Angry Planet - Why the West Loves 'ISIS Brides'

Episode Date: April 17, 2023

The Islamic State has largely fallen out of the western press with the weird exception of ISIS brides. And when we talk about the Islamic State, western press often ignores its broader crimes. The plight of the Yazidi, specifically, is largely ignored by press and NGOs.The plight of the so-called “ISIS bride,” however, is very much in fasion. But I wanted that photo and that testimony to lead off this post. Today’s episode is mostly about the women of the Islamic State, but the Yazidis are a crucial part of that story and we shouldn’t forget them.When Islamic State still had a caliphate that galvanized Western militaries, young men and women from around the world left their homes to join up. Their reasons were varied but their passion seems unwavering. Now the Islamic State is fractured and the Caliphate is in ruin but many of the fighters and so-called ISIS brides remain. Now, some of them want to go home, and Western media has looked at them with a shockingly sympathetic eye.Today’s show is a long interview with journalist Norma Costello, who has spent time in al-Hol where many of the women of the Islamic State now live. She’s written about them in UnHerd.Around the beginning of the pandemic, family and friends of Isis members began to gently craft a new narrative about their women. They had never supported the caliphate. They were innocents forced to travel there by men. They were, in their own way, victims. These grown women had been “trafficked” into Isis territory. Ignore the fact that many of them bought their own tickets.After we’re done talking about the Islamic State, Norma and I switch gears and get onto a very Angry Planet topic: Irish tankies and their strained relationship with Russia and its war in Ukraine.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world of their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello, and welcome to Angry Planet.

I am Matthew Galt. When the Islamic State still had a caliphate that galvanized Western militaries, Young men and women from around the world left their homes to join up. The reasons were varied, but their passion seemed unwavering. Now the Islamic State is fractured and the caliphate is in ruin, but many of the fighters and so-called ISIS brides remain. Now, some of them want to go home, and Western media has looked at them with a shockingly sympathetic eye.

With us here today to talk about this is Norma Costello. Costello is a journalist whose work has appeared in vice, foreign policy, and unheard. Her latest on this specific subject is in unheard. It's called How the Media Whitewashed ISIS Brides. Norma, thank you so much for coming onto the show once again and walking us through this. Good morning, Matthew. Yes. So the last piece that I wrote about them, God, we're going back like a few months,

was just in relation to a trend that I started to notice with the men and women who traveled to join ISIS in, in 2014, 2014, and 16. And I started to kind of notice the headlines were changing. So it just became, it went from everybody being terrified of these ISIS guys, you know, like who were traveling across vast plains of Nineveh, enslaving women and children, which I think is a pretty scary thing to do, to suddenly, they were innocent victims who had no control over their surroundings. And we're not, in fact, like, gleefully clapping on these men in white Toyotas, but were actually traumatized by the whole thing.

And I just found that so bizarre. You know, it was just such a strange twist that even today I'm still trying to process it. Yeah, it's this strange kind of redemption tour for a lot of these women, right? Can you kind of, can you walk me through how does someone end up becoming an ISIS bride? Well, like the first thing, the terminology, ISIS Bride, I remember when I was filing a story about an ISIS and Verticum of Bride, I begged my editor not to use that term because I thought this woman had plenty agency herself and the term Bride sort of diminished her to just like a shatel accessory of a man and she had her own mind. But anyway, he went for it. So that was what happened. I think that, no, I think that's a really good, I think that's a really good point and it's kind of key to this whole story, right? it? Yeah, absolutely. I think the women were just painted as not all of them. Like I live in Melbourne in Australia, Australia has been quite, has been quite robust about how they've treated these women

as actors and as, you know, not just bystanders to the story. And Australia has been quite robust and, you know, brought people home and then prosecuted them. And Ireland did the same, but I think not with the same level of, not with the same level of planning that Australia did. I think in Ireland's case, it's just, it happened more by circumstance, but they still did it. In terms of the bride, the bride moniker, there's a lot of issues with it. There's a lot of issues with it. There's a lot of we associate bride with femininity and we associate it with caring. You think about what a bride is, like a woman on, you know, like there's an innocence to the term that was used and kind of supplanted. on a lot of women who are very violent, are still very violent,

and harbour quite damaging, terrifying ideologies that a lot of different international organisations would rather look the other way. They're happy for us to use the family bride terminology as opposed to, you know, individual actors who were doing, who were doing things based on a toxic ideology that saw a group of people as superior to others and everybody else was, you know, is, it. Like, they have an ideology about slavery, and slavery is absolutely fine. There's no issues with it because that's something that exists in their ideology, so calling them innocent brides or something different.

