As the West struggles with the fate of ISIS fighters and their families, one woman in Dagestan helps bring Russians home
Sevil Novruzova has brought back sons from what was once the Islamic State’s self-declared caliphate. She has retrieved grandchildren from Iraqi prisons, jailed for being with the militants. Novruzova has flown last-minute to Turkey, hoping to discourage daughters from traveling farther to reach the Islamic State lines.
Her outreach is even more remarkable for the shift it reflects in President Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Sevil Novruzova, a lawyer from Russia’s mostly Muslim Dagestan region, started out as a volunteer before becoming a member of her republic’s anti-terrorism council and director of Derbent’s Center for Reconciliation and Harmony. “We don’t know what goes on in the souls of our young people,” Novruzova said in her native Derbent, where placards denouncing terrorism line boulevards, and families gather to picnic on the Caspian Sea coast. “We need to understand what they really want.
Text messages for help On a recent afternoon, Novruzova set about visiting some of her clients. As she drove around Derbent, evidence of the Islamic State’s reach was easy to spot. “It is a crime for countries to not accept their children. We are proud of Russia because it never abandons them,” said Gulnara Magomedova, a teacher who appealed to Novruzova on behalf of a family friend, who had her two grandchildren returned from Iraq.
A former camp guard in Raqqa, the caliphate’s self-declared capital in Syria, he was temporarily allowed back to Turkey on the pretense of needing medical care. There, he called his mother, who made contact with Novruzova. Court documents reviewed by The Washington Post show that in Turkey he voluntarily surrendered.
‘All deceived’ Dagestan, with a population of about 3 million, saw 1,200 people join the Islamic State, according to official figures — around the same number who went from Germany and Belgium combined. Dagestan is also where the Islamic State’s first attack in Russia took place, in 2015, when a group of insurgents claiming allegiance to the group launched a raid on a Russian army barracks, killing several.
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