Black Flag over Babylon - Jihad and the West Chapter Five Podcast Three

Sometimes parents will brave the dangers of Raqqa to fetch their daughters back home. Nineteen-year-old Aicha fell hard for a charismatic Dutch Jihadi after seeing him on television. She converted to Islam and left with him for Raqqa but soon called her mother, Monique, to take her home. “Monique,” fully aware of what she would likely encounter, set out to Raqqa undercover and in a burka to bring her daughter home, at great risk to both of them. Monique said, “Sometimes you do what you have to do.” Monique rescued her daughter, but most stories do not have warm endings.

 

            In the United States, the parents of Shannon Maureen Conley had evidence that their girl was preparing to fight as a Jihadi. Only after they exhausted their pleas to their daughter did they contact the FBI, knowing she would be arrested. Her story and that of a Russian college student are presented below.

 

Profile Sixteen: An American and a Russian: Halima and Amina

Shannon/Halima

 

            Christian-raised Shannon Maureen Conley, a nineteen-year-old Denver suburbanite, planned to make herself useful to the Islamic State after she became a Muslim. Shannon changed her name to Halima, which is loosely translated as “mild-mannered” and “generous.” She announced to the world that she had become a “slave of Allah.”

 

            All this was a surprise to some of those who had known her as a girl, well before she became Halima. Her neighbors commented that Shannon had undergone a drastic transformation late in high school. A neighbor related, “I would see her in shorts and, then, all of a sudden, she started wearing those [Islamic] clothes.” She found a new identity in Islam as she entered adulthood.

 

            Halima did not keep her newfound faith to herself. At Faith Bible Chapel, near her home, she made her presence known. Wearing a hijab and a backpack, she drew the pastor’s attention by adopting a curious hostility. A volunteer at the church’s small café noticed that Conley ordered biscuits and gravy one morning. However, Shannon became angry when she learned that her meal contained meat, and she threw it away. She also made political comments that alarmed churchgoers. She was asked not to return.

 

            The FBI intervened, interviewed her and her parents, and advised her not to make statements that could easily be construed as threatening. But she told the FBI, “If they [churchgoers] think I’m a terrorist, I’ll give them something to think I am.” The FBI monitored Halima and spoke to her nine times. They understood that she intended to travel to Syria. They were right.

 

            There was an element of romance, of sorts, to Shannon’s road to Jihad. She fell hard for a man she had never met in person. On the internet, she spooned her affections to a man she believed to be a fellow traveler. Her paramour and coconspirator boasted that he was an active Caliphate fighter. In turn, she crowed that she had attended a US Army Explorers camp and would use that training to wage Jihad against nonbelievers. She was also certified in shooting skills by the National Rifle Association. They had much in common. He proposed marriage, and she accepted. They aspired to meet and marry in Syria and then to fight for the Caliphate. She would cook and nurse injured Jihadis; he would kill the enemies of the State. But before traveling to Syria, Conley needed to prepare.

 

            Shannon’s father discovered her plan and notified the FBI, which arrested her at the Denver airport. In her luggage, agents found several CDs and DVDs labeled “Anwar al-Awlaki,” a leading propagandist for Islamic violence. She also carried a list of contacts, one of whom was the man she planned to marry. Shannon did not make it to the Middle East or get married. She was sentenced to four years in federal prison. As for the reaction of those who knew her? The church volunteer who had served Shannon the biscuit she had thrown in the trash with scorn said of her, “I feel sorry for her. She needs a lot of prayer.”

Amina

 

            A young Russian woman followed a path similar to Shannon’s. With a soft smile and a broad Slavic face, the nineteen-year-old Varvara Karaulova looked more like a Russian coed than a Jihadi aspirant. She was both. Varvara was enrolled at one of Russia’s most respected universities, Moscow State University, where she studied Arabic and philosophy. She had already mastered French and English, and her intellectual curiosity led her to the Middle East. Her Facebook profile lists her as liking authors J. R. R. Tolkien and the leading Russian writer and poet Mikhail Lermontov. But in late May 2015, she would be arrested, along with other Russians, while trying to infiltrate Syria from Turkey.

 

            Her father, Pavel, said, “She’s always home studying... she’s so trustworthy. But somehow she got twisted into this.” Varvara’s friends observed that she began acting and dressing differently after she began taking Arabic classes at her university. She grew more distant from non-Muslims and began wearing the hijab. Then, a week before she left, Pavel noticed she wasn’t wearing her cross necklace. “She said the chain broke,” he said. She changed her name to Amina and left for Syria.

 

            Interpol detained her when she tried to cross the border from Turkey to Syria illegally. Varvara was deported back to Russia. Her father was relieved yet despaired. “I just had no idea. This should be a lesson for all of us.”