Tareena Shakil’s journey from the United Kingdom to Syria and back offers a complex insight into the experiences of foreign women who joined the Islamic State (Isis) during the group’s rise between 2012 and 2019. Shakil, who was 24 when she traveled from Birmingham to Syria in October 2014 with her one-year-old son, has since returned to Britain, served a prison sentence, and sought to rebuild her life.

Raised in Burton upon Trent by a British mother and Pakistani father, Shakil described a challenging home environment marked by familial instability and exposure to criminal behavior. Ambitious and academically inclined, she attended the University of Wolverhampton studying psychology before her life was disrupted by an abusive marriage and subsequent separation. In 2014, feeling isolated and vulnerable, she became exposed to online recruitment efforts by Isis sympathizers, including a Portuguese man named Fabio Pocas, who influenced her with a mix of religious arguments and propaganda. Shakil stated she was attracted not by a desire to fight or commit violence, but by a belief that joining Isis’s so-called caliphate was the only way to practice pure Sharia and secure her and her son’s spiritual future.

Her route involved flights to Turkish cities Antalya and Istanbul, before reaching Gaziantep near the Syrian border. There, she joined a group of women from around the world who had traveled to Syria with hopes—some uncertain or conflicted—about the realities awaiting them. Shakil described an environment fraught with tension, control, and surveillance, where women struggled with the gap between the ideology presented online and the brutal conditions on the ground, including bombings and executions in Raqqa, then the de facto capital of the caliphate.

After six weeks in Syria, Shakil escaped alone with her son, fleeing through checkpoints and crossing into Turkey where she was detained for six weeks before being allowed to return to the UK in early 2015. Upon arrival at Heathrow, she was arrested on suspicion of terrorism offenses; her son was placed into care.

Shakil was subsequently charged with joining Isis and encouraging acts of terror. The prosecution presented evidence including photographs of her in Isis territory posing with weapons and messages expressing allegiance to the group. She admitted to cooperating with Isis monitoring by participating in activities such as posing with an AK47 but denied engaging in violence herself. In 2016, she was convicted at Birmingham Crown Court and sentenced to six years in prison, of which she served three.

Since her release in 2018, Shakil has worked to reshape her narrative, becoming a social media influencer focusing primarily on relationship advice and everyday issues, distancing herself from the extremist ideology she once encountered. She credits her rediscovery of Islam through a prison imam as a formative influence and rejects Isis’s violent interpretation of the faith. Shakil acknowledges that public skepticism remains regarding her remorse and motivations, but points to over a decade of distancing herself from extremism as evidence of change.

Shakil’s case highlights the difficulties in balancing security concerns with rehabilitation for individuals who joined Isis under various circumstances, including claims of grooming and vulnerability. Her experience mirrors broader challenges in dealing with foreign nationals who traveled to conflict zones and later returned, as governments and societies assess questions of accountability, reintegration, and public safety.