SEXUAL VIOLENCE AND THE MAKING OF ISIS
instrument of state repression)
US Pres Obama most prominent reason he offered for
taking military action against the Islamic State of Iraq and
al-Sham (ISIS) was the protection of women, children and
religious minorities
Defending oppressed Muslim women is a major trope of the
fight against terrorism
ISIS appears to match/surpass the Talibans misogyny
US-led coalition against ISIS portrays itself as tough but
tender, empowering womens self-defense, seeking to
draw as stark a contrast as possible between itself and its
antagonist
Western media celebrated British and Emirati female
pilots and Kurdish female fighters who took up arms
against ISIS
Instead of raw disgust, confronting ISIS requires a more
systematic examination of the roots and impact of its
violent strategies including its specific targeting of women
In war and crisis states tend to adopt hyper-masculine
characteristics: use violence to defend territory, lives and
honor
Men are primary implementers of violence as well as the
main decision-makers in matters of state policy
pertaining to military and security affairs
Women are cast in the opposite role: beautiful souls;
innocents; embodying peace and purity
In warfare women and children are automatically
deemed civilian non-combatants
Mothers, daughters and wives are sacrosanct,
worthy of greatest sacrifices for defense and
protection
Men as warriors empowered by the ability to protect their
women and masculine states stronger for cloistering their
female citizens
These gender norms create stronger incentives to target
women for violence
Destroying the sanctity of females demonstrates an
enemys disempowerment and emasculation
The interplay of hyper-masculinity and beautiful
soul abets sexual violence against men: the
ultimate act of humiliating de-masculinization
Other cultures deem victimization of this kind so
shameful even discussing it is taboo
In conditions where rebels lack the important symbolic
resources of international recognition, the perceived need
to exhibit hyper-masculinity (ideational component) can
be especially pronounced
ISISs sexual violence emulates practices that have been
endemic for decades in Iraq and Syria
ISIS emerged from a socio-political environment deeply
imbued with violence, particularly sexualized violence
against women
During Saddam Hussein and Assad Dynasty the Iraq and
Syrian states used sexual violence to sustain ethno-
sectarian hierarchies, linking hyper-masculine ideals to
particular forms of ethnic and sectarian domination (under
the moderate Bashar al-Assad [2000] and removal of
Saddam [2003] sexual violence remained a critical
When faced with threats to regime survival, the security
services quickly returned to old patterns of violence using
rape and other kinds of sexual violence to intimidate ethno-
sectarian rivals
The broader breakdowns in state authority contributed to
conditions in which sexualized violence (honor killing)
became more commonplace
Further solidifying sexual violence as a means of
exerting power over entire populations
The violence of the Islamic State sexual and non-sexual
is part of its effort to construct alternative institutions of
protection and public services
ISIS already functions like a state within its territory:
Extorts taxes
Redistributes grain, petrol and crucial foodstuffs
Regulates education and cultural life
Controls oilfields and refineries (E.Syria & W. Iraq) gaining
access to millions of dollars in revenue from smuggling
Seized key hydroelectric infrastructure on Tigris and
Euphrates rivers and their tributaries, exerting control
over both electricity generation and irrigation
ISIS uses sexual violence to construct a distinctive form of
hyper-masculine Islamic state
Its hyper-masculinity is intertwined with Sunni
fundamentalist, supremacist ideology and the
attendant notion of ethno-sectarian hierarchy
Sexual violence helps to subordinate and degrade Shiites,
Alawites, Yazidis, Christians and other groups ISIS deems
enemies, infidels and apostates
Captured women and girls are placed into sexual slavery
and become breeding stock
Sexual Violence reinforces bonds among Sunni Muslims
turning motley crew of true believers, opportunists, thugs
and outright sociopaths into networks that form the upper
levels of the embryonic Islamic State
Violent Fathers
Histories of Syria and Iraq neo-patriarchy which the
boundaries between family, society and state are blurred
The state operates as a macrocosm of the family and neo-
patriarchy deploys modern techniques of governance to
reinforce traditional modes of male domination
Men are heads of households and expect complete
submission
Women are treated as subordinate sources of sexual
and reproductive resources and as family managers
Neo-patriarchy suffuses broad aspects of governance in
the Arab world from the way bureaucracies are organized
to the way armies are disciplined
