Instead they dream about being respected and gaining recognition. They want to be “heroes.” Becoming the neighborhood big shot and hanging out over PlayStation is one thing; playing war and creating a state is quite another. Still, there’s more than one type of jihadist. Recent cases of young people moving to the Middle East have often involved solitary radicalization. I’m thinking of a young girl from Normandy who thought she’d found the answers to her existence, alone, on the Net. A few weeks later, the converted Christian girl left to join the ranks of Islamist fighters. I imagined my Toulousain avatar, Mélodie, to be an extremely sensitive girl; being dominated would give her life a sense of purpose. Like so many other young people—from throughout history and regardless of social milieu—she lived a life of desperation.

That night (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

Milan was asleep. His bedroom was calm and quiet. I tossed and turned. The blinds were open, the streetlamps outside bathing the room in a poetic light. This familiar nocturnal scene accompanied my insomnia but did nothing to silence the questions crashing through my brain.

I carefully got out of bed. Milan slept like an angel, while my subconscious dragged me into the living room and toward a demon imprisoned behind a retina display. Three new messages from my correspondent awaited me. I hadn’t expected so many. I lit a cigarette. He’d sent the first one at 2:30 p.m. in Syria, a surprising time for a zealous fighter to be corresponding. He should have been on the front. Or elsewhere. I was bewildered by the thought of him digitally stalking a girl from an Internet café in the middle of the afternoon.

“Salaam alaikum, sister. How are you today? I wanted to let you know that I’m available if you want to talk. I’m around.”

Around? Around where? His next message grabbed my attention before I could reflect on that question:

“What time will you be online? I really want to talk to you.”

“I have a special surprise for you . . . Masha’Allah*.”

The “surprise” was a picture of him, armed to the teeth. So cool. A gigantic M4 assault rifle was slung across his shoulder. A black bandana embroidered with the Islamic State’s white insignia covered his forehead. He stood erect, puffing out his chest, smiling. I had trouble believing this was real. He didn’t know me. What if I was hiding behind Mélodie’s identity? What if I was really a cop? Or a journalist searching for reliable information from a solid source? Abu Bilel wasn’t concerned. Clearly, he thought he’d caught a fish. Based on the tone of his messages, it didn’t seem like he was going to let this one escape from his net. Did he often act like this? It must have been four o’clock in the morning. I was looking for answers. For now, all I had were more and more questions.

People often compare journalists to dogs in search of bones to gnaw on. Admittedly, at that moment, I was excited by the idea of delving into the mind of an assassin—this assassin. I admire people of faith. I envy the strength it affords them. Faith is a precious source of support as one confronts life’s inevitable difficulties. But when people use spirituality as an excuse to commit murder, I, Anna, give myself permission to become someone else. At least digitally speaking. That was how I justified becoming Mélodie, a desperate and naïve young woman. Some might object to my methods on moral grounds, but at the time this terrorist organization was doing everything in its power to enroll a maximum number of new recruits. I let my conscience decide. Abu Bilel wouldn’t be the subject of a story. I wanted to examine what he said and untangle fact from fiction. How many people now served the Islamic State? How many French? How many Europeans? Did women really pleasure jihadists as a way of serving God? Did they also take up arms? Abu Bilel beckoned me onto his path of religious domination, while he decimated the meek and helpless in a country rife with religious divisions. Could I get him to tell me about the bloody conflicts he spearheaded?

As day broke, I surfed the Net, scanning the labyrinthine Web for anything I could find on Abu Bilel. I dug up dozens of conversations between mujahideen and potential recruits. Nothing conclusive. However, I learned that a very important battle had just taken place in Syria, in the region of Deir ez-Zor, less than three hundred miles from the border with Iraq, a country still haunted by the ghost of Saddam Hussein and the American invasion. I came across an exchange that normally would have interested me: “We destroyed them! I recorded the whole thing! But al-Baghdadi and his emirs were suspicious it might be an al-Nusra trap, and they stayed inside the house. Call Guitone; he’s with them.” I’d known of al-Baghdadi, the very dangerous leader of ISIS, for a long time. But that night, since I couldn’t find any information on Bilel, I was interested in Guitone. I knew him “well.” Guitone, aged twenty-two or twenty-three, was born in Marseille and had lived for a while in Great Britain before joining ISIS, where he quickly climbed the ranks. He possessed three qualities that made him an essential asset to the Islamic State’s digital propaganda campaign: he was good-looking, he knew his religion by heart, and he was able to preach in four different languages.

My colleagues and I had nicknamed him “the Publicist.” Whenever we needed information, we could rely on him. He was always eager to help. Guitone knew me through my true identity: Anna. We had spoken on several occasions. I’d last contacted him in March about Norah, a fifteen-year-old girl from Avignon. Her family had recently told me that Norah had left to join the al-Nusra Front, and not the Islamic State. Guitone had confirmed that fact as well as her geographic location.

Guitone bragged about his affiliation with ISIS on his Facebook page, often posting videos of himself: Guitone visiting wounded jihadists in hospitals; Guitone flouting France and Turkey, armed to the teeth at a feast on the Turkish border; Guitone waving to a crowd of fighters celebrating in the conquered streets of Raqqa, Syria. Guitone was unbelievably famous. Each of his posts literally made adolescents from all over Europe salivate. He claimed to live like a king, and he was always dressed from head to toe in name brands. He was respected for what he was. He always had an innocent smile on his face. That was his trademark. Who better to convince you to embrace his cause, particularly in a country so affected by war? Admittedly, it was clever PR. I considered sending Guitone a message asking him to fill me in on the latest battle, at which the “emirs” were nowhere to be found, but I decided against it. I didn’t yet know that Guitone, Abu Bilel, and al-Baghdadi were related—insanely related. I continued dissecting the information at my disposal. I had nothing on Bilel. Who was he? And how old? I guessed he had extensive experience in the field. My curiosity growing, I sensed this man was more complicated than the young jihadists I’d encountered before.

