Mubaraz Ahmed is an analyst with the Co-Existence team at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where he focuses on Islamist extremism. The opinions in this article belong to the author.

(CNN) The fate of Shamima Begum, the British teenager who fled the UK to join ISIS, appears to more unclear than the fate of the so-called Caliphate itself.

Reduced to a fraction of the territory it once controlled, the group that once swept across Iraq and Syria now faces total territorial annihilation.

What once felt like a deluge of foreign fighters flooding from all parts of the world across the Syrian border to join ISIS eventually became a trickle. Now, the likes of Shamima Begum and Hoda Muthana, the US citizen President Donald Trump says cannot return home after joining ISIS , represent an altogether different current.

Destitute and desperate to return to countries they once called home, they now form part of a growing number of women facing an uncertain future. Effective statelessness, banishment and imprisonment all seem plausible outcomes. A far cry from the vision that once attracted them to the caliphate.

While states consider the fate of these women, with both Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Home Secretary Sajid Javid taking steps to try and prevent individuals returning to the US and UK respectively, further reflection is needed on why these women, and girls, left in the first place.

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