Kyrgyzstan’s Repatriation of Foreign Fighters’ Wives and Children from Syrian Camps Marks the End of an Era

Executive Summary

• Kyrgyzstan recently finished repatriating women and children who were detained in Syria and Iraq for having been connected with men who fought with al-Qaeda and Islamic State (IS). This has been hailed as the end to Central Asia’s struggle with large-scale jihadism, but the Taliban’s seizure of Afghanistan and the ongoing Israel–Hamas war have the potential to generate another wave of militancy.
• The returning Kyrgyz nationals are currently undergoing a long and complex rehabilitation and reintegration process, though one that has been broadly successful across the region.

On February 20, Kyrgyz authorities conducted the sixth repatriation operation and repatriated 28 women and 71 children who had been stranded in refugee camps in northeastern Syria since the fall of the Islamic State (IS) in 2019 (Kaktus Media, February 20). This operation brought the number of Kyrgyz nationals returned from Syria and Iraq to 511, including 129 women and 382 children, and completed the repatriation program that began in March 2021 (Kaktus Media, March 16, 2021, February 16, 2023, October 22, 2023, August 30, 2023; Fergana, December 8, 2023).

Upon arrival, these women and children will enter the long and complex rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R) process. This ensures that they will adapt to peaceful life in Kyrgyzstan and present no security threat to their home country. Questions pertaining to their prosecution and the provision of psychological, social, and economic support will decide the fate of Kyrgyzstan’s R&R program. In broader terms, Kyrgyzstan’s latest repatriation operation signaled the end of a Central Asian jihadist era, which saw thousands of Central Asians join terrorist groups in the Middle East since the advent of the IS and its caliphate. However, it is too early for the region’s governments to relax, as the terrorist groups in neighboring Afghanistan and the ongoing war in Gaza may provoke another wave of extremism.

Kyrgyzstanis in International Terrorist Groups

According to the Kyrgyz security services, 850 Kyrgyz nationals left for Syria and Iraq between 2013 and 2020 (United Nations Development Program/Kyrgyzstan, June 21, 2022). The evidence suggests that foreign fighters from Kyrgyzstan who took part in hostilities in Syria and Iraq were divided into two contingents based on their loyalty to al-Qaeda or IS. The group that sided with al-Qaeda was based around Aleppo and fought within the ranks of groups linked with al-Qaeda’s Syrian wing, Jabhat al-Nusrah. One of these groups was Katibat Imam al-Bukhari (KIB), established in 2011. Its most notable Kyrgyzstani fighter was Sirojiddin Mukhtarov. Widely known as “Abu Saloh,” he established his own group, Katibat Tawhid wal-Jihad (KTJ), in 2014. He also allegedly orchestrated several high-profile attacks, including the 2016 bombing of China’s Embassy in Bishkek (by a Uyghur born in China) and the 2017 Saint Petersburg metro bombing (conducted by a Kyrgyzstan-born ethnic Uzbek Russian citizen) (24.KG, September 10, 2022).

The second contingent was based around Raqqa, Syria and Mosul, Iraq and fought within IS’s ranks. Kyrgyz nationals appeared in several IS-produced videos. The most notable one came in July 2015, when IS published a nine-minute-long “Address to the People of Kyrgyzstan” on YouTube. A religious man speaking in Kyrgyz urged Kyrgyzstani Muslims “to move to the lands of the Islamic State from the countries of kufr (infidelity)” (Kloop, July 26, 2015). Kyrgyzstan’s security services identified the individual as a Kyrgyz national from Jalalabad Province but did not provide further details.

Around 150 out of the 850 Kyrgyz who joined these contingents were men, nearly all of whom died in battle. This left their wives and children stranded in Syrian refugee camps and Iraqi prisons (United Nations Development Program/Kyrgyzstan, June 21, 2022). The Kyrgyz government ended the repatriation of Kyrgyz nationals from Iraq after allowing 79 children to be returned home in March 2021. This is because Iraqi authorities refuse to release the remaining women, who were sentenced to lengthy prison sentences. Thus, Kyrgyzstan has focused on repatriating its nationals from the al-Hol and Roj refugee camps in northeastern Syria, where women and children are not imprisoned. In total, 432 individuals (around three-quarters of which were children, with almost all of the remaining returnees being women) were repatriated from Syria in five repatriation operations carried out in a roughly one-year span through 2023 (Kaktus Media, February 16, 2023, October 22, 2023, August 30, 2023, February 20, 2024; Fergana, December 8, 2023).

Uncertainty Mixed with Clarity and Confidence

The Kyrgyz authorities’ approach to R&R of children consists of placing them at special centers, where they spend several months under the care of medical doctors and psychologists before returning them to family members. This was the country’s approach in 2021 and 2023, when the repatriated children were placed “in a rehabilitation center to receive appropriate services to help them adapt to life in a peaceful and safe environment” (Kabar, February 16, 2023). International partners, such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and US-funded NGOs, are expected to continue playing a key role together with the receiving families and communities in Kyrgyzstan’s R&R program. For example, in 2023, UNICEF pledged to “continue supporting the full reintegration of these children into their families and communities” (AKIpress, February 16, 2023).

