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The bittersweet taste of home: Former ISIL wife returns to Kazakhstan |


Asel, a 32-year-old Kazakh woman, recalls: “We were told that Syria was a sacred land. “If we die there in battle, we will immediately go to heaven and become martyrs.”

In 2014 Asel was one of about 150 people who left Kazakhstan to join the terrorist network ISIL, also known by the Arabic term Da’esh, in Syria, along with her husband and son. She was pregnant at the time.

Asel grew up in an “average” Kazakh family in the north of Kazakhstan, where religious influence is not as strong as in the south. After graduating from the College of Transport, she moved to the capital, Nur-Sultan, formerly known as Astana, in 2013.


Asel, ex-wife of ISIL, now recovered and living in Kazakhstan

Asel, the ex-wife of ISIL, has now been rehabilitated and lives in Kazakhstan, according to UN News / Kulpash Konurova

Heaven is lost

While there, she became a follower of a strict form of Islam and married a man who shared her views, who convinced her that they should move to Syria: “We were intrigued. because we believe that no one will have to work on the sacred land, that we will receive monthly financial benefits, and that the houses and properties from the ‘liberated’ cities and towns will be ours “.

The following year, they reached Syria, via a route that took them through Belarus and Turkey. However, as hostility grows, their dreams turn sour, and their money and food quickly run out.

In total, Asel has lived in Syria for about 5 years, moving with her husband from place to place. During this time, she gave birth to a second son while her husband married two other women from Kazakhstan, who also bore him children.

But one day, she said, her husband didn’t come home: he was killed by a bomb that hit the building where he was working. Now leaving a widow, Asel and her children, decide to return to their homeland.

Al-Hol survived

The family had heard on the vineyard that the Kazakh Government was organizing flights for people who wanted to return home. Despite fears that she might be sent to prison, Asel realized that, if they stayed in Syria, they would struggle to survive in increasingly difficult conditions.

At great risk to his life, Asel, along with women from Dagestan in the Russian Federation, Turkey and even from European countries, arrived at the notorious Al-Hol refugee camp in northeastern Syria .

Conditions at the camp, home to more than 60,000 refugees, are regularly denounced as extremely harsh. Families of Da’esh veterans are kept in an isolated, protected ward, following an outbreak of violence between them and others at the facility.

Asel says she was lucky to have only been in Al-Hol for two months, but those 60 days, combined with the hardships of the previous five years, were enough to underline the urgent need to get her and her sons out of Syria. .


A view of Almaty in Kazakhstan.

© Unsplash / Alexander Serzhantov

A view of Almaty in Kazakhstan.

‘Zhusan’, the smell of homeland

Thanks to the initiative of the Kazakhs, Asel succeeded in returning home. She and her sons were flown to the city of Aktau, on the Caspian Sea, and spent a month in a rehabilitation center, among others in a similar condition.

After the physical examination, psychologists, theologians and religious scholars worked with the family, and her children attended temporary schools and kindergartens. At the end of the probationary period, they were sent to stay with relatives in the countryside.

Today Asel is settled in Kazakhstan. She found new love, remarried, and her two sons, now 8 and 5 years old, are budding.

Asel’s final return was made possible by Operation Zhusan. Zhusan is a Kazakh word meaning “sage,” the smell that many Kazakhs associate with their homeland.

The year 2022 marks three years since the start of Operation Zhusan. According to the National Security Committee of the Republic of Kazakhstan, 37 men, 157 women and 413 children – 34 of whom are orphans – have been repatriated so far.

Of this total, 31 men and 18 women were convicted for participating in ISIL activities.

According to the Government, the success of this operation has been closely monitored by a number of countries accepting the return of foreign veterans and their families – including Austria, Germany, Uzbekistan, Ukraine and even even the Republic of the Maldives – as well as the United Nations, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the European Parliament.


Refugees in the Al-Hol camp in the capital Hasakeh in northeastern Syria.  (file)

© UNICEF / Delil Souleiman

Refugees in the Al-Hol camp in the capital Hasakeh in northeastern Syria. (file)

False Prophet

According to an expert on radicalization interviewed by UN News, there were three main reasons for the influx of young Kazakhs to Syria in 2013-2014. The first, according to Alim Shaumetov, director of Nur-Sultan-based Akniet rehabilitation center, is religious illiteracy, which leaves them defenseless against those who preach extreme religious ideology. group.

“They couldn’t object to the very capable work of these recruiting preachers,” he said. “Extreme religious ideology is the joint work of political leaders, psychologists, and theologians, who have planted these ideas in their heads, then they are ready to sacrifice their lives. own for the ideas of others”.

Another important element, according to Shaumetov, is the law on freedom of religion and religious associations, passed during the first years of Kazakhstan’s independence.

“Borders are opened, young people go abroad to religious institutions, and fall into the hands of false preachers,” he explained. “And when they came back, they started spreading their dangerous ideology here.”

The third reason, paradoxically, is the World Wide Web, and the vast amount of information that the Internet provides. Young people have searched the internet for answers to their questions, and solutions to problems they face in life and through religious websites and social media, “too radicalization” took place.

“Therefore, there was a massive exodus of our young people to Syria and Iraq, that’s why they ended up with someone else’s war.”

Akniet staff members will engage foreign veterans and their families for education and information sessions, Shaumatov said, a process that, according to Shaumatov, results in about 95% of the results. some of them give up radical ideas.

Some reverted to secular life, while others converted to more moderate forms of Islam. “Our work continues,” he said.



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