Emerged as colonial mandates: Syria (French) & Iraq
(British) which offered a distinctly paternalistic and
infantilizing model of governance
The mandates were distinctly masculine: states are
catered to some of the material needs of women
through welfare provision but reinforced their status as
beautiful but politically inert souls

the cults of personality (Iraqi Baath party, Saddams
familial web & Hafezs fellow ALwaites) surrounding both
Saddam and Hafez stressed their role as national fathers
interventions in sexual life were useful for battering those
who refused to accommodate these new patriarchs
(clergy and other counter-revolutionaries)
Iraq
The regulation of sexual relationships and the more
acute forms of sexual violence were intimately related
to maintaining Sunni political hegemony
Saddams regime inherited the Ottoman system of
classifying citizens as either of Arab (Ottoman) or Iranian
descent and used sexual regulation to eliminate the
latter
Coercive, violent interventions into sexual life intensified
during Iran-Iraq war
2 yrs into the war the government offered cash reward
to Iraq men to divorce wives of Iranian origin and
offered monetary incentives for men to marry war
widows
Women were encouraged to stay at homes and rear
large families to make up for the hundreds
killed/wounded at the front
Under threat the regime increasingly reverted to overt
neo-patriarchy
Prominent trope in regime propaganda: Defending
Iraqi women from the onslaught of Iranian
aggression
State itself used sex as a weapon
Iraqi prisons notorious for brutality reached new
heights of violence
Iraqi secret police videotaped their own sexual
violations of prisoners to blackmail victims into
becoming informants
Counter-insurgency against Kurdish separatists saw
brutal treatment of women
Mid-1980s government began the Anfal a
campaign to destroy Kurdish villages wholesale and
deport residents to concentration camps in the
lowlands
Iraqi troops use of chemical weapons to depopulate
isolated areas
During deportation, Iraqi troops raped Kurdish women
The assaults defiled victims and symbolically
disempowered their male kinsmen
1990s early 2000s Saddams gender policies became
even more retrograde
The regime turned to tribal and religious values to
shore up its base of support
Polygamy revived
Honor killing briefly legalized when banned again
penalties became less stringent
Women were abducted in the streets of Baghdad
and sold to sexual slavery
Overthrow of Saddam and collapse of Iraqi state had a
direct impact on women
With US dismantling Iraqi army and police the security
evaporated
Iraqi and American security services failed to stop a
tidal wave of rapes and other sexual crimes
Without recourse to effective state institutions many
communities tool to self-policing through local militias
and gangs
Honor killing was employed to enforce communal
boundaries and solidarity
The newly empowered Shia Islamist parties
encouraged this transformation
Revisions to Iraqs constitution in 2005 effectively
nullified previous provisions granting women
protection in personal status
Sectarian family and religious law was reintroduced
and constitutional commitments to gender equity
diluted
For Sunnis
Saddams removal amounted to an outright inversion
of Iraqs ethnic hierarchy
De-Baathification and dismantling of the army were
seen as direct efforts to purge Sunnis from positions of
power
These changes had gendered impacts as well
Untold number of destitute refugee Sunni women
were forced to become sex workers in the nightclubs
and brothels of Damascus, Amman and other cities
State-inflicted sexual violence has been less severe but
hardly unknown in the new Iraq
Sunnis, but becoming the specific target of such state
violence was emblematic of a profound reversal of
fortune
Under US control, Abu Ghraib prison continued to be
a site for sexualized torture of suspected terrorists
It was no coincidence that ISIS executioners chose to
clad their American and British beheading victims in
orange jumpsuits to invoke this history
The US-run prisons served as incubators for ISIS
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi held at Camp Bucca near
Umm Qasr
With US withdrawing and insurgent violence worsening,
Iraqi and Kurdish security services carried over many of
the practices of sexual and ethnic violence witnessed in
the previous decades
Human Rights Watch: documented how Iraqi
security services threatened and actually carried out
sexual assaults of women in front of husbands,
brothers and children
Nearly all of the 4300 women held at the interior and
defense ministry facilities were Sunnis gave this
violence an unmistakable ethno-sectarian inflection
Syria
Its history of sexual violence is tied to maintaining ethno-
sectarian hierarchies
1950s 60s series of military coups unseated the old
Sunni aristocracy
1970s - Hafez al-Assad seized power for himself, a
culminating victory for the entire Alawite sect which