But look, I sidestep. In terms of how they got into it, there's lots of different pathways. So, like some people, say, for example, in the case of Shemima Begham, I mean, she was 15. Like, she was a child when she left. So you could argue with Shemima that her story is quite complex because she was minor and, you know, like there was a lot of factors of play with her. You had like international intelligence agencies involved with her traveling in. But then you also have, let's say, the bog standard ones,

who are the women that I'm in touch with a lot or used to be. I kind of cut them off about six months ago. But they are, they were adults when they went in. They were fully cognizant of what they were joining. They knew damn well what they were, you know, what ISIS were doing. They supported them. Not only did they do that, but they also justified ISIS's existence by being, you know, the people that created the families, the children, the cubs of the caliphate. Without these women, ISIS would never have been as successful as it was.

Like they were integral parts of what we now, like when we look back and kind of think about what ISIS was. And still is, but not to the same extent, these women were integral to the whole thing. They later became after the fall of like the territorial full of the caliphate. They became sort of like money collectors. They became symbols of oppression for, you know, the international media to sort of like justify the actions of ISIS. In many ways, like people will argue with me about this and say, you can't say that these women being held in camps in Syria is, you know, humane and that it's okay for us to do this as an international community. and I would say absolutely not.

Like they should not. They should be repatriated. But I do think that the way that the women have been sort of portrayed as innocence based on the circumstances that brought them to Al Hall is a very damaging path to go down. I used to joke with a friend saying, well, they've completely sanitised the women now.

Next we'll see the brothers, the men in the prisons. That will be next. And sure enough, that's happening now. We're being like there's a Canadian guy. He's Canadian British, Jack Lett. And he joined ISIS. And now his family are talking about how he's the most innocent little boy in the world that is deeply traumatized and it's Islamophobic to keep him there. And I'm like, let's say, for example, your kid is a murderer.

You're going to feel like, you know, protective of your child and you're not going to want to want to. believe the vicious things your kid did. But when you're presented with evidence, you finally would have to accept that and go, okay, well, my kid needs to be punished, even though I have so much love for my child, the kid needs to still be punished. But what they're trying to do is say that, well,

my kid's perfect because this is who I believe him to be, not based on his actions, but who I believe him to be. Unfortunately, justice doesn't work like that. But with ISIS, I feel like a lot of the INGOs and a lot of kind of international human rights organizations are supporting this narrative now in order to sort of, I actually don't know why they're doing it because I think that there's a fair hand you can deal here where you could say we need to bring people back because we, you know, they are citizens of our country and we need to repatriate them and treat them as we would people in our country who break laws. that's a fair enough argument. But why are we talking about innocent victims? Like where does the victimization of these people come in? Because they're not victims.

I mean, the children who are born in this situation are victims, but the adults who went to join this terrorist organization are not victims, you know? And I find that that's, how did we get here, you know? The line gets fuzzy around age, I think, too, right? I think that that's part of what, like Jack Letts was 19 when he said that he went to Kuwait and kind of started to get integrated into the Islamic State. The one, the, I'm going to, I keep screwing up the name, Shemima. Shemima.

Yeah, Shemima. She was 15, right? And now she's kind of, in the UK, has become kind of the poster person for this. She's on the cover of the Times Magazine, the April 2nd issue, sharing what she calls her confessions. And I think in a lot of people's minds, the difference between a, 15-year-old and 19-year-old is not, they can look the same to people, especially when you're 40, 50 years old and you're just reading the newspaper, you're not super informed

about all this stuff. You see a young woman or a young man on the cover of a magazine, and they just look young to you. A 15-year-old and 19-year-old could look the same. Yeah, but there's cultural issues here, too. I mean, you know, Jack Letts would have actively sought this out. He wasn't raised Muslim. He wasn't exposed to any.

extremism and any like Islamic extremism through his his upbringing. He would have actively sought this out. And I think that's when it kind of changes to. And I think there is a difference between 15 and 19. There's, there's a legal difference, which is what's significant here. There absolutely is. I'm just trying to answer the like the cultural perception issue. You're absolutely right. Like the brain is different. There's a legal difference. There's a world of those four years. There's a world of difference. Right. Yeah. Like I mean when when when you're 15, you're still in high school, living with your mom and dad, and when you're 19, you're like either in university or you're working or you're doing some kind of trade, like you're an independent person at that point. Like, I think the issue, though, when we're talking about people who converted to Islam and very quickly joined ISIS, like if we're talking the word that they use is revert, if we're talking about those people, in my experience, those people have been the most aggressive.

They have been the most vehement. They have been the most ideological. They have been, and this is in my experience, I've talked to, I'm going to say, it could be close on 100 now, ISIS, ex-ISIS members and current ISIS members, like, well, current ideological supporters of ISIS. And basically, I would find, in my experience, the reverts have been, I think it's because they kind of have to fight a little bit harder to prove, you know, one explained it to me quite well. She used to be, she's what they call Tachfuri ISIS, she used to be ISIS, and she isn't now. And she said, well, you know, you have to learn everything. You have to learn how to pray properly. You have to learn about food. You have to learn about like, you know, like during Ramadan and how you behave.

