Uzbekistan: Who is returning through Operation Compassion?

"Are you visiting us from Uzbekistan?" asked the children who recently repatriated from Syria, when I met them outside Tashkent at a special facility, where they were going through a rehabilitation program set up jointly with the UNICEF. Speaking in Uzbek, Arabic, and Turkish, these kids were yet to feel in real Uzbekistan. Their mothers shared stories of "agony and misery." My notes from Tashkent.

A mother of three, Farida, 34, sold fruit in a Syrian refugee camp. She left her village in Kashkadarya, Uzbekistan in 2014 with her newborn child to join her husband in Russia, spending a month there before moving to Turkey for three months.

They moved, “constantly under fire,” to Aleppo and then to Idlib, Syria. Despite two more children, Farida says her husband was not around much and eventually disappeared. The last time she heard from him was in early 2019 before arriving at Al-Hawl refugee camp in northern Syria.    

Yulduz, 31, from Sirdarya, also went to Russia in 2011 to reunite with her husband, “just to have a happy life there.” But he sent the family to Waziristan, Pakistan until 2014, with other Uzbek families, they headed to Syria.

Her husband never joined them. She has now returned to Uzbekistan with eight kids, three of them stepchildren from her second husband, who vanished on the battlefield.

A mother of three, 40, a lady from the Uzbek capital Tashkent does not want her name revealed. In 2012, she went to Turkey for work. Friends convinced her that single mothers would be well taken care of in the Islamic caliphate.

She describes years in Syria as agony and misery. She also claims that Kurdish forces managing the refugee camp were abusive. 

Rano, trained as a doctor in Uzbekistan, moved to Russia in 2012 to be with her husband, a bus driver. Via Turkey, in 2015 they landed in Raqqa, the ISIS capital in Syria.

Her husband, she says, deeply regretted going there, especially with a wife and three children, but ISIS would not let anyone out. “My husband was not a fighter,” Rano stresses. “He repaired cars and also worked as a butcher.” He died in a 2019 air bombing. 

These women are among 435 Uzbeks the government has repatriated from Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan in five operations, called “Mehr” (Compassion), since 2019.

The Mirziyoyev Administration only accepts women and kids. Most of the returnees, 343 of 435, are children aged 1-15.

VOA talked to them in a special facility outside Tashkent, where they are in an intensive rehabilitation program run jointly with UNICEF. It’s a leftover Soviet sanatorium, opened in 1927, where each mother has two rooms with her offspring. They go through medical and psychological examinations. Children’s educational levels are evaluated. Nearly 100 personnel work with each batch of returnees, including 40 nurses and doctors, especially psychologists.

Each returnee gets a new ID. Their relatives in Uzbekistan can receive them once they complete a month in the country. The program monitors them, assisting in housing, employment, and education. Officials tell VOA that orphan returnees are usually adopted by relatives, which the government prefers to orphanages.

Maqsuda Varisova, an Uzbek parliamentarian, also a doctor, told VOA there has been no major issue with returnees so far.

“We are bringing people home from the most dangerous parts of the world. These women and children ended up there not of their own will. They were taken there by others, misled. Uzbekistan will not close its eyes to their horrible fate. This is truly a humanitarian program. We fully support it and trust our security and military system to carry it out,” says Varisova.

But Uzbek public reaction is mixed. And some in the political establishment worry about encouraging extremism while ignoring prior support or sympathy for terrorists.

“We lost our way, but people make mistakes,” says Yulduz. “I and my children don’t pose any danger to this country or anyone.” 

“We experienced hell away from our homeland,” sobs Farida. “It’s hard to imagine what I and my children went through for years… I don’t wish that for anybody.”

“I’m hopeful that our people will accept us and understand what took us to those parts of the world. Forgiveness is what we seek,” says the lady, who prefers to hide her name. 

“I accepted that the Uzbek government had every right to prosecute us when we returned. I was ready to be tried. It would still be much better than living in Syria, I told myself. But none of that happened… My kids go to school. I’m back working as a doctor,” says Rano. 

They see a better Uzbekistan too—a country that allows prayer, head coverings, and criticism of the authorities. But no woman admits to leaving for political reasons. They insist they just followed their migrant husbands. None call themselves former Jihadists or supporters.

Nodirjon Abduvaliyev, a young parliamentarian, believes them.

“We would already know if these women and children were terrorism supporters. They need care and stability in their lives and the government is working to provide that. They go to their families, start new lives, and deal with challenges like everyone else.”  

Abduvaliyev says “Mehr” should continue, since returnees attest to hundreds of Uzbeks waiting to be rescued. He predicts men could come back too, so long as they are not affiliated to terror groups and pose zero security threat. Officials told VOA they are deliberating repatriating male citizens trapped in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The UN has offered assistance when and if Uzbekistan returns former fighters.

Why not spend resources instead on Uzbekistan’s domestic needs?

“It’s not an either/or?” says Mohira Khodjaeva, a lawmaker involved in “Mehr.”

“The state should care for its citizens, whether here or anywhere. And Uzbekistan has international obligations under conventions, protocols and treaties that call for humanitarian policies and acts. Let’s act accordingly.”

Washington has supported of “Mehr” from the beginning. Daniel Rosenblum, U.S. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, told VOA earlier this year that Tashkent had not asked for support in repatriating its citizens from war zones. But VOA has confirmed that America assisted the latest operation in late April. 

Rosenblum credited Syrian Democratic Forces in an April 30 tweet:

“Congratulations to Uzbekistan on Mehr-5, latest repatriation of Uzbek non-combatants from Syria. Kudos to GOU leadership for returning and rehabilitating/reintegrating 93 more women and children. Thanks to @SDF_Syria for its collaboration and its safeguarding of detainees.”

“To be honest, they have done a very credible, excellent job … Mirziyoyev made it clear when the first group returned in May 2019 that this was a national priority, saying ‘these are our people that we need to care of...’ That set the tone and was the right thing to do.” 

Tashkent also gets high marks from the UN, whose Resident Coordinator in Uzbekistan, Helena Fraser, says it is in line with global framework. 

“Mehr” coincided with the release of UN key principles for the protection, repatriation, prosecution, rehabilitation, and reintegration of women and children with links to UN-listed terrorist groups,” Fraser told VOA. 

UNICEF, the key UN entity in this effort, provides technical and financial support.

Fraser says Uzbekistan’s “commendable experience and collaboration” could be a model and reminds that providing basic security, meeting health and psychological needs, offering quality education and ensuring other rights are priorities in rehabilitating and reintegrating returnees.