NEW YORK: Increasing numbers of young women who are seeking to fight or to become the wives of fighters are trying to join radical groups in Syriaand Iraq , the New York Times said in a report on Thursday.

The report said that it was a new twist on a recruitment effort that had led to several thousand men from Europe and beyond flocking to the battlefield.

In the past week alone, the authorities reported two instances of women and girls trying to get to Syria or take part in jihad. On Wednesday, the British police arrested a 25-year-old woman north of London on suspicion of preparing “terrorist acts” related to the fighting in Syria.

Over the weekend, three teenage girls from the Denver suburbs — two sisters of Somali descent and a friend of Sudanese descent — were intercepted.

The precise number of women seeking to join the groups is unclear, but some analysts estimate that roughly 10 percent of recruits from the West are women, often influenced by social media networks that offer advice, tips and even logistical support for travel.

These networks often portray life under the caliphate as a kind of Islamic paradise that offers a religious alternative to what can often be a second-class life of struggle and alienation in the West. They often find the reality is far different from that ideal.

Published in Dawn, October 24th, 2014