And she said every mistake we made is constantly corrected by Muslims, like who are born in the culture. And they're constantly correcting us to make us better Muslims. But she said it can kind of make you feel like you're being picked on. And then if you feel like you're being picked on, well, you know, you can also go very extreme because you want to show your commitment and your dead. dedication. And that's how she described her situation to me. Like the other thing, I think what I find interesting about it is, like, you can't paint everybody with the same brush with this. I do know, like I had sushi in Ukraine with the guy who was ex-IS, an ex-IS fighter from Dajistan. And that was a really surreal experience for me because I was thinking, oh my God, like, you know, this is somebody

who's walking around, not prosecuted. He did go to prison. He did go to prison. He did. go to prison in Russia. So he did serve a short sentence, probably similar to what Irish woman Lisa Smith will serve, you know, a couple of years and then they're out. He had completely changed his mind on a lot of things, you know, and he had, he spoke about how he didn't like the corruption of the organisation and all of this. But, you know, one of the things he, that drew him from that just down there was the romanticism of jihad. And I feel from speaking to him that that wasn't necessarily over for him. If there was a, you know, a kind of another variant of that appeared somewhere, I'm not so sure that he wouldn't be attracted to that, maybe not as, not in the exact same

ways, ISIS, but something similar. I felt like that, that particular attraction hadn't gone for him yet. And I think for a lot of people, like, say, for example, you see you're no longer ISIS, it doesn't mean that you're not, or potentially wouldn't be attracted to something. similar that came along under a different branding, you know? And I mean, like, that's the thing with, with really, like, with these kind of ideologies, I'm not just talking about Islamic ideologies here, but these extremist ideologies anywhere, is that you can always, you might leave one variant and then join another. And I feel like that that's quite, that's something that I've seen with a lot of people that I speak to, that that's something that could potentially come up in the future.

But currently, as it stands, a lot of people are very angry with life. They're now talking about their behavior and their conduct, but I do kind of think that's also because of the territorial defeat. They lost, they lost the land. So you have to kind of wonder, well, are you like against them now because really this thing you're telling me about the ideological deficiencies of ISIS? Or is it just because simply they didn't win, you know, the Kaffir Kurds won as far as it goes. How does that one, you know, how do you square that one? But I mean, in terms of how, we're processing this. And the ISIS story and the ISIS bride story and the ISIS, you know, fighter story, it's kind of gone from the headlines now. But I feel like a lot of the things we should have learned from these sort of transnational fighters, we haven't. Like we haven't learned anything.

And maybe you have a country like Australia that, for example, has a declared area law that they can enact and say, okay, well, you can't go to here, here and here if there's conflict going on and if you go there, we're going to prosecute you. They have something, but I'm looking at Ukraine and I was there for a good chunk last year and I'm watching the same thing happen there in terms of people with extremist ideologies going somewhere where they can fight and they can act out, whatever they want to act out. And governments are doing the same thing they did with the ISIS guys. Now, I wonder, because you have state support for the war in Ukraine, it's a lot different. But with the ISIS guys,

it's sort of like the governments didn't really in a lot of countries didn't really know what to do with them. The women when they came back I mean there was a Swedish woman who was caught rotten because essentially she had a YouTube or no it was an Instagram page where she was posting pictures of herself in makeup and with long nails and everything

and a Kurdish activist recognized her from her time in Daula in ISIS and out at her. And she went, yeah, like, whatever, what's your problem? That was me. And meanwhile, the Swedish government are kind of going, and in Germany you've a lot of cases of women coming back, same ideology, probably, you know, not expounding it as they used to.

But, you know, Germany took in a lot of Yazidis, a lot of Assyrians, and these guys now are forced to live side by side with people who have completely evaded justice, you know. and I think I've been speaking to Assyrians here in Australia and they've just told me well we're Assyrian

we're kind of used to it but it's very it's scary for them it's scary for the Yazidis they were following the ISIS brides coming back here and the ISIS fighters coming back here like watching this

like live you know minute to minute because these people had directly you know killed family members of theirs and now you had a lot of international human rights organizations saying, how dare Australia not repatriate these poor victims?

And meanwhile, you have the Yazidis living in New South Wales and their jaws on the floor, you know, while they're trying maybe to get another family member into Australia who's living in the, you know, the absolute shambles that is shingal now, since ISIS completely destroyed the city and, you know, enslaved their sisters, their daughters, their mothers like. this is one thing that like I think people don't really notice when they're looking at like I'm not going to name the organizations people can look them up themselves but looking at like you know a well-funded well-respected international human rights organization crying about these people and then you'd wonder well I actually did I checked it out like in comparison to the

money and the press releases and the energy that was put to repatriating the people in a hall to what was going on in the Yazidis, the Assyrians, it was an interesting discord is all I'm going to say about it. And I can't help but think that ISIS brides make sexy headlines. And people, now I think now people are bored. You know, they're not as interested as they were in 2016, 17, 18. But, you know, you're going to drum up publicity for your organisation if you focus on those kind of topics.

