Much like a street gang, ISIS is continuing to strategically recruit young women to stand alongside their fighters.

This past February, three teenage girls from the London suburb of Bethnal Green, Kadiza Sultana, Shamima Begum and Amira Abase left their homes on a flight to Turkey and then boarded a bus to Syria to join the caliphate. They were described a bright young women with equally bright futures-“the girls you wanted to be like”, said a fellow student.

And, apparently, so is raping and using other women as sex slaves and beheading, drowning or blowing up prisoners of the Islamic State.

“ISIS has been on a very strong female recruitment drive, and women are joining ISIS for a variety of reasons, many of which are the same as men. Feelings of alienation, feelings of inequality. [For] adventure. In some cases, romance. And in many cases too, these women are responding to quite a deliberate call from the Islamic State [ISIS] to have women come and participate in a form of state-building and to make a new country in which they can practice their religion.” Jayne Huckerby, Director of the Duke International Human Rights Clinic

Like many teenage girls, these young women want a sense of belonging. And while I may be generalizing here when I say this, from what I have experienced, many teenage girls with smarts think they have all of their faculties together and that they already have every thing there is to know in life all figured out before their 18th birthday. They have, in their minds, “grown up”. They want to “change the world” and they are looking for any means of doing so. This includes rebellion, which is billed sometimes as “liberating” and rebellion against those who have maybe developed misconceptions of these young women as Muslim “terrorists” in our post 9/11 world. (ISIS is capitalizing on this, by the way.) Blend all of this with Western ideals and culture and these young women begin questioning whether or not they belong. They long for utopia. They long for a place where they will be valued for their input. They may even have dreams of marriage and a family and holding onto their culture and values and creating a legacy. They long for purpose.

Goodbye cruel world, they’re off to join the Islamic State.

“Women see themselves playing a number of roles in the group. They see themselves as recruiters for other young women. They see themselves as a very important part of the propaganda machine of ISIS.” Jayne Huckerby, Director of the Duke International Human Rights

These young women are sold also on the “glory” and the “comfort” of this lifestyle. They are given the important job of educating and recruiting others. They are given stipends for their homes, their food, for having children. They are being taken care of in this society where the Western model encourages us to become educated and fend for ourselves. They are married to a “warrior”, a “real man” who will fight for their collective values and are, much like any military branch part of a “sisterhood” and an extended family that the rest of this world would never understand.

ISIS has tapped into social media platforms to seduce young women into joining them-some right here in the United States. Much like the Bloods and the Crips, ISIS uses similar strategies: target vulnerabilities and frustrations, isolate subjects from existing family and friends based on these vulnerabilities and frustrations, promise another family, a “better” family of shared values and goals who understands them and encourage rebellion against the world they live in order to obtain the life of their dreams. With all of this new hope and promise, these young women venture out into a world where they will be accepted as Muslim women of value and away from the Western world full of values they disagree with and the discrimination and stereotypes. They suck them in, filling them with more disillusions and stereotypes.

A very sad self fulfilling prophecy indeed.