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Reuters
MINNEAPOLIS U.S. law enforcement is investigating a new phenomenon of women from the
American heartland joining Islamic State as President Barack Obama vows to cut off the militants'
recruiting at home.
At least three Somali families in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area have female relatives who have gone
missing in the past six weeks and may have tried to join Islamic State, said community leader
Abdirizak Bihi. He said that while the reasons for their disappearance were unclear, he had told the
families to contact police.
In a separate case, a 19-year-old American Somali woman from St. Paul snuck away from her
parents on Aug. 25 saying she was going to a bridal shower. Instead, she flew to Turkey and joined
IS in Syria.
Home to the biggest Somali community in the United States, the Twin Cities area of Minnesota has
been plagued by terrorist recruiting since the Somali group al-Shabaab began enlisting in America
around 2007.
This year, law enforcement officials say they learned of 15-20 men with connections to the
Minnesota Somali community fighting for extremist groups in Syria. They included Douglas
McAuthur McCain, a convert to Islam, who was killed in battle this summer.
The St. Paul woman is the first case of an area female joining IS that has been made public although
her family have asked for her name to be kept private because it fears retaliation from Islamists.
Greg Boosalis, FBI division counsel in Minneapolis, said law enforcement was investigating the
possible recruitment in the area by Islamist extremists of other females, as well as males, but
refused to comment on specific cases.
"We are looking into the possibility of additional men and women travelers," he said.
Somali leaders and sources close to police worry that the reports of female would-be jihadis from the
region could mark a new trend.
The St. Paul woman is highly likely to have been recruited by IS through Islamist sympathizers in the
United States, rather than joining the group on her own, they said. At least one other woman is
suspected of helping her leave the United States.
Another U.S. teenager, nurse's aide Shannon Conley, 19, from Colorado, pleaded guilty this week to
trying to travel to the Middle East to enroll in IS. She was arrested at Denver International Airport in
April with a one-way ticket and had been recruited online by a male militant in Syria.
Nipping domestic extremism in the bud before Americans try to join terrorist groups is part of
Obama's strategy against Islamic State announced in a televised address last week.
Along with an aerial bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria, Obama pledged that the government
would "intervene with at-risk individuals before they become radicalized toward violence and decide