Chorqishloq, the village in the northern Sughd province, has gained the unwanted reputation of being a jihadist hotbed.
More than 100 young people from Chorqishloq are fighting alongside Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militants in Syria, veteran of security services of Tajikistan, Davlatkhoja Nazirov, told Asia-Plus in an interview.
He has recently visited Isfara to study reasons why residents of some local villages join international extremist and terrorist organizations.
According to him, some of residents of Chorqishloq have been recruited by a married couple. “In 1997, one of young women from Chorqishloq left for Russia seeking better employment opportunities. In Moscow, she got acquainted with young man from Dushanbe and they married. In 2000, she returned to Chorqishloq and told her friends that her husband is an activist of Jabhat-an-Nusra and he charged her to recruit young people for that organization,” Nazirov said.
According to him, residents of the village traveled to Syria via Moscow and Turkey.
Nazirov says quite a few young people left for Syria from another Isfara village – Chorkuh. They are also fighting alongside ISIL militants, Nazirov said.
“Many young people from Tajikistan are fighting alongside ISIL militants not for religious ideals; social and economic problems have compelled them to travel to Syria. Therefore, the authorities of Isfara and Sughd province ought to pay more attention to the problems of employment of youth,” the expert noted.
Chorqishloq is the village of some 3,000 — a leafy suburb of Isfara — has come under intense scrutiny following allegations that a number of inhabitants left to wage holy war in Syria and Iraq.
According to Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service, after Tajik authorities estimated in September 2014 that 200 Tajiks had joined the fight, reports emerged that at least 20 were from Chorqishloq.
In 2013, numerous village men in their 20s and early 30s reportedly left for Syria and Iraq. In at least two cases, they took their wives and children along, according to RFE/RL’s Tajik Service.
Meanwhile, Tajik chief prosecutor, Yusuf Rahmon, told reporters on March 3 this year that the majority of Tajik nationals fighting alongside ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria are followers of the Salafi movement. According to him, 85 percent of Tajik nationals fighting alongside ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria were recruited while working as migrant laborers in Russia.