And they're controversial and polarised. and people will discuss it like we're doing right now, you know. Why, how big was the discord? Do you remember? Between discord, between. Between the money and time that had been spent on the plet. No, yeah. Yeah, it was big.

It was big, Matthew. It was, I like, at one point, I started getting really interested in this and I started to press releases at one point. And it was basically. Basically, I remember thinking about it in terms of like what they would spend knowing a little bit about NGO comms. And it was, it was, it was so significant. I don't know exact figures now of like what I was guessing it would cost. And that was just an approximation.

Like it was me just completely speculating on that. But there was, it was huge. It was big. And like one interesting thing that is also relevant is the INGOs, if they do anything in terms of like, shingal or like shingal or like for the Assyrian camps or the Assyrians are kind of they move on. They're kind of an

insular community that kind of takes care of themselves but you still have outside Doohawk in northern Iraq. You have huge camps populated by Yazidis. INGOs were pulling out. When I was there there was like cubs of the caliphate as they were so, you know, grotesely dubbed by

the tabloids and by the women. Let's be honest, it was ISIS who created the term. But they um yeah these these kids they were they had access to programs through again NGOs i won't mention to sort of support them because they they were incredibly damaged kids like they used to spend all day playing violent computer games with people you know where you can kind of dial in and play with people and their their mothers and their sisters their aunties whoever you know when these kids came out of mosul whoever kind of identified them they kept asking me can you

you take these kids with you? Can you bring them out because they will not have any life here? We don't know who they're playing these violent computer games with. We don't know. We feel like they've been programmed to say or trained to say certain things to us that they don't mean. They spent too long with ISIS. And they had some NGO supports where they were doing, you know, classes with them and some basic kind of social groups. And as I was leaving, they told me, no, they're pulling out. They're leaving us. So you have the true like, like that word is problematic, but you have like people who have been victims since they were three, four years of age. Right. And whatever small supports they have are being taken away.

And meanwhile, it's like, let's launch a media campaign and talk about how the poor traumatized women are having such a hard time in Al Hall. It's like, well, the conditions in there, in these Ziti camps aren't much better, but we've, we've completely stopped talking about them because we're not getting the sexy headlines with them. We're not getting the mysterious stories about why they decided to leave their comfortable lives and join this terrorist organization. So it was frustrating to see like NGOs and I and international human rights organizations

putting all of their support with these guys. And getting quite, you know, on Twitter, they'd get quite confrontational and aggressive when you started to talk about this stuff. You know, it was more like, I remember seeing like a tweet that was sort of like a congratulations, go you girl about someone who had written a very sympathetic article

about how terrible it was for the women in Al Hall. Do you think that's the tone we should be using when we're talking about these people? Like the situation obviously is fraud. They need to come back. They need to be repatriated. But let's not be singing like, you know, like let's not be calling them innocent angels

until we've actually maybe put them through a trial, maybe looked at the evidence against them. You'll also notice that the international intelligence agencies who informed the government were slow to take them back. And that's because they know a lot more than they can divulge about what the women were up to. And that's the other side of it too, you know. Like, for example, a lot of the people that I've been speaking to have, they weren't just, let's say, especially if you're looking at converts and reverts, they didn't just like become radicalized in a silo within their own. country. They also reached out to other people in different countries. And they were quite stupid and they did it through Facebook groups. Like, yeah, that was secure. And I've seen, like,

I've seen a lot of the correspondence one particular woman had with people. And what they didn't realize is, okay, like, intelligence agencies from all of these countries are looking at what you're doing. And while they won't share everything, they will tip people off. Like, they will go, okay, this is what's happening. Or bigger countries will let smaller countries terrorists be like a patsy for what they want to do, for them chasing their people, you know? And we saw that a lot, but yeah, it was kind of,

so the intelligence agencies, they had a lot of information on these kind of people. I think it's, and I think the international human rights organizations don't want to hear it, they don't want to acknowledge it. They, yeah, they just, there's a deafening kind of silence about, accountability for them. It's interesting with the Australian case because it's the first time it's ever come to a test

where a woman was repatriated back to Australia. I think it was January. She was arrested and then she was out on bail because obviously they had like a whole dossier on her and her violent tendencies and her support for her insane husband. And so she, they'll get her with the declared aerial law because they have a law for that. But I mean, other countries have literally,

like they know what these people have been up to and they've let them back. and either that they can't prosecute them because the trials probably wouldn't stand up. Evidence is a big issue with this. It's really, really difficult to prosecute people because the evidence that you gather in somewhere like Syria, you know, how do you introduce that into a court in Germany? It's like it's a very laborious, difficult process. And states know that and governments know that.

And that's kind of part of the reason that they are a lot. upton to bring them back is because they know that the trials await them when they come home might not be reflective of what these people were up to, you know? Tell me about what it was like, because you've, you've talked to a lot of these women. You've been in their WhatsApp groups. I found the kind of the way that you opened this unheard story very striking, where you're around a bunch of these women in El Hall. Can you tell us about that? Yeah.

