December 26, 2025
By | TKD Team , Manahil Tariq Manj , Muhammad Mudassir
In the shadowy world of jihadist networks, a quiet revolution is unfolding—not on the battlefield, but in encrypted chat rooms, university campuses, and local communities. Women, once confined to ideological support roles, are now emerging as recruiters, propagandists, and even cell leaders in South and Central Asia’s most dangerous terrorist outfits. These developments are a radical shift from the traditional perception of women as non-political observers of jihad. The Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) and Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP) are among the organizations that have strategically involved women in their operations to cope with the dynamic environments. While AQIS has built a cadre of “digital sisters” engaged in online recruitment and ideological dissemination, it has also experimented with female-led operational networks and suicide units, such as the “Al-Qaida Shaheen Force. In contrast, ISKP has adopted a more localized, embedded strategy, placing women into operational, logistical, and leadership frameworks of their decentralized networks. There is a discussion on how AQIS and ISKP have developed women's use, and it is argued that there has been a change in the role of women as an ideological support mechanism in the operational activities of the two groups, and this is part of a broader strategic shift in the contemporary jihad movements.
AQIS: Digital Sustainers of Jihad
Historically, women in Al-Qaeda served active roles as well as supporting roles. From suicide bombers to sustaining ideology inside households, running safe houses, couriering messages, and occasionally translating or disseminating propaganda. Women suicide bombers were widely used in Iraq and Syria. For instance, an Iraqi woman posing as a man stood among job hopefuls before detonating an explosive belt outside a US military base in Tal Afar. Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed responsibility for the incident, describing her as a "blessed sister" of the Malik Suicidal Brigade.
Apart from active roles, Al-Qaeda played vital behind-the-scenes roles—teaching extremist ideology at home, supporting male jihadists, and managing safe houses and finances. In many cases, women provide a support role. For instance, women provided safe refuge to Al-Qaeda militants, and in another case in Karachi, women received dead bodies of Al-Qaeda militants killed in police encounters and managed their burial in local graveyards. These tasks helped preserve the group’s ideology and operations over time, making women key to its long-term survival.
Women-authored material, maintained “sisterhood” networks, and extended reach into diaspora communities—actions analyzed in policy literature on changing female roles in violent Islamist groups. Today, women’s roles have digitalized and in some cases operationalized: many act as online propagandists, account-admins and recruiters; security agencies report instances where women have served as handlers or coordinators in small, decentralized cells—an adaptation enabled by social media and encrypted apps. A powerful example of women’s expanded roles in Al-Qaeda propaganda and recruitment post-2000s is the case of Malika El Aroud, a Belgian-Moroccan woman who became a prominent online jihadist propagandist. After her husband died in a suicide attack in Afghanistan, El Aroud emerged as a vocal supporter of Al-Qaeda, using websites and forums to recruit and radicalize young Muslims across Europe.
With the decline of AQAP, the regional affiliates emerged more active in utilizing women. There are various cases of women's involvement in Al Qaeda regional affiliates' activities. For instance, the establishment of the “Al Qaida Shaheen force” under the leadership of Afinda Binte Ayesha. the women’s wing of the terror outfit would operate from the Pak-Afghan tribal belt and organize a squad of female suicide bombers. This was the time when AQIS utilized women for an active role. Furthermore, in a supporting role, Farzana Abdul Qudoos, a district leader of Jamaat-e-Islami, played a support role in Al-Qaeda’s network by providing shelter to Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, the 9/11 mastermind, at her residence in Westridge, Rawalpindi. Her involvement underscores the operational significance of women in facilitating high-profile militant activities within urban safe havens. This was the time period between 2003 to 2016; after that, there were relatively few publicly available cases of women's involvement in AQIS.
However, in July 2025, a trend emerged when the Indian authorities arrested 30-year-old Shama / Sama Parveen from Bengaluru, the leader of the local AQIS cell. She was running social accounts that circulated AQIS slogans and “glorified armed rebellion, propagated Ghazwa-e-Hind, and promoted myth-based violence,” and that she coordinated with suspects arrested earlier. She was leading a local AQIS cell, highlighting a shift from a traditional role to a more active leadership role.
ISKP: Embedded Operatives in a Localized Strategy
In the early stages, ISIS had a dual attitude toward women. On the one hand, IS used women as commodities to be traded and given away as rewards to Jihadist fighters. But on the other hand, recruited women for more active roles in their so-called jihad. The group actively mobilized women in propaganda and recruitment, leveraging online platforms to draw in global supporters. During its peak in 2014-15, around 550 European women travelled to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, which shows the level of propaganda regarding women's recruitment. A striking case is Sally Jones, a British convert and UN-designated IS recruiter. She became a prominent female propagandist, encouraging European women to join jihad and legitimizing female participation as part of the group’s transnational project. Beyond Europe, IS had influence in South Asia as well. In a prominent case in December 2014, a group of female students from Pakistan’s Hafsa Mosque pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, urging Pakistani Islamist militants to join the ranks of ISIS and support the Caliphate.
