MOSCOW: As the end nears for the Daesh enclave in Syria and the fate of militants’ family members becomes a prescient issue, Russia can be seen as a pioneer in systematically returning children of extremist fighters home.
A potential homecoming of the many foreign women who have gone to live in the Daesh “caliphate” and their children, many of whom were born there, has been a subject of debate in Russia, with some security chiefs seeing them as potential threats.
Earlier this month, 27 children, from four to 13 years old, were flown from Iraq to the Moscow region.
Clutching stuffed toys and bundled in winter jackets, the children were carried off the cargo plane to face the Russian winter after years in the desert.
After health exams, they would be given into the care of their uncles, aunts, and grandparents in the Russian North Caucasus, the majority-Muslim territory in the south of Russia that is home to most of the Russians that had joined the Daesh group.
Another 30 children were brought back in late December.
“They attend school and kindergarten. Volunteers work with them and talk to them about what they have been through, explaining how they have been indoctrinated,” said Kheda Saratova, an adviser to Chechnya leader Ramzan Kadyrov, who has assumed a central role in the process of repatriating extremists’ relatives.
Russian authorities have given sometimes conflicting figures of returnees. Saratova said that about 200 children have been brought to Russia, but nearly 1,400 are still stuck in Iraq and Syria.
Kadyrov, a longtime Kremlin protege with vast resources, began efforts to bring back fighters’ children in 2017. Diplomatic negotiations are often led by Aleppo-born Chechnya senator Ziyad Sabsabi.
Endorsing Kadyrov’s efforts, President Vladimir Putin in late 2017 called the drive to return the children “a very honorable and correct deed” and promised to help.
“It’s very good for the image of Kadyrov. He seems somebody who doesn’t just use violence against terrorists but who builds mosques and hands out humanitarian aid,” said Grigory Shvedov, who edits a Caucasus-focused news website Caucasian Knot.
When he began Russia’s intervention in Syria in 2015, Putin justified it by the need to kill extremists before they come to Russia.
Although some regions have tried rehabilitation programs for extremists, these have failed to catch on at the national level. Young men who returned from Syria or Iraq and turned themselves in have faced harsh punishment.
This month Russia’s Supreme Court confirmed a 16-year-term for a young man who went to Syria as a 19-year-old student and worked as a cook and driver on Daesh-controlled territory for six months.
Returning the wives of jihadists is also complicated by the absence of an extradition agreement between Russia and Iraq, where many have been sentenced, sometimes to life, in prison.
But there is also reluctance by Russia’s powerful security services to bring home adult civilians.
FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov in November noted that many women with children exiting conflict zones have been used by militants as suicide bombers or recruiters.
“The FSB sees them as dangerous, even though many of these wives purchase their freedom from the Kurds and will eventually return one way or another,” said Saratova.
Any affiliation with Daesh terrorists is a crime, since the group is banned under Russian law.
“Some sort of amnesty has been promised to many, but it doesn’t actually happen,” said Shvedov. “They are put on trial, (charges) sometimes trumped up and sometimes real.”
Last year, two women returned from Syria to their native Dagestan and were swiftly convicted and sentenced to eight years in prison. The court eventually ruled to delay their time in prison until their children are older.
The children themselves face a difficult reintegration process into life in Russia, a country they barely know, after spending formative years in the “caliphate.”
Russian authorities hope that bringing them back into their extended families can minimize risks of radicalization once they reach adulthood in the Caucasus, a region with a history of extremism.
Russia pioneering return of ‘Daesh children’
Russia pioneering return of ‘Daesh children’
- Earlier this month, 27 children, from four to 13 years old, were flown from Iraq to the Moscow region
- The children themselves face a difficult reintegration process into life in Russia, a country they barely know
Rubio defends US ouster of Venezuela’s Maduro to Caribbean leaders unsettled by Trump policies
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts and Nevis: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday defended the Trump administration’s military operation to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, telling Caribbean leaders, many of whom objected to that move, that the country and the region were better off as a result.
Speaking to leaders from the 15-member Caribbean Community bloc at a summit in the country of St. Kitts and Nevis, Rubio brushed aside concerns about the legality of Maduro’s capture last month that have been raised among Venezuela’s island-state neighbors and others.
