In Uzbekistan, authorities admitted powerlessness against ISIS propaganda
The authorities partially admitted their failure to fight ISIS propaganda, which killed hundreds of women in Uzbekistan. This was said by Uzbek speakers at the international conference in Tashkent to study the experience of Uzbekistan concerning the rehabilitation and reintegration of citizens who returned from Syria and Iraq.
The keynote at the conference was the presentation by the expert of the Institute of Strategic and Interregional Studies under the President of Uzbekistan, Bakhtiyor Babadzhanov. According to him, “No one could have imagined that the propaganda of ISIS ideology would be so effective that religious heroization will also play its role, almost the main one, in the success of this ideology. Now the messages of this ideology are often introduced smuggled.”
Babadzhanov explained the partial success of this ideology not only by the skillful propaganda of the mythical caliphate, but also by the errors in the work of state bodies and other structures.
Approximately 60% of the repatriates surveyed by the Institute left for Syria in 2016-2017, when there was already a war there. Opponents of Uzbek experts argue that the main reason for leaving was in socio-economic problems, the absence of social elevators, and uncomfortable conditions for fulfilling religious needs.
Bakhtiyor Babadzhanov acknowledged the arguments of his foreign colleagues, but at the same time specified the main, in his opinion, motivation of women following their husbands in the Middle East. Subsequently, the most of the returnees said that they went to ISIS after the manner of their husband, father, brother, or at the call of relatives. Another no less interesting fact, according to Babadzhanov, is that most of those, who left, were from fairly wealthy families.
“We were deceived and left to die.” “This was a common phrase from almost all the interviews we conducted with repatriates,” B. Babadzhanov stated his opinion. “One of the Uzbek women recalled how in the besieged Mosul, militants and their commanders left women and children to die under bombs and shelling. They took only Arabs from the city, leaving the rest to die. They left no products for these women and children. Most importantly, they did not allow them to leave the city when the humanitarian corridor was provided.”
The expert also added that this fact was a complete destruction of previous ideas about a happy caliphate for women. “It was an enormous psychological shock. Women regretted that the idea of a happy caliphate was just a myth, that there was no Islam in this caliphate, that Amir and the caliphate’s elite profited from the war, raped their children,” Babadzhanov emphasized.
In order to return women and children, last year the Uzbek authorities organized special flights from the zone of armed conflict to transport 220 Uzbek citizens, mainly women and children.