Sunday night (#ua7c63389-a74d-5013-b97f-7f9a8c0f4eb4)

“Sympathy for the Devil” by the Rolling Stones crashed against the walls of my living room, resonating like a premonition. I turned on my computer and found new messages from Bilel. I barely had time to read them before he connected and contacted my digital puppet. In his first posts, he struggled to hide his crass insistence. Every other line, the mercenary begged Mélodie to sign off Facebook and continue her conversation with him over Skype, a platform that combines sight and sound. Why was he so obsessed? Was it a safety measure? Did he want to verify my identity? Or did he want to make sure the new fish swimming in his net was appetizing?

“Why do you want to Skype?” I had Mélodie reply awkwardly.

“Conversations over Skype are more secure, if you see what I mean.”

No, I didn’t see. He ended his sentence with a smiley face, a yellow, winking emoticon. It was absurd. He was absurd. On his profile, he swore he was “devoted to the Islamic State,” so I tried to engage him on that point.

“I see you work for the Islamic State. What’s your job? In France, people say it’s not a very strong brigade.”

I couldn’t help using Mélodie to insult him. I also added a blushing smiley face. Bilel was quick to defend his vanity, firmly insisting that ISIS embodied the height of power, not only in Syria but throughout the world. Soldiers came from all corners of the globe to join its ranks.

“There are three types of fighters,” my charming interlocutor went on, in teacher mode: “those on the front, those who become suicide bombers, and those who return to France to punish infidels.”

“Punish? How?”

“You know how . . . like Mohammed . . .”

It was a reference to Mohammed Merah, the shooter in Toulouse. But Mélodie didn’t understand.

“Who’s Mohammed? And how is he punishing people?”

“You live in Toulouse, right? You don’t know about the scooter killer? . . . There’s one important rule: terrorize the enemies of Allah.”

“But Merah killed children. Don’t children represent innocence and purity? How can they be enemies?”

“You’re so naïve, Mélodie. . . . You like children? One day, you’ll have some of your own, Insha’Allah. You know, we have many orphans here in need of mothers. ISIS sisters take care of them; they’re remarkable women. You have a lot in common with them. You would like them.”

Although he didn’t know Mélodie, Bilel was a master manipulator. His method: lull her into a state of security by telling her what she wanted to hear. Ultimately, the subject of conversation didn’t matter; he would guide her in whatever direction he wanted. Mélodie expressed a certain affection for children, so Bilel suggested she could become a surrogate mother. Forgetting the discussion about Mohammed Merah, she smiled faintly, and imagined what it would be like to devote herself to others worse off than herself. As if other people’s despair could cure her of her own. For some time, she’d felt lost in her depressing surroundings. Everything seemed like a waste of time. Nothing mattered. True happiness was a rare and fleeting sensation; she barely remembered the strength it could provide. Mélodie was tired of her dull and futureless life. She was lost and looking for purpose. I imagined her as a marginalized teen with a difficult and scarring past.

The honey-tongued Bilel might be the spark of hope she needed to restore her faith in life. The terrorist tried to discern Mélodie’s jihadist motivations. He was like a salesman before making a pitch; he sought to understand the expectations and weaknesses of his prey. For him, Mélodie represented a type. Once he managed to categorize her, he simply had to churn out appropriate responses in deep and convincing tones. Bilel was an evil genie. He was an expert salesman, who was careful not to make direct queries on her plans for hijrah. Instead, he asked what she hoped to find once in Syria. It was an important nuance. Bilel still didn’t know much about Mélodie—not her age, the color of her eyes, or her family situation. He wasn’t concerned about any of that. In fact, he seemed interested in only one thing: that she had converted to Islam.

And for Bilel, Mélodie’s faith was so strong that it would be easy to convince her to join him in the most dangerous country on earth. He only questioned Mélodie on her opinion of jihadists. I felt as if I were being polled. My answers relied on opinions I’d heard expressed in reports on high-risk suburbs.

“I’ve heard about what Israel is doing to Palestinian children. I’ve seen dozens of videos showing dead babies. I started following some of your brothers on Facebook who have left to do jihad, there and in Syria. Some mujahideen do good, others evil, so I don’t know what to think.”

“Focus on the good! I myself am an important mujahid. I’ve been devoted to religion for a long time, and I promise you: I can be very, very gentle with the people I love, and very, very hard on nonbelievers. I hope you’re not one of them—”

“How could I be? I converted.”

“Good, but that’s not enough. It’s not enough simply to pray five times a day and observe Ramadan. According to the Prophet, if you want to be a good Muslim, you must come to al-Sham

and serve God’s cause.”

“But I can’t leave my family and abandon everything.”

“Wrong answer! Let me guess: you’re a capitalist.”

Mélodie wasn’t an intellectual. She wasn’t interested in capitalism. Besides, what did it have to do with her family? She didn’t understand what Bilel was implying. Soon he’d tell her to turn her back on the consumer society in which she’d grown up and embrace the Islamic court (or sharia law, a radical Islamic doctrine that exists in a minority of countries). Bilel was clear: Mélodie should not obey the laws of her country. The only laws that applied to her were those of a radical form of Islam. A “pure” Islam, the one he’d embraced. Mélodie was naïve; she didn’t see anything coming. She was duped at every turn. She didn’t even notice the contradiction between Bilel’s attack on consumer society and the fact that he was wearing the latest Ray-Bans and Nike apparel.

“Isn’t capitalism about finding a balance between supply and demand? Something like that? LOL.”