Thank you for downloading this edition of Assignment. I'm Shala Atwood, the producer of this program.

We were actually in Mombassal and Kenya's coast covering another story when we came across

this group of women. We were told we could come and interview a group of former female fighters,

fighters for Alshabab, and this is obviously quite a rarity to have female fighters. So

we went along, but it became very clear, very quickly, that this group of women were in fact

incredibly traumatized, had been trafficked, had not gone willingly to fight for the militants,

but in fact been kidnapped, been drugged, been abused. And this for me is the crux of the problem.

There doesn't seem to be anybody who's differentiating between those who are being radicalised

and going to Somalia willingly to fight, and those who are being kidnapped and taken against

their will. So myself and Soyuz, the reporter and our team spent months trying to track down

these women who've managed to escape and find out as much information as we could about this

hidden trade. And in this program, you'll hear their stories told for the very first time.

I think I can see you're done shopping the chicken. Yeah, it was very cold, but yeah, it

shocked it. Is this something you enjoy doing? Yeah, it's very enjoying, you know, I like cooking very

much. Well, certainly not the way it was in the forest. Yeah, you know, there we were cooking

just, you know, galley rice, but yeah, you know, you cook delicious foods.

This is Faith. It's not her real name, but we're calling her that to protect her identity.

She's just 19, fresh-faced, quiet as two years. She looks so completely normal, but there's

nothing normal about the story she's about to tell me. And I should warn you that some listeners

may find this program disturbing. I'm Ansoy and this is assignment on the BBC World Service

and we end the coastal city Mombasa in Kenya. Faith's story began when she left school at 16.

There was no money and she needed a job. One day, she was approached by an elderly couple who

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