had been marginalized and reviled
 Assad tried to transcend atavistic sectarian identity
and made the liberation of women a primary front in
the campaign against religious conservatism
The Sunni opposition took overt religious and sectarian
forms, a faction of the Muslim Brotherhood began a
military campaign and was brutally responded by the
government
After pulverizing the restive cities of Hama and Homs
in 1982, state-run media lauded the knights of the
Baath for defending themselves and their families
and the masses of people and homeland from a
group that brutally killed whom they could of women
and children
Sexual Violence proved a crucial means to reassert
regime supremacy
Syrian security services abducted and threatened
to rape female relatives of suspected opposition
activists and prisoners testified to a number of
sexualized torture and interrogation techniques
(machine that inserted burning metal into the anus)
1990s 2000s regime stabilized
Sexual Violence appeared to abate
Political prisoners were released and censorship
relaxed
Bashar al-Assad succeeded and a new era of political
pluralism
Economic liberalization: children of Alawite military
and state officials married to the venerable Sunni
merchant families
Bashar himself married British-born daughter of a
prominent Syrian Sunni Family
Damascus worked to get into line with international
norms and standards concerning sexual violence
Jan 2010, the government issued a decree for the first
time criminalizing human trafficking
The older practices of sexual violence came back with
vengeance when the regime felt threatened
the suppression of protests in Daraa in March 2011
the events which catalyzed the massive national
uprising depicted systematic sexual abuses
prisoners were sodomized, beaten on the genitals
and forced to perform oral sex
security officials threatened detainees and their
families with rape, taunted families whose sons had
been arrested to forget their children and if they
really want their children they should make more
and the officers will show them how to do it
government forces and state-sponsored shbiha
(apparition) militia have been implicated in a large
number of rapes and sexual violations of both men
and women during the war
as was the case during Iraqs earlier civil wars, refugees
and internally displaced people are ever more
susceptible to various kinds of sexual exploitation
ISIS champions a return to a primitive caliphate state,
promises the resumption of the kind of Sunni supremacy
that prevailed until fairly recently in both Syria and Iraq
Drawn from the Sunni tribes of the Jazeera and Syrian
deserts, the leaders and foot soldiers of the Islamic State
have witnessed how states enact ethno-sectarian
domination through sexual violence and broader
regulation of sexual and family lives
They know what it is like to be at wrong end of these
interactions and are desperate to avoid such fate
Cohesion and Control
ISIS adamant rejection of all forms of ethnically based
national identity is what sets them apart from most previous
insurgent groups in Iraq and Syria
They see the entire notion of nation-states and Arab
nationalism espoused in Baath ideology as merely
means to artificially divide the Muslim community
For a pan-Islamic state, orthodox Sunnis sit at the
pinnacle, certain recognized non-Muslim communities
(Christians) are forced to accede to becoming
subordinate dependents (dhimmi) and heterodox
groups (Shiites, Yazidis and Alawites) are to be
completely eradicated
ISIS faces obstacles in fashioning a state based along these
lines (refer to above statements)
Combination of greed and grievances motivates ISIS
fighters, these varying motivations mean that special
efforts must be made to monitor and maintain discipline
within the ranks
Recruitment of foreign fighters across the Sunni Islamic
world (Chechnya, Pakistan & the West) already
introduces language and cultural barriers compounded
by the challenge of dealing with indigenous forces
within Syria and Iraq
While ISIS has a hard core of ideological committed
radicals, it has many more latecomers who joined less
out of ideological conviction than for reasons of
personal protection and aggrandizement
given the ideological differences between the pan-
Islamic ISIS and the Arab nationalist Baathists
however the relationship was bound to be
contentious and there has been evidence of violence
between the 2 factions
many fighters in Syria came as defectors from ISIS
rivals (Western-backed Free Syrian Army/al-Qaeda
affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra), others were kidnapped
from their families as boys, indoctrinated and trained
to be child soldiers and even suicide bombers
sexual violence thus both asserts ISIS supremacy over
subaltern groups and builds cohesion within its ranks
diff types of sexual violence play different roles in solidifying
this hegemony and the most visible aspect is female
enslavement
