A 22-year-old Canadian woman from Montreal is in the custody of Kurdish forces in Syria, along with her two-year-old daughter and newborn baby girl, after having fled a Daesh-controlled region of Syria.

She is being held by members of the Syrian Democratic Forces, a predominantly Kurdish and Arab force allied with Western governments fighting Daesh in the areas the group once held as part of its self-declared Islamic State.

Officials with Global Affairs Canada are in contact with senior members of the coalition group.

The woman, a Canadian citizen who surrendered to coalition forces last month, left Montreal for Syria with another teenage girl in November 2014, without telling her family or closest friends. It is believed the two took a common route for the thousands of Westerners who joined Daesh, also known as ISIS and ISIL, flying first to Istanbul, Turkey, and then travelling south into Syria.

The woman’s mother, who has tried for three years to get her daughter home, said her daughter called crying soon after arriving, saying the situation was not what she expected and that she was being closely monitored. “Everything is under surveillance. Everything is dangerous here,” the woman’s mother said about the panicked call. “We are watched. It’s not safe. I’m so sorry, mama. I’m so sorry.”

Her mother, whom the Star agreed not to identify, has been in sporadic contact with her daughter throughout the three years she has been gone and speaks regularly with both the RCMP and Canada’s spy service, CSIS.

Toronto lawyer Nader Hasan has also been in contact with the security services on the mother’s behalf.

“We have been working with Canadian authorities for months to find a way to get her out of Daesh territory and into Canadian custody,” Hasan said in an interview with the Star. “She was able to escape from Daesh territory — despite being eight and a half months pregnant — with the help of coalition allies. We understand she’s in Kurdish custody as she awaits transfer to Canadian authorities.”

“The RCMP has not indicated one way or another whether she’ll be charged with a criminal offence. That said … we believe she is a victim and can be seen no other way,” Hasan said.

The Quebec teenager left for Syria soon after she turned 19. Months later she was married to a German citizen, a convert to Islam. By February 2015, she was pregnant.

In December 2015, the Star’s Allan Woods reached out to the woman on Facebook but got a reply from the husband, who went by the name Abu Saleheddin. “Im the husband, what do you want?” he wrote.

They were in Iraq at the time, where Canada was part of the coalition fighting Daesh. “The situation with fighter jets is still the same, few days ago they bombed a building with womans and children,” the husband wrote.

The exact route of the Canadian woman’s travel is unclear. She is believed to be in custody in the town of Al Hasakah, where she gave birth on Nov. 15. Canadian foreign affairs officials are working on getting travel documents for the women and her infant daughters.

“We are aware of the case and in contact with the family and offering consular assistance,” MP Omar Alghabra, parliamentary secretary responsible for Canadians held abroad, told the Star.

Women have been involved in terrorism throughout history, but Daesh has ushered in a new era of female participation. The group’s propaganda focused on the need for women to help create a new world order, promising an ideal life, blending passages of the Qur’an with images of kittens and winking emojis.

Only a small group of armed women in Raqqa, known as the Al-Khansaa Brigade, were considered Daesh enforcers — imposing the group’s strict code.

Canada’s 2016 Public Safety report noted: “It is often unclear which roles women who travel to Syria perform. The most commonly held assumption is that women travel abroad to marry terrorists, but the reasons for travel and eventual roles vary. Some may occupy secondary roles within terrorist groups, while in other cases they appear to be training and taking part in combat. Some women have also facilitated the travel of others.”

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Hicham Tiflati, a Montreal researcher who has spent years studying questions of identity among Muslims youths and radicalism, said with the exception of Al-Khansaa, the role of women was largely “restricted to staying at home, raising children, and supporting their husbands.”

“To my knowledge, she was a stay-at-home mother that was looking after her daughter and did not have an active role in the organization,” said Tiflati, who knows the young woman’s mother.

In a high-profile October 2014 case, three Toronto girls aged between 15 and 18 were intercepted by Turkish authorities at the behest of Canada and sent back home after leaving for Syria. The girls’ parents had alerted police after discovering their plan.

The girls could have been charged with leaving to join a terrorist group, but instead agreed to speak with authorities and provide what intelligence they could about the recruitment of Western members. Community leaders and those within the security services who have advocated for measures beyond criminal sanctions hailed the case as a positive example of co-operation.

Little is known about Canadian cases of “returnees,” although reportedly more than 60 have returned in recent years from conflicts in Somalia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. Terrorism analysts and security sources say only a few are known to have returned from Daesh-held territory.

Governments worldwide have been grappling with how to handle those returning from Daesh’s defeat in Syria and Iraq.

The Liberal government highlighted this issue soon after taking power, but despite pledges to create a community outreach and counter-radicalization office, little has been done. Two years after announcing funding for the initiative, Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale has yet to name a coordinator.

The foreign fighter issue was back in the news recently after Rory Stewart, the U.K.’s minister of international development, said the British government may be forced to kill its citizens who had joined the group.

“I’m afraid we have to be serious about the fact these people are a serious danger to us, and unfortunately the only way of dealing with them will be, in almost every case, to kill them,” he told BBC Radio.

Officials from the U.S. and France have also been quoted as saying those who went to Syria should die in Syria.

In response, Goodale told the CBC, “Canada does not engage in death squads.”

Earlier this month at the Halifax International Security Forum, Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan stated: “We will make sure that we put every type of resource into place so Canadians are well protected.”

Michelle Shephard is the Star’s National Security correspondent. Follow her @shephardm.

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