As ISIS so called caliphate diminished, its offshoots, such as Islamic State Khorasan Province (ISKP), took a leading role in women’s radicalization through highly localized propaganda dissemination. ISKP follows much of the ISIS model but adapts it to its Afghan-Pakistani context. ISKP uses women for a variety of tasks, including preaching, recruiting (including the recruitment of male family members), fundraising, scouting, carrying weapons, spying, and providing training, including in the manufacture of IEDs and the use of light weapons.
ISKP uses tailored propaganda for its women supporters. For instance, ISKP released an Urdu language booklet through its al-Azaim Foundation, outlining ten “responsibilities” for Muslim women in service of the caliphate. The responsibilities outlined in the booklet include: (1) pledge loyalty to the caliphate as a religious obligation, (2) support jihad through media work and family influence, (3) strictly adhere to Sharia law in all aspects of life, (4) reject secular education as a corrupting force, (5) denounce democracy and nationalism as un-Islamic, (6) promote ideological purity within the household, (7) obey male guardians without question, (8) raise children to become future fighters for the cause, (9) avoid public life and employment to preserve modesty, and (10) endorse martyrdom as the highest form of devotion. Furthermore, ISKP, in its magazine, writes biographies of prominent women in Islamic history. The purpose of this is usually to inspire, influence, and mobilize women by presenting historical female figures as role models
This gendered propaganda effort reflects ISKP’s broader evolution: blending ideological legitimacy with grassroots resilience by framing women as both supporters and silent enablers of militant operations. While couched in spiritual rhetoric and historical Islamic references, the booklet positions women not only as educators and nurturers but also as operational supporters of jihad. The document explicitly rejects the notion that women should question "What can we women do?"—instead declaring them "bright torches of the ship of monotheism" who have historically "drowned the ship full of Pharaoh's tyrannical rule."
Prominent Journalist, Co-founder and Director News, The Khorasan Diary, Mr. Ihsanullah Tipu Mehsud, said, “Compared to ISIS Central—where entire families migrated to the caliphate—ISKP has not replicated mass mobilization of women but still leaves the door open for their participation in line with its propaganda needs. He further added that “While ISIS Central during its territorial control encouraged families to uproot themselves and relocate, ISKP permits a more 'embedded' model. Female affiliates, much like their male counterparts, may continue their professional and social roles—such as teachers, doctors, or students—while quietly serving the organization’s needs.” Their main focus is the objective, not which gender or ethnic group carries it out.
Mr. Ihsan's point can be verified through various cases. For instance, in Islamabad, an ISKP cell was busted in 2023, consisting of 14 individuals aged between 20 and 21, including girls. Furthermore, police in the Netherlands arrested two people — a man from Tajikistan and his wife — both linked to ISKP. The concerning trend emerged in September 2025, Uzbekistan’s State Security Service dismantled an ISKP cell in Namangan that was led by a 19-year-old woman. She had become radicalized while studying religion at a hujra (private Islamic religious school) in Istanbul in 2022. Upon returning to Uzbekistan, she established a local ISKP network actively promoting extremist ideology. Her case highlights how young women are no longer confined to support roles but can emerge as leaders of local militant cells—demonstrating the evolving flexibility of ISKP’s gendered approach.
Table 1 Comparative Analysis of ISKP and AQIS Use of Women
Conclusion:
The evolving roles of women in AQIS and ISKP are a sign of a major change in modern jihadist activities. AQIS has taken advantage of technology to produce so-called digital sisters who maintain ideological discourses and reach out to more people through the internet. AQIS, which previously employed female suicide bombers and has not entirely ruled out their future use, has seen a decline in women’s direct operational roles in recent years. Currently, women are usually online propagandists, account managers, and recruiters; they use social media and encrypted applications to promote the agenda of the group.
Instead, ISKP has been more localized and embedded in its operations and has embraced the inclusion of women in its decentralized networks, operations, logistics, and leadership. This approach enables the female affiliates to retain their professional and social functions and fulfil the needs of the organization silently.
The two organizations have outgrown their customary supportive roles towards women as AQIS concentrates on digital sustenance of jihad, and ISKP uses women as internal agents. This development shows how these organizations are flexible to varying working environments and how women are becoming more relevant in their approaches.
The shift from ideological support to embedded operational roles presents new challenges for counterterrorism efforts. It highlights the importance of a more subtle perception of gender relations in extremist groups and proposes flexible methods to respond to the dynamic threat situation in South and Central Asia.
