Urfa, Turkey (CNN) -- The petite 25-year-old
tentatively opens the door to the hotel room
where we've agreed to meet. Her face is covered,
but her body language betrays her anxiety.
She slowly lifts her niqab, revealing her young,
heart-shaped face. Her large brown eyes, filled
with guilt and turmoil, are delicately made up
under perfectly sculpted brows.

She calls herself 'Khadija.' It's not her real name,
because she's a marked woman. Once a member
of a fearsome, female ISIS brigade, she's a recent
defector, disillusioned by the group's brutality.
Her interview with CNN is the first time she has
ever told anyone her story.

'I ran away to something uglier'
Growing up in Syria, Khadija's family
ensured she got an education. She
earned her college degree and began
teaching elementary school. Khadija
describes her family and upbringing as
"not overly conservative."
When the Syrian uprising began more
than three and a half years ago,
Khadija joined the masses who began
peaceful protests against the
government of President Bashar al-
Assad.
"We'd go out and demonstrate. The
security services would chase us.
We'd write on walls, have different
outfits to change into," she said.
"Those days were great."
But it was when the Syrian uprising
spiraled into chaos and violence that
she said she began to lose her soul,
her humanity.

"Everything around us was chaos,"
she said, her words tumbling out.
"Free Syrian Army, the regime, barrel
bombs, strikes, the wounded, clinics,
blood -- you want to tear yourself
away, to find something to run to.
"My problem was I ran away to something
uglier."

Gradual induction

She found herself drawn to the eloquence of a
Tunisian whom she met online. Taken with his
manners, she grew to trust him over time and he
gradually lured her into the Islamic State, she
said. He assured her that the group was not what
people thought, that it was not a terrorist
organization.
"He would say, 'We are going to properly
implement Islam. Right now we are in a state of
war, a phase where we need to control the
country, so we have to be harsh.'"
He told her he was coming to the Syrian city of
Raqqa, that they could even get married.
"I got in touch with my cousin, and she said, 'You
can come join us in the Khansa'a Brigade. She
was living in Raqqa with her husband who was
with the Islamic State," Khadija said. The brigade
is the feared, all-female police for ISIS.
Khadija convinced her family to move to Raqqa,
saying it would be easier to register her younger
siblings in school, and that they would have the
support of relatives.

With her cousin to open the doors, Khadija was
welcomed into the feared Khansa'a brigade.
Inside the female ISIS brigade
The Khansa'a Brigade is made up of
around 25 to 30 women and is tasked
with patrolling the streets of Raqqa to
ensure that women adhere to proper
clothing as outlined by the Islamic
State.

Beaded or slightly form-fitting abayas
are banned. Women are not allowed to show their
eyes.
Those who broke the laws are lashed.
The lashings to the women who broke ISIS rules
were carried out by Umm Hamza.
When Khadija first saw Umm Hamza, she was
terrified.
"She's not a normal female. She's huge, she has
an AK, a pistol, a whip, a dagger and she wears
the niqab," Khadija said.

Brigade commander Umm Rayan sensed Khadija's
fear "and she got close to me and said a
sentence I won't forget. She said, 'We are harsh
with the infidels, but merciful among ourselves.'"
Khadija was trained to clean, dismantle, and fire a
weapon. She was paid $200 a month and
received food rations.
Her family sensed Khadija was slipping away, but
were helpless to stop it. Her mother tried to warn
her.
"She would always say to me, 'Wake up, take
care of yourself. You are walking, but you don't
know where you are going.'"


Second thoughts

Initally, Khadija did not pay attention to her
mother's warnings, seduced by the sense of
power. But eventually, she started questioning
herself and the principles of the Islamic State.
"At the start, I was happy with my job. I felt that I
had authority in the streets. But then I started to
get scared, scared of my situation. I even started
to be afraid of myself."
She started thinking: "I am not like this. I have a
degree in education. I shouldn't be like this. What
happened to me? What happened in my mind that
brought me here?"
And her image of ISIS began to crumble.
Burned into her mind is an image she saw online
of a 16-year-old boy who was crucified for rape.
She questioned her inclusion in a group capable
of such violence.
"The worst thing I saw was a man getting his
head hacked off in front of me," she said.
Violence against women
Even more personally, she witnessed ISIS' brand
of violence reserved for women. The brigade
shared its building with a man who specialized in
marriage for ISIS fighters.
"He was one of the worst people," she said of the
man tasked with finding wives for both local and
foreign fighters.

"The foreign fighters are very brutal with women,
even the ones they marry," she said. "There were
cases where the wife had to be taken to the
emergency ward because of the violence, the
sexual violence."
Khadija saw a future she did not want.
With her commander pressuring her to submit to
marriage, Khadija decided she needed to leave the
brigade.
"So it was at this point, I said enough. After all
that I had already seen and all the times I stayed
silent, telling myself, 'We're at war, then it will all
be rectified.'
"But after this, I decided no, I have to leave."
Khadija left just days before the coalition
airstrikes, but her family remains in Syria.
She was smuggled across the border to Turkey.
Inside the online world of the women of ISIS

Life after ISIS

Khadija still wears the niqab, not just to conceal
her identity but also because she's struggling to
adapt back to life outside the Islamic State.
Regretful of her immersion in radical Islam, she is
wary of another sudden change.
"It has to be gradual, so that I don't become
someone else. I am afraid of becoming someone
else. Someone who swings, as a reaction in the
other direction, after I was so entrenched in
religion, that I reject religion completely," she
said.

Towards the end of our interview, speaking about
how ISIS could have gotten a foothold in parts of
Syrian society, she has a personal moment.
"How did we allow them to come in? How did we
allow them to rule us? There is a weakness in
us."
Khadija spoke to us because she said she wants
people, especially women, to know the truth about
ISIS.
"I don't want anyone else to be duped by them.
Too many girls think they are the right Islam,"
she said.
She desperately wants to be the girl she was
before falling under the spell of ISIS -- "a girl who
is merry, who loves life and laughter... who loves
to travel, to draw, to walk in the street with her
headphones listening to music without caring
what anyone thinks," she said.
"I want to be like that again."

Their own way of evangelism. Quite innovative. The devil has his own people.

Very Pathetic!