The Growing Role of Human Trafficking With ISIS in the 21ST Century

1.0 Introduction

Human trafficking is among the global issues that affect the wellbeing of women and children. It also attracts the attention of global leaders who aim to come up with long-lasting or permanent decisions which will help put an end to the social menace. Human trafficking takes place in both developed and developing nations due to the allure it presents for the unsuspecting victims (Doezema, 2013). Both men and women are potential candidates for human trafficking. However, women are more susceptible since they are trafficked to be used as sex slaves for the terrorist groups. Another reason justifying the acts of human trafficking include having cheap labor. Able-bodied persons are taken to work in different work environments without any pay or subjected to poor working conditions. Employers also take advantage of the fact that most of the slaves are illiterate and may not know the relevance of a unified workforce bargaining their right to fair pay. Trafficking can take place within a country or across the region, meaning that victims can be moved from one place to another within their nation, or can be transported outside the borders of their country (Weitzer & Ditmore, 2010). Traffickers who operate within the country or outside have an organized terrorist network that provides accommodation for the victims before the leaders can make the final decision on what they should do with a large number of people they have managed to capture. Traffickers can either be men or women. However, women are mostly used as baits to capture the victims as help lure the potential victims with a promise of work-related opportunities and kidnap them against their wishes.

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Globally, there are more than 40 million people who are victims of slavery (Territo & Kirkham, 2010). According to the United Nations, the human trafficking acts accelerate during armed conflict situations. For instance, traffickers take advantage of war-torn areas as they take advantage of the desperate women and children who want to find a safe environment and a stable income. It also increases due to the gender-based violence acts and sexual ideologies that terrorist groups adopt. The terrorist networks support recruitment of young-able-bodied persons into the groups and award them with sexual partners. The terrorist groups also get financial income through the sale of women and girls and use religious ideologies to support their ill motives. The vulnerable persons, including women and children, are affected by political instabilities in countries and during times of conflict as the men go to war. Groups involved in terrorist acts like the ISIS, Al-Shabaab, and Boko Haram, amongst others, capitalize on using human trafficking and sale of their victims as a way to raise finances to fund their evil activities. ISIS has also engaged in sexual enslavement where the women and girls captured during their escapades were used to satisfy the sexual urges of the bandits (Weitzer & Ditmore, 2010). Captured victims are sold in slave markets at the cheap process or in war-torn countries like Syria which need cheap labor from people who would be willing and able to fight against their foes

Doezema (2013) describes sex slavery or trafficking as exploitation directed towards women and children, who are the most vulnerable individuals in a community in case there is conflict. Trafficking takes place locally or beyond the borders of a country. Each year, there are more than 800,000 victims, including both women and children (Fong & Cardoso, 2010). They are taken from different countries. Traffickers remain conspicuous as they operate their illegal businesses under the umbrella of other registered and legal organizations like spas or parlors. Developing countries produce the largest number of victims as most women are vulnerable due to the unstable financial positions (Merry, 2016). This means that any promise for a possible job is welcomed within a short-time, making it easy for the traffickers to capture their potential candidates.

1.1 Problem Statement

The study aims to understand how human trafficking occurs and why women and young girls are the main victims of the terrorist attacks. It will also provide insights from former victims who had gone through the process and discussed the environment they lived when in captivity and how they managed to escape. This will help highlight the plight of victims when in the hands of the terrorist groups. The study will use secondary sources to gather information about former slaves giving their testimonies to help understand the motivation of the human traffickers.

The justification and motivation of Research

The research is important for knowledge advancement as it will add to the existing knowledge and information about human trafficking, while taking into special interest on ISIS, as one of the terrorist groups that have been actively involved in human trafficking activities. This means that the study will use actual examples to illustrate the impact of human trafficking on the victims, as well as highlight the implications of knowledge for future research.

1.3 Research Questions

What role does human trafficking play in funding terrorism?

How does human slavery create an enabling environment for sex trafficking?

How are victims captured?

