BEIRUT _ Thousands of foreign-born women left their homes and lives to join Islamic State and marry its fighters. But now that the militant group's so-called caliphate is reduced to crumbled masonry and scorched rebar, many of them want to return home.
Shamima Begum was a teenage schoolgirl in east London when she left home to join Islamic State; Hoda Muthana, an Alabama-born college student; Kimberly Gwen Polman, a 46-year-old single mom in Canada studying to be a children's advocate. Now they're held in a Kurdish-controlled prison in the hinterlands of eastern Syria, asking to be let back into their home countries.
The women branded "ISIS brides," using initials for militant group, have become a focal point of fierce debate for governments worldwide: What are states' responsibilities toward these women?
A central question in that debate is what exactly did the women do in the caliphate? Were they cloistered housewives largely ignorant of the group's realities, or active participants in its genocidal acts?
