Kyrgyzstan is studying experiences of neighboring countries, including Tajikistan, in bringing back home women and children stranded in Syrian refugee camps.
Eurasianet says any success adapting this first group of children could represent a lifeline for the estimated 400 Kyrgyzstani women and children still languishing in northeast Syria.
In the middle of March 2021, a plane landed in Kyrgyzstan with 79 children onboard. Only days earlier, they had all been stuck in Iraqi prisons.
Many of the children were reportedly taken to the Middle East as toddlers by parents lured by the ideological appeal of enrolling in militant Islamic groups. Almost half of them were born in the conflict zones.
Getting them out had reportedly taken two years of painstaking negotiations between Kyrgyz and Iraqi officials.
The Kyrgyz security services believe around 800 Kyrgyz nationals traveled to Syria and Iraq between 2014 and 2015. Hundreds died in battle. Around 400 women and children are still living in refugee camps in northeast Syria.
The process of easing them back into normal life will be an even tougher challenge than anything they have faced before. Kyrgyzstan has looked at the experiences of neighboring countries to ensure minimal trauma and long-lasting developmental harm.
Mr. Cholpon Orozobekova, the head of the Bulan Institute, a Geneva-based research group focusing on counter-extremist strategies (and a former Eurasianet contributor), commended the Kyrgyz government’s efforts to learn from regional precedents.
“The Kyrgyz government learned from Tajikistan’s mistakes and made sure that the receiving families issued their prior agreement to host the repatriated children,” Orozobekova told Eurasianet.
In Tajikistan, 84 repatriated children have reportedly been living in boarding schools and orphanages ever since their return in May 2019, a fact that may be grievously affecting the adaptive process. Kyrgyzstan’s approach was reportedly closer to that in Uzbekistan, which placed a strong emphasis on placing children with families to facilitate smoother reintegration.
One major complication is that the children had no documents to prove their identity. Enshrining their basic right to citizenship required bending legal norms near to the breaking point. This was particularly the case with children born outside of Kyrgyzstan without any birth certificates or other forms of basic paperwork.
Kyrgyz authorities have striven to keep the readaptation process away from the glare of public attention, according to Eurasianet. The Labor, Welfare and Migration Ministry, which has been tasked with handling this process, has reportedly refrained from divulging too much information about how things are going. But that is deemed a necessary cost of shielding children and families from the potential stigmatization and discrimination that would arise from their names becoming known.
Another lesson learned from Uzbekistan is to refrain from providing material support to the families – as opposed to help in other forms – so as to avoid public backlashes. There was much grumbling in Uzbekistan that the state was spending money on the repatriated wives and children of alleged militants and criminals while failing to provide enough for other people in desperate need of economic assistance. Some bitterly remarked that they too should have traveled to Syria and Iraq to get their share of welfare payments.
Some of the most important restorative work has been done by the International Committee for the Red Cross, or ICRC, and the Red Crescent Society of Kyrgyzstan, or RCSK. The ICRC has among other things been providing mental health and psychosocial support, which is known by the acronym MHPSS.
Another difficulty is that almost all the children now getting new homes have missed out entirely on a normal education. There are reportedly cases of 15-year-old children with only three years of schooling.
The push for a more energetic repatriation campaign is being led by a group called Protyani Ruku Pomoschi (Lend a Helping Hand), an NGO formed by the relatives of the women and children currently stuck in the Syrian camps.