So like with the women, but there's two, let's say initially the first time I kind of kind of made contact with them was physically in person in El Hall in 2019. And I was there, I think, two or three times that year. And, I mean, they were telling me that they were going to cut my head off and that it was a dirty cafe and all, you know, like they really were over the top. Like, there was a Venezuelan woman, especially, who was like really intense and there was no repentance. They didn't feel bad about anything they done.

They just were annoyed that they, that, you know, that they weren't allowed out of the camp. They thought the men had told them that. nothing was ever going to happen to them. And, you know, shock horror maybe not that much has happened to them. And that was one thing was meeting them in person. But then the second thing was that in 2020, it was I started to kind of, I started to talk to to people who'd left ISIS. And they were kind of annoyed with other people.

There's a lot of infighting. So you'll find, especially amongst the women, that these women might have shared a tent and they don't like each other anymore. And then one of them will contact me and say, you know, like, linked me to a story. You know this story about how this person's innocent, wait until you hear this for me. And step by step, then you start to get like more and more information on them. And then we ended up, it was me and a colleague of mine, in a group of WhatsApp, signal, telegram groups where they were talking about getting money for the sisters.

Isis were so smart about this. They saw, you know, like the sisters in the camp in El hall with the kids, hey, this is a really good chance for us. to get a bit of money, you know, to graft and get some cash. So they started putting pressure on people. And a lot of them were kind of normal, regular Muslim Muslims with no extremist ideology, who felt bad for these kids, you know. And they were collecting money for them. The women were usually the point of contact from what I saw.

And they would encourage you to give money through Bitcoin. That was their big one at the time. you know, like to send us like we want crypto. And it took talking to them for about a month and a half, maybe even two months, because I had to pretend that I was someone who was not digitally literate, but that I wanted to give money for the cause. So I was bounced between Turkey to the UK because a lot of the money gathering was going on in Turkey. This was all done through two women who seemed to be running.

we talked to an intelligence agency afterwards that confirmed, yeah, this particular lady in Turkey was running a lot of these transactions. And I pretended to be a man from England. Finally, I got to a bank account, but then the newspaper I was doing this for wanted. They said, can we get hand to hand? And I said, oh my God, guys, you actually want me to see if ISIS financiers will meet me in London. like in person and they were like yes and we managed to organize a drop at a petrol station somewhere in the UK a British journalist picked up the bag of money in inverted commas which you know obviously we didn't I think we sent them a phone book and a guy in a bike came collected it and and you know he was

detained by the police and no arrests were made like and we had I still have the phone I had to keep the phone separate with all of these messages, you know, like, you know, like the, I hate the UK, I want the UK to burn. Yes, yes, brother, this is exactly what we want to, you know, send us the money now. And it was kind of like a dodgy kind of con that they were running on like, let's say, me would have been quite a, in there to them, a very naive person who just wanted to help the women. But it was interesting to see how it was being run by when we managed to find out enough

information about one of the main collectors in Turkey who was married to a Bosnian fighter who's imprisoned in Bosnia. And I know their names, like I know everything about these people, but again, prosecutions are difficult. I was a little bit annoyed that they didn't prosecute anyone considering we got someone to collect money for ISIS in a petrol station in London, that nobody got in trouble for that. But what can you do? But it was so easy to do, Matthew, It was so easy. And I imagine now it's even easier. Like now it's probably, you know, three, four steps.

At that time, ISIS were still in the headlines. You know, people were still thinking about them. Now they've sort of disappeared and we have the innocent poor boy, Jack Letts, how dare they imprison him and, you know, the poor innocent women. You know, like the narrative was completely shifted. So they're probably being more and more overt. But then who knows that? Again, that's speculation.

but I would just assume that when I was talking to them, they were still in the headlines and they were still a focus for police. But since then, a lot of things have changed. And I imagine that they're not that high of a priority for Met Police at the minute. But yeah, I mean, look, the stuff they used to send me was horrific. It was so vile. It was so violent. And they loved it.

They really enjoyed it. You know, this made them so happy. to kind of think about these disgusting horrific violence scenarios for infidels in the West. And it was just like, it was just so normalized after a while that, you know, I remember asking about the Yazidis. And it was like, well, you know, what can you do? My colleague has since tried to, I think she was trying to join up with an ISIS. because a lot of ISIS guys who left Iraq, not a lot, but several of them, they went through Iran and they ended up in Afghanistan. And some women were trying to marry brothers in Afghanistan.

And she was talking to them. And she even went as far as saying, well, you know, like I had a bit of problems because my other, my old husband had a Yazidi slave. And they were like, yeah, don't worry, don't worry. You can still come. So, you know, that's what you're dealing with. Like there is no, and then like, okay, so we're talking to these people. We're looking, you know, like we're everyday looking at messages that are just violent, horrific, justifying everything they did.