“Irrespective of how some of you may have individually felt about our operations and our policy toward Venezuela, I will tell you this, and I will tell you this without any apology or without any apprehension: Venezuela is better off today than it was eight weeks ago,” Rubio told the leaders in a closed-door meeting, according to a transcript of his remarks later distributed by the US State Department.
Rubio said that since Maduro’s ouster and the effective takeover of Venezuela’s oil sector by the United States, the interim authorities in the South American country have made “substantial” progress in improving conditions by doing “things that eight or nine weeks ago would have been unimaginable.”
The Caribbean leaders have gathered to debate pressing issues in a region that President Donald Trump has targeted for a 21st-century incarnation of the Monroe Doctrine meant to ensure Washington’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere. The Republican administration has declared a focus closer to home even as Washington increasingly has been preoccupied by the possibility of a US military attack on Iran.
Rubio downplays antagonism in US regional push
In his remarks to the group, America’s top diplomat tried to play down any antagonistic intent in what Trump has referred to as the “Donroe Doctrine.” Rubio said the administration wants to strengthen ties with the region in the wake of the Venezuela operation and ensure that issues such as crime and economic opportunities are jointly addressed.
“I am very happy to be in an administration that’s giving priority to the Western Hemisphere after largely being ignored for a very long time,” Rubio said. “We share common opportunities, and we share some common challenges. And that’s what we hope to confront.”
He said transnational criminal organizations pose the biggest threat to the Caribbean while recognizing that many are buying weapons from the United States, a problem he said authorities are tackling.
Rubio also said the US and the Caribbean can work together on economic advancement and energy issues, especially because many leaders at the four-day summit have energy resources they seek to explore. “We want to be your partner in that regard,” he said.
Rubio said the US recognizes the need for fair, democratic elections in Venezuela, which lies just miles away from Trinidad and Tobago at the closest point.
“We do believe that a prosperous, free Venezuela who’s governed by a legitimate government who has the interests of their people in mind could also be an extraordinary partner and asset to many of the countries represented here today in terms of energy needs and the like, and also one less source of instability in the region,” he said.
Rubio added: “We view our security, our prosperity, our stability to be intricately tied to yours.”
Trump plays up Maduro’s ouster
Trump, in his State of the Union address Tuesday night, called the operation that spirited Maduro out of Venezuela to face drug trafficking charges in New York “an absolutely colossal victory for the security of the United States.”
The US had built up the largest military presence in the Caribbean Sea in generations before the Jan. 3 raid. That has now been exceeded by the surge of American warships and aircraft to the Middle East as the administration pressures Iran to make a deal over its nuclear program.
In the Caribbean, Trump has stepped up aggressive tactics to combat alleged drug smuggling with a series of strikes on boats that have killed over 150 people and he has tightened pressure on Cuba. Regional leaders have complained about administration demands for nations to accept third-country deportees from the US and to chill relations with China.
One regional leader who has backed the US escalation is Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, whom Rubio thanked for her “public support for US military operations in the South Caribbean Sea,” the State Department said.
Persad-Bissessar told reporters that her conversation with Rubio focused on “Haiti; we talked about Cuba of course; we talked about engagements with Venezuela and the way forward.”
She was asked if she considered the latest US military strikes in Caribbean waters as extrajudicial killings: “I don’t think they are, and if they are, we will find out, but our legal advice is they are not.”
Rubio had other one-on-one meetings with heads of government, including from St. Kitts and Nevis, Haiti, Jamaica and Guyana.
Caribbean leaders point to shifting global order
Trump said during the State of the Union that his administration is “restoring American security and dominance in the Western Hemisphere, acting to secure our national interests and defend our country from violence, drugs, terrorism and foreign interference.”
Terrance Drew, prime minister of St. Kitts and Nevis and chair of the Caribbean Community bloc, said the region “stands at a decisive hour” and that “the global order is shifting.”
Drew and other leaders said Cuba’s humanitarian situation must be addressed.
“It must be clear that a prolonged crisis in Cuba will not remain confined to Cuba,” Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness warned. “It will affect migration, security and economic stability across the Caribbean basin.”
The US Treasury Department on Wednesday slightly eased restrictions on the sale of Venezuelan oil to Cuba, which instituted austere fuel-saving measures in the weeks after the US raid in Venezuela.
That move came hours before Cuba’s government announced that its soldiers killed four people aboard a speedboat registered in Florida that had opened fire on officers in Cuban waters.
