Experts recognize effective work on return of Chechen children from Iraq and Syria

A Chechen woman with three children was evacuated from Iraq after her mother had appealed to Ramzan Kadyrov for help. This is reported by a female relative of the woman. The activities of the Chechen authorities concerning the return of children and women from the Middle East are effective. This opinion has been expressed by experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that on September 1, a special flight arrived from Iraq with four women and eight children to Chechnya, including a Chechen woman with three sons.

Iman Muzaeva, a resident of Chechnya, returned from Iraq on September 1, left for Syria together with her husband from Kazakhstan in 2014.

In August, Rosa Anaeva, the mother of Iman Muzaeva, arrive in Grozny from Kazakhstan to appeal to the leader of Chechnya for help. This was told to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent by a member of one of the Chechen NGOs.

The NGO member has also added that at present, the public activists have the information on more than 50 Chechen children allegedly staying in the war zone in Syria or Iraq.

The experts interviewed by the "Caucasian Knot" believe that Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov got nod from the Kremlin to assume the functions of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) in the issue on returning children from Iraq and Syria.

"It would seem that it is the MFA which should deal with the problem of returning Russian-speaking people from problem regions. However, Ramzan Kadyrov performs the task quicker than the MFA with its bureaucratic approach," believes Alexei Malashenko, research Director of the Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute.

The "Caucasian Knot" correspondent was informed by Forbes journalist Orkhan Djemal that the problem concerning evacuation of children from the war zone in the Middle East arose in July 2017.

"The problem of evacuating children from Iraq became very acute after the assault of Mosul. There, many children were killed, and the survivors appeared to be in a terrible situation: their parents were killed and the children themselves found themselves in a politically hostile environment," Orkhan Djemal said.

Ramzan Kadyrov is not the only person who made efforts to evacuate children, but his actions in that direction were notable, emphasized Orkhan Djemal.

"I do not know how Ramzan Kadyrov contacted the people who hand over the children. However, we can assume that there are quite a lot of people with Caucasian and, in particular, Chechen roots in Syria and Iraq. It should be noted that the MFA looked helpless, like many other public institutions. The Chechen leader has made a certain effort, not the smallest one," Orkhan Djemal has concluded.

Full text of the article is available on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’.