And then you'll see a press releasing, innocent women and families. And some of the women who were collecting this money were in Al Hall at the time. You know, there was like a cohort of them working in Al Hall to distribute the money and to like, they used to do, take photos. You could get a photo taken. So let's say Matthew, you send somebody money in Al Hall. They will take a photo of something that they bought with the money that you sent them. And thanks, thanks, you know, thanks for this.

And meanwhile, the messages that would have built up to you donating would have been, let's say, not very sanitary. And that was something that, yeah. So like there's like, it's just, I just wonder do they sort of like, you know, they're on their phones and they're like expounding this violent. ideology and then next thing somebody from an NGO comes in and they're like oh it's so terrible we just feel awful we'd never ever support ISIS ever again meanwhile they're back on the phones like the only way to really resolve any of this is to put it to a legal test but well tell me tell me about what happened to lisa smith yeah Lisa Lisa had an interesting kind of scenario

because she comes from ireland and ireland has its own terrorism we've got our homegrown guys and we have legislation that could prosecute Lisa. And I think Lisa had no idea that that could possibly ever happen to her. And I think public sympathy wasn't with Lisa the way it's kind of, she was not as polarizing as Shemima because Shemima was quite young. And Shemima, like, you know, the structure of her citizenship. She's still out there. Like Lisa was in her mid, early to mid-30s when she went the first time. But she's born in 1981? Yeah, so she's not a baby.

She didn't go out as an innocent baby. She didn't convert to Islam until she was in her mid to late 20s, didn't go to ISIS until her early 30s. Maybe she was even, I'm trying to think now, it's been so long ago since I even thought about her, but I'm wondering when she was the early 30s when she converted. But she radicalized very, very quickly. I've seen the messages in the groups that she was in,

and she was quite active. And she went with an ISIS-Rexist, recruiter and nicest propagandist. He's probably better known for his propaganda that Graham Wood has written about in his book, his name is John George Lus. And she went initially to Syria with him and then came back and then went back out in 2015, September 2015. So when I interviewed her, I asked her about the Yazidis and she's saying, well, I had no idea about the Yazidis. I thought it was lies. And I was kind of thinking, well, Lisa, you and I would have been in Ireland at the same time, right? All that was on our state broadcaster at that time was images of the Yazidis,

fling shingale and the white Toyota's coming through. You know, like you would have seen the same thing, Matthew. Now, if you're, if you've already, right, gone to join a variant of this organization, you've married a Tunisian fighter, then you've gone back to your own country, and then you've come back to join, let's say, the more sophisticated, let's call it that. I mean, people are probably going to get annoyed at the terminology I'm using about them. But look, I'm sort of so sick of them at this point that this has become sort of the basic. They're just such a basic topic in my life now that perhaps like it might seem blown.

But anyway, Lisa, yeah, so she went back out in 2015 and she, like, so are you trying to tell me that she didn't know what ISIS were doing with the Yazidis? Are you trying to tell me that the organisation she was going back to join? She never followed any of the media that was covering them incessantly, like that she just switched off for those sections of the media and maybe watch the gardening shows. Like, it was such a weak argument. And like Lisa's not, but then I think media-wise Lisa's not as interesting as Shemima. She's kind of, yeah, she's a lot more polarizing. There's a lot more going on with her.

Lisa was older. She knew exactly what she was doing. the courts had a lot of evidence on her. A lot of the evidence that they have on Lisa, they weren't even able to submit and they still manage to prosecute her. Because you see, it's like I say about these international organizations

and everybody kind of connecting with each other. So Lisa was hanging out with John George lives, who the Americans were watching closely. I remember one time I visited Lisa in Syria and she went, well, the FBI were just here. I was like, oh, right. And how did you get on with them? oh yeah yeah they were just asking me some questions

Lisa would never have volunteered that the John George's information if I hadn't put it to her because I think she thought she was going to get away with it and the people weren't going to link her with him but obviously the Americans you know must have kindly shared some information with the Irish which is how his name ended up coming up in her court case but yeah so Lisa was part

she was kind of caught in that intersection of international organizations watching their own people. Another thing you argue in your piece is that this is going to be, there's going to be long-term consequences for this of this that will spread, yeah, go ahead, sorry? Yeah, beyond the borders, like exactly like Ukraine. So I'm following Ukraine. I look at a lot of people from, you know, like,

especially my thing is more like Western countries who go and join conflicts that really don't have much to do with, them. And in Ukraine, we can see the same thing. You know, like you, America has several people in Ukraine right now who are currently being investigated for war crimes. It's tricky because of this transnational justice. How do you collect evidence? How do you sufficiently prosecute these people? Are they going to be, because I think the whitewashing of the Ukrainian guys will be much, much easier than the whitewashing of the Ukrainian guys would be much easier than the whitewashing of, let's say, the ISIS fighters. And Matthew, that's happening. So if it's