1.4 Aims and Objectives of the Study

The objectives of the research include having a better understanding of the impact of human slavery and sex trafficking of women and children, and how their lives change. This means that the study will provide a better understanding of the suffering and pain that the victims go through as they are sold or used by the terrorist groups. The study will focus on the actions of ISIS, as one of the main terrorist groups in the world that have engaged in terrorist activities. So, the specific aims and objectives of the study are:

• To understand how human trafficking supports terrorist activities
• To know how human slavery affects sex trafficking
• To understand the impact of human trafficking on the wellbeing of victims
• To know how victims are captured

Chapter Two

2.0 Literature Review

2.1 Chapter Overview

This chapter will provide an overview of the previous related research on the research problem and their strength and weaknesses and a justification for the research. This part will also highlight the gap that exists in the research as justification for undertaking the study while comparing the information that other scholars have identified in the past. This helps avoid repeating and plagiarizing work, while not recognizing the efforts of previous researchers.

2.2 Summary of Previous Related Research

Human Trafficking Activities

The human trafficking activities have been in existence for long where people take advantage of others by subjecting them to torture after holding them without their consent. Traditionally, human trafficking was mostly done so that people could be sold as slaves and work on farms owned by whites (Lee, 2013). Blacks were the main commodity of sale in slave markets. In the modern day, human trafficking has gone a notch higher where people care captured to be involved in terrorist attacks and for sexual pleasure for the armies. In addition, it is also used as a way of rewarding fighters who do well in war by ensuring that they get either the young women or girls captured during a trafficking session (Jonsson, 2012). Human trafficking can take place within a country or necessitate the movement of the victims across borders with the aim of fetching more financial returns for the captors.

Victims are retained against their will. Most of the young women and girls are in their prime years meaning that any sexual activity might result in pregnancy (Lee, 2013). Traffickers force the women to go through sterility and induce abortion to avoid the expenses that come from birthing during captivity (Ahram, 2015). Some of the strengths of the information provided by the scholars are the descriptive details of the suffering that victims go through in the hands of traffickers, as well as the exposure on trafficking taking place in the modern day world despite the efforts by different lawmakers to put an end to the menace. The limitation is the lack of concrete figures or percentages to represent the information presented therein.

The link between Human Trafficking and Terrorist Activities

According to Lee (2013), the link between human trafficking and terrorist activities is that the latter are constantly kidnapping women and girls with the aim of selling them to different target markets and get money in exchange, which helps support their illegal activities. In addition, traffickers linked to terrorist groups are on the lookout for recruits that can join their armies which strengthens their ability to engage in terrorist activities (Binetti, 2015). Human traffickers use the victims as a cheap source of sex or labor, which are necessary as a support system in the terrorist activities (Gonzalez, 2013). This means that the victims captured during a war can be used to serve the military stations like cleaning and ensuring the general maintenance of the area. The strengths of the literature provided include the clear information about how terrorist groups like the ISIS require extra help and opt for human trafficking as a way to recruit.

Religious Conversion

According to Jonsson (2012), most of the victims captured are of different religious backgrounds. However, traffickers consider converting their recruits to their religious beliefs and engage in thorough training of the new way of life (Malik, 2017). The victims have no choice, and most of them are killed by execution in case they show any form of resistance. For instance, the ISIS is affiliated with the Islam religion, meaning that trafficked victims are trained on the way of life of Muslim and required to adhere to the teachings (Binetti, 2015). The religious conversion makes it easy to manipulate and control the victims since they are made to believe that fighting is holy and responsibility according to their religious beliefs.

2.3 What is known/what has been done by others

Some of the information that has been done by others reveal that women and girls from the highest percentage of human trafficking victims, by more than 85% of the total number of cases reported per year (Jonsson, 2012). In addition, the study reveals that victims are forced to engage in sexual activities more than ten times per day with more than one partner. In addition, those who conceive are encouraged to terminate their pregnancies with the aim of limiting the number of births among the kidnapped females. Human trafficking generates billions of dollars per year and shared by the network of organized criminal minds. ISIS captures women whose age is as low as fourteen years.

ISIS which is one of the popular and organized crimes has taken responsibility for the high number of cases in human trafficking. Human trafficking includes rape, physical abuse, as well as prostitution activities. The group targets women and girls who are easy p...