The blood began to pool on the hospital floor. It had run down the leg of a pregnant foreigner — the wife of an Islamic State fighter — who knew she was having a miscarriage. Yet she was mostly ignored by the Syrian medical staff busying themselves with less urgent cases. “She wasn’t offered a chair or a bed and nobody even returned to check on her,” former Melbourne mother-of-two Dullel Kassab later wrote from her high-rise apartment in Raqqa, the Islamic State capital, adding: “The muhajireen (migrants) are also subjected to mistreatment and discrimination from the locals.”
This is a glimpse of the true Islamic State, where women are banned from fighting and are restricted to domestic duties in days punctuated by airstrikes and hostility from many local Syrians angered by the influx of foreigners and the imposition of an extreme form of sharia on their daily lives.
When having consistent electricity at night is an event worth tweeting about, it brings into question the laboured efforts by people such as fellow Melburnian Zehra Duman and the Sharrouf family from Sydney to glamourise the jihad lifestyle by posing with AK-47s and BMWs.
“Photographs like these, of girls and women engaging in weapons training and cavorting around bombed-out buildings as if they were training for urban warfare, are inaccurate,” respected British researcher Charlie Winter, who studies Islamic State for the Quilliam Foundation think tank, wrote last week. “This is not what life is like for muhajireen, the female jihadists who have joined IS … It is a false image based on targeted obfuscation and exaggeration.”
The image painted by 28-year-old Kassab, who The Australian can reveal is the woman behind a Twitter account popular among female Islamic State supporters across the world, is one of sacrifice and hardship in the name of Allah. Yet she still tells women to join her. “Getting here is ½ the battle,” she wrote in October. “Remaining is the other ½.”
She shows particular anger towards Syrian Muslims who begrudge the new “khilafah” — caliphate — and the foreigners it has attracted, and she has argued that their concerns are inconsequential. “Many Syrians … don’t want sharia. (Because) they don’t want it, do we abolish khilafah? The Ummah (global Islamic community) being ready isn’t a pre-requisite.”
Kassab has indicated she is married to a foreign fighter. Far from the large home on Melbourne’s outskirts where she once lived, she and her two children appear to live in an apartment in Raqqa, in northern Syrian, where a crooked light fixture “drives me nuts” and where death is a constant occurrence. “Reality hits you when u celebrate a walimah (marriage banquet) and console a widow on the same day,” she wrote in November.
It is unclear whether she was married when she moved with her children to the conflict zone.
“Of course I teach my child patience, love + forgiveness,” Kassab wrote in response to criticism of her daughter, 4, declaring “I hate kuffar (non-believers)”. “But when she’s paralyzed w/fear from air strikes targeting her city cos (Islamic State) enforces shariah + ppl dnt want Islam to progress … wat do u want me 2 tell her? They dropping bombs of love? She’s not stupid!”
There are few or no schools operating; airstrikes make them too dangerous for the children, Kassab says. Instead, her daughter and her even younger son are schooled away from the violence and the hatred of the “kuffar” that permeates Raqqa.
The lessons have taken a hold. The little girl has even approached strangers to ask if they love “Dawlah” — Islamic State. “Then she walked up and down saying: Dawlatul-Islam (Islamic State), Baqqiyah (remaining)!” Kassab wrote in an internet post after the girl approached patients at a medical clinic.
The son, whose age has not been disclosed by Kassab, has required hospital treatment for an infection. Both children “sleep with their guns by their heads” — toy guns — Kassab claims.
Her parents, who know her whereabouts and who have received complaints from religious leaders in Melbourne about her decision to go to Syria, “reject jihad, from even before IS (was formed)”.
Both remain in contact with her on Facebook. “If we all returned due 2 threats of parents, nobody will be left!” Kassab once stated. She regularly counts the number of airstrikes each day, sometimes complaining about their indirect impact on her daily life, but often about the bloodshed they have caused.
“Infuriating when u clean and then an air strike happens … #FirstWorldProblems in #ThirdWorldCountry,” she tweeted. “Its (sic) definitely not good for my OCD tendencies!” What does a “beautiful” day with blue skies mean? “Do the washing of course!”
A “simple delicious” dinner for her husband is photographed: Fried eggs, a fresh tomato, bread and a glass of milk. She watches the propaganda videos released by Islamic State, defending beheadings of Western hostages and bragging about her daughter recognising Barack Obama as a “kafir” while watching one “doco”.
She has adopted a more anonymous persona on Twitter, in an apparent bid to stop anyone identifying her.
On Facebook, where she remains friends with many in Melbourne, she is much more open about her identity — but the fact she is in Syria is not readily apparent from the posts. She maintains links to the notorious al-Furqan Islamic Centre in Melbourne, praising its “emir” — Harun Mehicevic, aka Abu Talha — and taking to Facebook to complain when it was targeted with graffiti. “Abu Talha is a legend!” she wrote in a long thread with another Australian on Twitter. “He + his family + Furqan Jama’ah (the al-Furqan community) are the most beautiful/humble ppl.”