happening with the ISIS fighters and successfully kind of going ahead, I knew that the stages would be children, women, men. And now that's exactly what we're seeing. Children, women, men. Obviously, kids, innocent should come home. Women, it's complicated case by case. But if a man is going to travel there to become a fighter, yeah, his case is not comparable to a four-year-old. child, you know. Can the beyond the let's case, I think the let's case is instructive, but like, how do you whitewash an ISIS fighter? Because I think they're sort of like a lot of the kind of stuff that's coming out now is

comparing it to Guantanamo Bay and saying like, you know, that these people are being like arbitrarily detained and that there's no legal proceedings. And you know what? All of these arguments are correct. They are correct, absolutely. but it's like I say the issue is not the meat of what they're saying is correct, repatriate people, it's how they're saying it. It's not repatriate them so they can face justice at home. It's the innocence, the innocence. We are so, we are such a terrible society for being so terrible to these people. You know what I mean? Like the onus and the blame is coming back on us as our societies instead of the individual's actions, instead of them deciding to willingly go and join a terrorist organization. it's suddenly our fault. But I don't believe that that's fair.

And I don't believe that that's fair for anybody who lives in, you know, in a liberal democracy where these people should be prosecuted. All right, angry planet listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We'll be right back after this. All right, welcome back. Angry Planet listeners. We are talking to Norma Costello about the brides of the Islamic State. And a little bit later, something a little stranger.

Speaking of the peculiarities of a living in a liberal democracy, I want to pivot here at the end and ask you about another unheard piece that you've recently written. Actually, I guess you wrote it in November. It was not recent. It was months ago. But it's still good and still relevant now. Ukraine has silenced Ireland's tankies. We've talked on the show before about tankies and kind of the people on the political left that defend. that defend war when it's not, when it's waged by who they view as their political,

I'm screwing up the definition of tankie here. Help me out. Yeah, well, people have complained to me about the definition of tankie. But look, I think like there's a historical definition and then there's how we were going to apply it, which is like basically apologies for regimes like a lot of them, a lot of them are apologies for China, for Russia. Russia is the real kind of masterpiece because it does come from people who politically would have had a lot of sympathy for the Soviet Union and now the issue is like you'll see

the tankies will go from anything that well, why are we in Ireland? They'll go, why are we fighting or why are we supporting Ukraine against the Russians? At least the Soviet Union housed people unlike or, you know, exclusive German country. And it can start like that. But the issue that, like, I think is going on, Ireland is an interesting case because it was neutral during World War II. And so Irish people are quite proud of their neutrality.

It's rubbish. It's a rubbish argument. It's rubbish. We have taken in so many Ukrainian refugees who are, you know, every day getting phone calls home with terrifying news about their families. This is right in front of us. You know, it's like in our face. And yet you have a lot of like Irish. And it's not just kind of initially was confined, let's say, to the fringes of the far right and far left. But now I'm starting to notice it's eeping into the centre and it's under the banner of this neutrality point.

It's this neutrality position where people are like, oh, we have to defend our neutrality. We're not in NATO. Well, Matthew, we're not in NATO because we have some very powerful, let's call it cultural capital in both your country and in the UK. And every time, you know, Russians come near Irish skies, the Brits scramble to save us. And Ireland has this sort of sense of, well, we don't really need to be involved in that because we're grand. It's a very Irish expression. We're grand. But yeah, well, why are you grand? Because you're kind of offsetting your security and defence to powerful neighbours.

That's exactly what we think. but I think and I know like I hate kind of using this word morality when we're talking about stuff like like this

but I think there is definitely a very strong moral argument for us to support Ukraine and to be supportive of what's happening

to Ukrainian people in a war that they never invited into their country and I covered Ukraine in 2015 so and I went to the other side I went to

to Dumbass and Dynetsk and so I've seen the other side of that as well and still had the same opinion, which is that it's a country that was illegally invaded by a bully imperialistic neighbour like. And I think most people can understand that bar the Irish tankies who kind of, like we had a situation where we have a new left-wing media or media outlet that's been funded by an Irish millionaire. And one of their journalists just was in Russia last.

week taking photos saying I'm at a conference talking about media, free media in Russia. You know what I mean? And I mean, that's it. And I think the Irish attitude to a lot of this is, I think, politically, there's no, nobody, nobody really wants to go near the NATO question. It gets floated around and bandied around should we join NATO, but nobody really wants to broach that. But I think there's a point where you can kind of say, okay, well, maybe we don't need to join

NATO. But at the same time, we probably need our own robust defence forces, given how politically and stable Europe is right now. But that's not happening either. Our defence forces have been historically defunded. And I think people would call me like a warmonger or whatever for saying this. But I think it's a practical opinion. It's sort of saying, well, we've romanticised our non-role in World War II. like we didn't, you know, we didn't do anything to prevent Germany from doing what it did.

