ISIS using love as recruitment tool

In a few months' time, perhaps even weeks, you might remember the story, but will you remember the names? Kadiza Sultana, 16; Shamima Begum, also 16; and Amira Abase, 15.

All three London schoolgirls said they were going out for the day and now it is thought they have left the UK, gone to Turkey and slipped across the border to join Islamic State  militants in Syria.

Their names are important for everyone, because they focus our mind on them as individuals, as young girls, with a promising future ahead of them, with friends, siblings and parents.

Yet, inevitably, we are in thrall to the bigger narrative: a troubling and growing sisterhood is being cultivated - it appears an estimated 200 to 300 European Muslim girls have made the same journey as Kadiza, Shamima and Amira.

Why? What for? The term jihadi bride is particularly egregious, but there is some truth to it.

Recently, this BBC reporter met some mothers of sons and daughters who have decided to join the self-styled caliphate. One woman, from Sweden, by way of Somalia, told the reporter about her daughter, who was lured to Syria by a man she says she was in love with.

Her mother says ISIS use love as a recruiting tool. Once girls are persuaded that a warrior is in love with them, they in turn, can be used to recruit more girls and young women.

Another mother, with an absent daughter, this one from Belgium, speaks to her daughter by text message regularly.  Her child also fell in love with a man thought to be a senior figure in the militant group.

The girls, Kadiza, Shamima and Amira are still just children. And we know how impressionable they can be, how easy to manipulate. This appears to be an issue of radicalisation and grooming: a twin track of romanticising the life they will have as part of a battle sanctioned by God, alongside the actual romance they might have with a warrior in that battle.