human trafficking alongside oil smuggling and hostage
ransoms is a major ISIS revenue source
several women inside ISIS compounds who had been
bound and raped repeatedly were found after
Kurdish forces retook Mosul Dam
captured women and girls have been forced into
brothels and are sold on the street
the semi-public display of sexuality is more than about
revenue, passing abducted women from man to man
demonstrates the abject humiliation of a conquered
community
 ISIS own propaganda justifies these acts as
permissible conduct toward non-believers who refuse
to accede to Islam
Islamic law, they claim, deems these women
concubines and the rightful spoils of jihad, the bodies
of the conquered are expropriated as sexual and
breeding stock
Many victims were so psychologically scarred that
they resisted returning to their own families for fear of
bringing shame to them
These forms of sexual violence force infidels to the
bottom of the Islamic States sexual and sectarian
hierarchy
ISIS indicate a profound concern for the legalities of
sexual relationships with slaves and ensuing issues of
paternity
illegitimate sexual relationships can yield legitimate
kinship bonds due to Islamic laws tendency to
recognize patrilineal descent, captive mothers may
be apostates and infidels the children of Muslim
fathers are generally deemed to be Muslim
themselves
These children must be accorded position with the
Islamic community making them demographic
fodder for the Islamic state
Second aspect of ISIS sexual violence is violence
committed against men and boys
Surprising since ISIS has maintained a fiercely puritanical
prohibition on homosexuality and has publicly executed
suspected homosexuals by throwing them from
buildings
The effect of on male victims are largely analogous to
those on females: besides the sheer physical harm they
induce shame, guilt and feelings of dishonor
Aspect of male-on-male violence as a form of
initiation or induction to new recruits
Marriages of new recruits involve gang rape or
sodomy
group participation helps build fraternal bonds among
perpetrators
the third form, arranged or enforced marriage, has very
different meaning and impact
marriage solidifies horizontal bonds, ties of peerage and
alliance between equals
unlike concubines, marriage is a uniquely intra-Muslim
engagement
the symbolic and political valence of marriage differs
dramatically from sexual slavery and concubinage
it entails reciprocal exchange and mutual consideration
instead of expropriation and seizure
marrying into the ISIS fold might offer an attractive
opportunity to enhance personal status and ensure
protection; opportunistic marriages effectively extend
ISIS umbrella of protection while augmenting its
demographic base
ISIS offers its own version of female empowerment
All-female Khansaa Brigade the members operated
checkpoints around the city and enforced strict codes
and staffed brothels that served ISIS fighters
ISIS desperately short of women so they have sought to
recruit young women online to serve as nurses, medics
or in other combat roles
These female recruits will be paired with ISIS growing
number of male fighters leaving them to bear and rear
the next gen of lions
* * * *
Some policies that can help mitigate the extent of the
damage wrought by sexual violence
1. The intl community must make dear its commitment to hold
accountable perpetrators of sexual violence among all
parties in the conflict
2. Better training of security-service personnel, explicit
instructions on the laws of war can prevent sexual violence
becoming a routine technique of interrogation
3. Unilateral change could have positive effects, many Sunnis
see ISIS as a lesser evil compared to rapacious govt forces,
given real protection fewer civilians will be attracted to the
ISIS banner
Indirect ways to reduce the impact of sexual violence
Govts should disrupt human-trafficking networks
operating under their noses and investigate govt
officials complicit in trafficking
Destination countries must take further steps to clamp
down on all forms of human trafficking esp those
involving sexual enslavement and prostitution
Overall this could reduce the financial incentives for ISIS
to engage in sexual enslavement and diminish ISIS
financial wherewithal
The roots of ISIS campaign of sexual violence come from
the same neo-patriarchal origins as their regime
antagonists
The modes of hyper-masculine statehood that have
emerged in the Arab world provided a blueprint for
instrumentalizing sexual violence as a tool for state-
building
The repertoires of sexual violence are effective precisely
because they capitalize on entrenched gender norms
that victims of such, females&males alike, are frequently
so stigmatized that they cannot return to their home
communities
The acts of sexual violence tear apart the basic
structures of family life, while at the same time
reinforcing the overarching neo-patriarchy of ISIS
control