DUSHANBE, May 13, 2015, Asia-Plus – Radio Liberty reports than when Gulru Olimova”s husband, Loiq, was killed fighting alongside Islamic State (IS) militants in Syria recently, the 25-year-old Tajik woman decided to pack her bags and return to Tajikistan with her children.
Following protocol, Gulru asked IS”s amir, or commander, in Aleppo for permission to return home to Tajikistan.
The IS commander agreed to let Gulru leave. On one condition: Gulru”s children — 7-year-old Fotima, 4-year-old Ahmad, and 6-month-old Rumaiso — were the “property of Islamic State,” the commander said, and so she would have to leave them behind.
Gulru”s 65-year-old mother, Mayrambi Olimova, says Gulru won”t leave Syria without her children.
Olimova told RFE/RL”s Tajik Service on May 11 that Gulru telephoned home to announce the 32-year-old Loiq”s “martyrdom,” the term used by IS to describe death in battle.
Gulru phoned home three times in all, telling her mother that she would not be in touch for another four months. According to Islamic law, she had to spend that time in mourning for Loiq, her “martyr” husband.
“She asked for help to bring her three kids back to the motherland, because she won”t budge from there without them,” Olimova added.
Gulru grew up in the town of Kulob in southwestern Tajikistan. As a child, Gulru wanted to be a nurse or maybe even a doctor, her mother told the Russian-language Meduza news site last month.
But those dreams seemed to have ended when Gulru was 16. That”s when she met Loiq Rajabov, who Olimova claims was a “local drug dealer.”
Loiq asked for Gulru”s hand in marriage but she refused, according to Olimova, who was also against the match. But the wedding went ahead anyway, after Loiq threatened to “bury everyone” if Olimova refused to allow her daughter to marry him.
It seems Loiq was radicalized in Moscow, where he traveled regularly on business. After one trip, Olimova says a black IS flag appeared in the couple”s home.
In September 2014, Loiq took his wife and children with him to Moscow, where he had reportedly found work on a construction crew, building dachas, Russian country homes, in the city”s suburbs.
But Loiq did not keep his family in Moscow for long. He and his family left for Syria in November, according to Radio Liberty’s Tajik Service. Some reports say that Loiq went to Syria with 25 other militants, including several Tajiks who have since been killed.
Olimova said that she found out that the family was in Syria in January, when she got a phone call from Loiq. Her son-in-law announced that he had taken his wife and children to Syria and said Olimova should keep quiet about it.
Olimova told RFE/RL’s Tajik Service in February that she had not approached the law-enforcement authorities in Kulob to tell them about her daughter. But it seems that Olimova”s silence did not last long. In April, Olimova told Meduza that she had approached the local branch of Tajikistan”s State Committee for National Security (SCNS), where she had worked for 31 years as a cleaner, and spilled the beans about Loiq.
The Kulob law-enforcement authorities say that they have only heard about Loiq”s death from his family. There has been no official word.
Radio Liberty reports that it is not known exactly how many Tajiks are fighting in Syria and Iraq alongside IS.
Official data puts the figure at 300 Tajiks, of whom 60 have been killed.
Edward Lemon of the University of Exeter in the United Kingdom, who tracks Tajik militants, says that he has a list of 102 Tajiks fighting in Syria and Iraq. However, Lemon says that the figure, which is based on officials, media reports, and videos, should be taken with caution, because there are likely to be more Tajiks fighting in Syria than have been reported.
