A brave Syrian woman from Raqqa recently revealed to the world what it's like to live in a city overtaken by the Islamic state by carrying a hidden camera in her burka and filming her surroundings.
The video, which was filmed in February and April this year and first aired by France 24, shows men and women carrying weapons as they walk about the streets in the heartland of the Islamic State (IS). One woman, who is wearing a veil and carrying an AK-47 slung over her shoulder, can be seen holding a child's hand as they enter a playground.
At another point in the footage, a man in a car pulls up and beckons to the undercover videographer to come forward before berating her for not sufficiently hiding her face under her veil.
The woman filming apologized, and then asked why she needed to "behave better" in public, as the man had ordered.
"God loves women who are covered," responded the man.
Then, the woman enters an internet cafe, in which were two women speaking fluent French with their families back home. The camera caught one of the women insisting she was happy and telling her mother, "I am not coming back."
"I did not take the risk by coming here to go back to France," the woman on screen continued before telling her mom to stop crying. "I don't want to come back mama, because I'm happy here...Everything you see on TV is fake, I swear to you, it's not true. Do you understand? They exaggerate everything on TV."
As the US leads airstrikes to hit Isis targets in Raqqa and other Islamists' controlled areas in northern and eastern Syria, international attention is focusing on the terrorist's recruitment of women and girls to their cause.
Last week, French police arrested and placed into custody six people in Lyon, including two minors, on suspicion of luring young women for the jihad in the Middle East.
Earlier in September, news came out of a 20-year-old former radiography student from Glasgow, Aqsa Mahmood, who travelled to Syria to marry an Islamic State jihadist. Through her Twitter account, she encouraged Muslims to carry out attacks in the west.
"Follow the examples of your brothers from Woolwich, Texas and Boston," she tweeted. "'If you cannot make it to the battlefield, then bring the battlefield to yourself.
According to France 2, around 150 French women currently live alongside militant groups in Syria, some leaving their home country to join husbands fighting, and others to get married.
