Samra Kesinovic, 16, and Sabina Selimovic, 15 were picked up by a whirlwind and deposited in the Islamic State by following a road they may have thought was paved with good intentions. In war, the primary sacrifice is of one’s body and these two teenagers, as potential breeders, were married off to “fighters” and likely to suicide bombers as those fighter’s personal wife-whores and sometimes as fighters. According to the NY Daily News, “Girls are increasingly being used in the fighting because of a belief that anybody killed by a female would never go to heaven.” According to an unidentified Tunisian women who claims to have lived with both girls, Samra Kesinovic was beaten to death trying to escape ISIS while Sabina was killed in fighting -- which presumes Sabina wasn’t a great breeder. These girls were manipulated by ISIS propaganda, they were young, to some extent disaffected by Austrian society and did not think enough of themselves to protect themselves from the phalluses and fallacies of evil men. I can’t help but assign most of the blame to them. Yeats wrote in Easter 1919 of a mourning over an Irish uprising that would presage modern terrorism:
"Transformed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.”
And such was the transformation of these two girls, there was apparently a Yugoslavian recruiter to blame, the ISIS propaganda machine which they would eventually work for as well but ultimately these two girls chose to join the fight in a terror organization which actively engaged in ethnic cleansing, rape and genocide. I feel sorry for them but their parents more because I understand how a sixteen or seventeen year old could be misguided, might be interested in G-d approved sexed with the bad boys of war and desire to outdo their parents in their ethnocentrism and religiosity, to take an easy way out to feeling important -- these can be attractive siren calls but the girls were no idiots. They planned their escape from Austria to Turkey, made propaganda, directly helped murder people at least in the case of Sabina and ultimately paid the price for their brutal ideals by their lives ending brutally. It’s tragic for kids to die at 17 and 16, a mere year later after running away from their homes but I also think of them as newly minted Nazis from Austria who lived two years too long. How many other children and innocent civilians might live if these girls died on their way to Turkey or before could have left? I would wish some other intervention, something that could rescue their minds from supporting intolerance and genocide but they could choose and they chose, Yeats' words are far darker now than they were a century ago as we now see what terrorism really is,“We know their dream; Enough to know they dreamed and are dead” and their dreams bewilder in their mixture and teen angst and murderousness. I am glad that ISIS eats its own, these cute little girls earned their ignoble and savage deaths but they could have been more, they had every chance to have better dreams and there is tragedy for their loss of potential.