He expected to have a wonderful life with a new job and a living allowance provided by the government, as promised by the IS propagandists on social media, but the reality was quite disappointing.

The 25-year-old man was asked to join the military when he entered the IS capital city of Raqqa, given his gender and strong build. Febri, however, managed to deceive the IS' army by pretending to be weak and sick so he could skip the mandatory military service.

The Iraqi Kurdish force, which is backed by the United States, had begun the fight against IS in 2014, right after the radical organization, then known as the Jama’at al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, proclaimed itself a worldwide caliphate and started to refer itself as the Islamic State.

Febri realized that the IS propaganda turned out to be a lie. “We were being intimidated and some of us had even been threatened to be killed,” he said, adding that his extended family of 26 people decided to depart for Syria in August 2015 because of financial constraints they faced at home. Some of the family members also suffered from severe illnesses at the time. 

Meanwhile, several others were being exposed to IS propaganda, claiming that the movement had solutions for their mounting problems. IS also suggested they should migrate to the caliphate’s base in Syria to be called “real Muslims”.

“We made a mistake by not carefully verifying the information,” Febri told The Jakarta Post in South Jakarta on Friday. 

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