The Kyrgyz government maintains as much of a “hands-off” approach as possible with the repatriated children. It insists that they “receive social assistance on an equal basis with other children from vulnerable families” instead of singling them out and providing additional support (CabarAsia, October 24, 2022). This approach is likely to be applied to the new group of repatriated children.

Of course, children are not the only ones repatriated—this has been the first time adult women were repatriated to Kyrgyzstan. The situation has presented the authorities and receiving communities with unprecedented challenges related to their prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration. It is unclear what awaits them at home, whether they will face prosecution, or what level of government support they will receive in their R&R journey.

Regional Context

Kyrgyzstan’s neighbors’ approaches and experiences present the Kyrgyz authorities with two paths in terms of prosecution. The first option, practiced in Uzbekistan, entails sentencing the women to prison sentences and issuing immediate presidential pardons to allow them to avoid actual prison time. The second option, practiced in Kazakhstan, entails sentencing women to custodial prison sentences ranging from three to seven years, depending on the crimes they committed. These two countries have extensive experience prosecuting repatriated adults, with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan repatriating 793 children and 304 adults between 2019 and 2021 (United Nations Development Program/Kyrgyzstan, June 21, 2022). Tajikistan, for its part, has repatriated 73 women and 266 children (Avesta.tj, July 25, 2022; Karavansarai, May 23, 2023).

With regard to providing repatriated women with social and economic support, these countries’ approaches converge and offer a roughly similar model. Both Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan have provided hefty economic and social support to the women upon their return, including covering costs for professional education, grants to start businesses, and even housing subsidies. In Uzbekistan, this approach was criticized for cultivating a “dependency syndrome” and drawing negative public attention to repatriates (United States Institute of Peace, July 2021). Given the vastly different budgets of these countries and Kyrgyzstan, it is reasonable to forecast that the Kyrgyz government will abstain from providing extensive material support to the repatriated women.

Stumbling Blocks

The biggest elephant in the room is the risk of terror attacks conducted by the female repatriates. Regional authorities have addressed this issue by framing repatriated women as victims of manipulation and lies from their husbands, who tricked them into traveling to conflict zones (Bulan Institute, June 14, 2021). This discourse has allowed for their relatively smooth repatriation and acceptance by communities. It may have some truth to it. Six years after the first repatriation of adults to Central Asia, there are no recorded cases of repatriated adults’ engagement in any type of extremist activity. This is not to mention hundreds of adult self-returnees who have also not committed any crimes since their return home. Thus, the risk of terror attacks occurring from the women repatriates in Kyrgyzstan appears low, verging on non-existent.

This law-abiding behavior is the result of not only repatriates’ personal transformation journeys, but also the end of the jihadist war in Syria, which facilitated heightened terrorism threat in Central Asia (Vlast.kz, March 17, 2015). It is highly unlikely that there will be another such wave of terrorism in the region. At its height, IS was a global phenomenon whose propaganda extended wide and attracted tens of thousands of people from all over the world. The group’s control of territory, messaging—including positioning itself as a utopian Islamic political entity—and the relative ease with which interested fighters could join IS contributed to its recruitment success.

With IS now heavily degraded, especially with regard to its influence in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Gaza are the two new theaters of conflict which could theoretically inspire the next wave of terrorism in the region. Afghanistan is home to several terrorist groups with links to Central Asia. They include IS in Khorasan Province (ISKP), Islamic Jihad Union (IJU), and Jamaat Ansarulla (JA) (CabarAsia, April 4, 2022). These groups’ personnel and media apparatus, coupled with the Taliban’s inability to contain them, pose threats to the region. Another foreign conflict exacerbating the security situation in Central Asia is the ongoing war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. The effects of this war have already reverberated in the region, with multiple reports of attacks (some successful, some not) carried out in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan against Jewish cultural and religious centers, as well as businesses with ties to Israel (see Terrorism Monitor, March 1, 2024).

Conclusion

In many ways, Kyrgyzstan’s last five repatriation operations are the result of the first such initiative three years ago, which tested the resources and capabilities of the Kyrgyz state and society to absorb repatriates from conflict zones. The R&R work with the first group of repatriates provided key stakeholders with much-needed knowledge and experience. More importantly, it provided the general public with clarity of purpose and the confidence necessary for further work in R&R. Given that Kyrgyzstan has successfully returned all its citizens from Syria, the repatriation stage has ended. The authorities are now in the midst of R&R work, which promises to be long and complicated.

IS was a terrorist organization of unprecedented scale and savviness. The jihadist war against Syria was the culmination of a post-9/11 rise in Central Asian terrorism. The start of repatriation operations by the region’s states in 2019 suggested that the threat of terrorism had peaked, with no tangible prospects of another wave of similar scale in Central Asia. However, the consequences of the Taliban’s usurpation of power in Afghanistan and the outbreak of the war in Gaza are challenging the belief that the issue of jihadism has all but disappeared. The Syrian–Iraqi jihadist era may have ended for Central Asia, but new theaters of conflict can spark a new wave of extremism.