And we are proud of being neutral in World War II, which I think most people were fine pretty shocking. Like wouldn't you think, if you think back, would you brag about being neutral in World War II? No, of course not. Yeah. But Irish people, there's a cohort of them, very proud of this, very proud of this and very proud of this neutrality and want to maintain it. And I think that's when it gets a bit. It just gets a bit, as the Australians would say, cooked, you know. But yeah, and I think the unfortunate thing is that while that kind of, again, you've different narratives.

So the far right and the far left might be completely pro-Russia and pro-Puton, strong leader, this is what we need. Then when you get into the centre, like the way that they would explain sort of a similar sentiment would be like, or neutrality. We need to be neutral. We're known for our neutrality, and that's what we're sticking to. But, you know, it doesn't matter if you're kind of sitting on the sidelines going, doing nothing, or you're actively supporting the aggressor. Either way, they have the same kind of impact, don't they like? So I think that's where we're going with it.

And I think it's just really depressing to see the normalisation of these narratives, especially when you still have a good chunk of what I would call normal people who aren't political, aren't in the political world who are very sympathetic to what's happening with Ukrainian people but their voices don't get reflected you know they're kind of

people who stay away from these kind of discussions and yeah but it's worrying now because we have a housing crisis right now in Ireland and that's being politicised and used to sort of

stir up racist sentiment and anti-Ukrainian sentiment as well you know we can't house our own why are we taking in these people you have to remember as well. I live now for the first time really in a country full of immigrants. And it's really made me realize how Ireland is definitely not that. We are not that. I remember my partner tried to set up a bank account in Ireland. He's Australian and he left the country frustrated after six

months. He couldn't do it. I walked into it like a bank here and I had an account in three hours. So they facilitate that, you know, in a country full of immigrants. Whereas in Ireland, they're more likely, you know, to, yeah, to sort of. there's a status quo, I think, the people, but some people want to maintain. And I think the whole supporting people like Putin to stop, you know, like the same thing with the Bashar al-Assad argument, you know, he's the best man to deal with it

so we don't get the Syrians coming here. Yeah. So the brutal dictators are useful, essentially. It's not basic. Norma Costello, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. What are you working on right now? What's the next thing? So it's a non, it's like a basically I've been writing and researching foreign fighters for people who travel, you know, overseas to join. Conflicts that have nothing to do with them.

I've been researching that for nearly, by accident for nearly eight years now. And it was again with ISIS and YPG, PKK, and now we have Ukraine. So I think God knows when it will get finished, to be honest, Matt, because another conflict will pick up. And you see, these people are rotating in and out. So like I told you, having sushi with the ISIS fighter in Ukraine, he's in Ukraine now. There's ex-YPG guys in Ukraine. There's, you know, there's a, like, and then who knows what conflict will pick up again. And it is a relatively, like the way that people, while it's a know, I've interviewed people from the French Foreign Legion about this, but I think the recruitment tools and the way people can just jump from one conflict to the other without having any military experience and do it via an online form that takes two seconds and have no base, no kind of legal consequences for that is, you know, like it's relatively new, I think.

do they I hate to start a whole other conversation let me just ask this one thing and I'll let you go but I do find this fascinating and I think like that's a to me that's like a book that's not just an article like I read a whole book yeah yeah it is and what I'm doing is I'm not going it's like just been it's been so difficult because I think people want analysis of this and they want like but the motivations and the analysis because it is so subjective from person to person, it's very difficult to group them into these, like, big themes all the time. Like, but at the same time, there are patterns that a lot of people, there was a type of person attracted to ISIS. Like, I know they said that they brought in all different kinds, but like there was, but with, and there was a type of person.

I think the YPG was the easiest, to be honest. They were the easiest to sort of like try and get a picture of. But then when you're moving into Ukraine, it gets a lot. like Ukraine is just a smorgasbord of everything. Like everything is there. So that's why it's, yeah, I've kind of stayed away from trying to, it's just telling their stories and talking about how they got to where they got to. And yeah, just trying to see if people will potentially understand the motivations for somebody

to bounce from one place to another. And some people are very nice. Some people are not so nice. And some people might be very nice, but have very terrible ideologies. And some people might be very terrible and have very nice ideologies. Yeah, it's been an interesting ride. I'm still in touch with a lot of them. I speak to people most days, you know.

But when that drops, I would love to have you back on the program to talk about it. Does I think that's an absolutely fascinating subject? Yeah, wait for another. Wait for every time. It's like chosen off and something else happens, and they all move to another. country. So we might be waiting for another 50 years, Matt, if it keeps going. Yeah, there has to be a point where you say stop, you know, like where it just stops.

But, yeah, it's just interesting to see familiar faces. You know, like you might think one person's story is finished in Syria, but no way that it's continuing on now into Ukraine. So that's been a bit of an eye-opener. Thanks for listening to another episode of Angry, The show is produced with love by Matthew Galt and Jason Fields with the assistants of Kevin Medell. This is the place where we ask you for money. If you subscribe to us on substack.organt.com, it means the world to us.

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