International Crisis Group

From Central Asia to Syria: A Teenage Girl’s Jihad | Crisis Group

As part of research for a report on Central Asian jihadis, to be published in mid-January, Crisis Group has interviewed numerous fighters and their families. In the excerpts below, printed with the permission of the family, the father, Ramaz, tells about his two daughters, one of whom suddenly left home to join the jihad in Syria (and get married there), the other of whom has disappeared and might have joined her sister.

Tell me, please, what is your name?

My name is Ramaz.

How old are you?

43.

Are you working at the moment?

Yes,  I work at a factory.

Did you go to Turkey to look for your daughter?

Yes. On 12 February [2014] my daughter ran away from home. She got a ticket to Turkey. Later that night, at 8 p.m., I called her. She said she was going to her grandmother’s and would stay there. But the next day we found out she went to the airport and flew to Istanbul. I immediately called the National Security Service (SNS) and the State Committee for National Security (SCNS). After I called them, they started working.

Working to find her?

Yes. We explained everything to them…. About two months before she left, she had started praying and reading the Koran at home. I have two daughters. The first is sixteen years old and the second just turned eighteen. They started to apply for documents, travel passports and state ID cards. I asked them why they would need travel passports; they were preparing to go for two months.

Only later did we find out that the eldest was communicating with a guy from Moscow. Her friend told us this. They were communicating by phone, through SMS, and Odnoklassniki (a Russia-based online social network). During those two months she started praying five times a day. She was never out overnight, she always stayed at home. She worked in the beauty salon nearby. She worked there for more than 6 months. She was earning money, she was a good girl. And then one day she announced she didn’t want to work at the salon anymore because she didn’t want to cut men’s hair.

Next thing, she flew quietly to Turkey, and two or three days later contacted us via Skype. As we were talking, our daughter was always looking to the side, back and forth, and it seemed like somebody was standing by her. She said she had arrived in Turkey without problems and that she wanted to study at a madrassa (religious school) in Turkey. Her argument was that she’d get a good education and she asked us for our permission to do this. I rejected her arguments and said the aim of this type of education is to prepare her for jihad. I told her it would ruin  her and that it was unnecessary. I did not agree to it. She just said “okay” and left.

FULL INTERVIEW (Crisis Group Blog - In Pursuit of Peace)

Photo: Screenshot from a video of alleged Uzbek jihadi training camp in Syria, June 2014.