3 school girls who wanted to be jihadi brides, now on the run from ISIS.

Three British girls were married to ISIS fighters. But now they’ve escaped.

Three British teenage ‘jihadi brides’ appear to have changed their mind about living under ISIS control — and have gone on the run from the extremist group.

Their decision to flee has prompted militants to go door-to-door in Syria, attempting to track them down.

While the runaway girls’ identities have not been confirmed, their reported ages — about 16 years old, according to the Daily Mail — match those of Amira Abase, Kadiza Sultana, and Shamima Begum, the British school girls who fled their east London homes in February.

The reports that three jihadi brides had fled ISIS control were made by anonymous blogger and self-described independent historian Mosul Eye, who blogs about life in the ISIS-controlled city.

Writing on his Facebook page on 5 May, Mosul Eye wrote: “Three girls, (Foreigners – British) married to ISIL militants, reported missing, and ISIL announced to all its check points to search for them. It is believed that those girls have escaped.”

“The latest info I got on them is they are still on the run, but still in Mosul, and ISIL is thoroughly searching for them and hasn’t captured them yet,” he later added.

“They are Brits, not immigrants, and they are very young teens (around 16 years old). That’s all I have about them for now.”

The blogger wrote an update this morning, posting:

“We cannot confirm, as of yet, if those girls were the same trio mentioned in the British media, as their identities still unknown to us. We don’t have any new details about the girls, and unable to provide any assistance with this matter.”

The girls’ decision to flee comes just a fortnight after one of the girls, Amira, posted a photo to Twitter of a takeaway dinner she appeared to be enjoying  with another teenage ‘jihadi bride’ in Syria.

Amira  captioned the photograph of their spread: ‘dawla takeaway w/ @um_ayoub12’; “Dawla” is another name for ISIS.

Frighteningly, these British teenagers are far from alone in their decision to flee a safe country for a war zone. They are just a handful of the hundreds of western women lured to the Middle East by ISIS’ masterful social media strategy.

As Mamamia previously wrote, that strategy is specifically designed to recruit young women as brides, mothers, or members of the group’s all-female brigades, which patrol the streets to ensure civilian women’s compliance a strict form of Islamist morality.

Given ISIS’s appalling treatment of women  — the organisation has published guidelines on “how to rape” and is involved in sex trafficking and forced marriages — it’s hard to understand why any woman would want to join a group known to violently enforce extremely conservative gender roles.

But women now account for nearly one-fifth of all foreign fighters — a phenomenon attributed to ISIS recruiters being  “very predatory and very targeted in going after young people,” as terror expert Professor Greg Barton from Monash University told Mamamia.

“We need to understand it’s that sense of belonging, particularly at the grooming state, that makes young people vulnerable,” Professor Barton said.

Professor Barton emphasisee that the narrative these young people may be enticed into is primarily “about falling in love with a new society- a creative, radical community, a new caliphate that will value them and then recognise them as heroes” — but said that a significant part of that story often involves meeting “one dashing courageous warrior who will put them on a pedestal”.

“So it’s not just a knight in shining armour (story), although there is an element of that,” he said.

Principal child psychologist at TheQuirky Kid Clinic, Kimberley O’Brien agreed that teen girls may be lured to Syria by jihadi ‘love interests’.

“Young girls aged 12 to 17 are often looking for the ideal partner, first boyfriend, so I guess part of that search might be looking for someone like a bad boy, someone they don’t find in their local community,” she told Mamamia earlier in the year.

“So there may be some appeal to travelling overseas or starting a long-distance relationship.”

Despite the attractive picture painted by pro-ISIS social media propaganda, once young women ultimately arrive in the ‘caliphate’,  ISIS reportedly confiscates their passports — making it a prison for those who change their mind and want to leave.

Related content:

The creepy blogs luring young Australians into joining ISIS.

The Austrian school girls who fled their home to join Islamic State.

Julie Bishop on why Australians are becoming radicalised.