"Meduza" tells about fate of Chechen women in IS* territory

Mothers of Chechen girls who left for Syria in the mid-2010s are still hoping to bring their daughters home. Finding themselves in the territory controlled by militants of the "Islamic State" (IS), a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court, some of these girls went missing, while others were sentenced to long prison terms, up to life-long ones. The stories of several Chechen women who ended up in the IS* territory were published on May 11 by "Meduza" (by the Russian Ministry of Justice (MoJ), the edition was put into the register of organizations performing the functions of a foreign agent, – note of the "Caucasian Knot").

The author of the project about the fate of Chechen women in Syria entitled "Look for your granddaughter, but we exist no longer" is Sergey Stroitelev, a photographer. He has created illustrations to the stories by projecting images of the girls missing or captured in Syria onto the figures of their mothers. "They feel the presence of their children every day; they live their lives and see them in their dreams," Sergey explained the idea of his illustrations.

Roza, a resident of Chechnya, told the story of her daughter Khadizhat, who in the summer of 2015 left for the Middle East after her husband Magomed. The woman suggests that her son-in-law could have been prompted to leave for Syria by failures at his work.

In 2017, Khadizhat and her husband tried to escape back to Turkey, but failed to do it. "My daughter and her husband took no part in hostilities; they were on the run, hiding. Three times militants put them in jail for disobedience. The daughter was thrown out into the street on the same evening – apparently, women were treated more gently. Magomed stayed [in prison] for two or three months; and Khadizhat wandered, begging for alms for food. There was also bullying by militants: they beat them up and threw them into a pit with water," Roza asserts.

While trying to get Khadizhat out of Syria, Roza managed to find law enforcers' support. As a result, only two of her granddaughters were brought to Russia: Magomed remains in jail, and Khadizhat refused to fly to Moscow without her husband.

Farida's daughter was tricked into the Middle East by her husband, with whom she had lived in Moscow since November 2014. In 2015, she ended up in Mosul. "In Mosul, she gave birth to my grandson; my daughter sent me a photo. As a result, her husband was killed – that's what my daughter said, but she didn't see the body: they don't allow this. After her husband's death, she was transferred to a widow's house, where she lived until 2017 with other girls, taking care of her child. I got in touch from time to time, and we cried together," Farida said.

Some time later, her contacts with the daughter stopped – later Farida found her daughter's name in the list of prisoners of one of the many camps in Iraq, but could not find out anything else about her fate.

* "Islamic State" (IS) is a terrorist organization banned in Russia by the court

This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on May 11, 2021 at 08:10 pm MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here.