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T HE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION TUESDAY, AUGUST 13, 2019 | 3

World

The young woman said she thought she

was going on vacation in Turkey, but in-

stead found herself in Syria, tricked, she

said, by her husband, who joined the Is-

lamic State group. She herself, she said,

never subscribed to Islamic State teach-

ings.

But back in Kazakhstan, government

psychologists are taking no chances.

They have heard that story before. They

have enrolled the young woman, Aida

Sarina — and scores of others who were

once residents of the Islamic State — in

a program to treat Islamist extremism.

“They want to know if we are danger-

ous,” said Ms. Sarina, who is 25 and has a

young son.

Unlike virtually every Western coun-

try and most of the rest of the world, Ka-

zakhstan is welcoming home women

like Ms. Sarina — albeit warily and de-

spite the lack of proof that deradicaliza-

tion programs work — rather than ar-

resting them if they dare show up.

So like a scene from a prosecutor’s

daydream, a small hotel in the desert of

western Kazakhstan is packed with

these women, whom many govern-

ments view as terrorist suspects.

Men are allowed back, too, in Ka-

zakhstan, though they face immediate

arrest and the prospect of a 10-year pris-

on term. Only a few have taken up the

offer.

At the treatment site, the Rehabilita-

tion Center of Good Intentions, the

women are provided nannies to look af-

ter their children, fed hot meals and

treated by doctors and psychologists,

testing the soft-touch approach to peo-

ple affiliated with a terrorist group.

For Ms. Sarina, it is a far cry from her

previous life in a fetid refugee camp in

Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria,

a human refuse heap of thousands of for-

mer Islamic State residents despised by

most of the world.

Having somebody now ask how she

felt was amazing, she said. “It was like

your mother forgot to pick you up from

kindergarten, but then remembered and

came back for you,” she said.

Rather than treating the women as

criminals, the professionals at the re-

habilitation center encourage them to

talk about their experiences.

“We teach them to listen to the nega-

tive feelings inside,” Lyazzat Na-

dirshina, one psychologist, said of the

method.

Set up in January to quickly process

scores of women whose radical ideas

might only ossify if they were thrown in

prison for long spells, the center’s serv-

ices are not so much for the benefit of the

women as the society they will soon re-

join, organizers say.

The Islamic State, also known as ISIS,

recruited more than 40,000 foreign

fighters and their families from 80 coun-

tries over its quick arc from expansion

to collapse, from 2014 until this year.

American-backed Kurdish militias in

Syria still hold at least 13,000 foreign Is-

lamic State followers in overflowing

camps, including at least 13 Americans.

American diplomats have been pres-

suring countries to repatriate their citi-

zens, though with not much success.

“Governments are not big fans of ex-

perimenting with this group because the

risks are too high,” said Liesbeth van der

Heide, an expert on Islamic radicaliza-

tion at the International Center for

Counter-Terrorism in The Hague.

What’s more, she said, studies of de-

radicalization programs going back dec-

ades have failed to show clear benefits.

Governments have tried it on neo-Na-

zis, members of the Red Brigades and

Irish Republican Army militants,

among others, with mixed results.

“Does it really matter if you go through a

rehab program?” she said. “We don’t

know.”

Yekaterina Sokirianskaya, the direc-

tor of the Conflict Analysis and Preven-

tion Center, said deradicalization pro-

grams offer no guarantees but are an al-

ternative to indefinite incarceration or

capital punishment.

Western governments show little

sympathy. Female suicide bombers are

hardly a rarity. Britain and Australia

have revoked the citizenship of nation-

als who joined the Islamic State. France

allows its citizens to be tried in Iraqi

courts, where hundreds of people have

been sentenced to death in trials that

last just a few minutes.

Kazakhstan has sought a larger role

in international diplomacy with a varie-

ty of initiatives to solve global problems,

including once offering to dispose of

other countries’ nuclear waste on its ter-

ritory. And to date, it is the only country

with a large contingent of citizens in

Syria to agree to repatriate all of them —

a total of 548, so far.

The program lasts about a month. The

women meet individually and in small

groups with psychologists. They un-

dergo art therapy and watch plays put

on by local actors that teach morality

lessons on the pitfalls of radicalization.

“It’s a success when they accept guilt,

when they promise to relate to nonbe-

lievers with respect and when they

promise to continue studying,” said

Alim Shaumetov, the director of a non-

governmental group that helped design

the curriculum.

“We don’t offer 100 percent guaran-

tees,” he added. “If we manage to

achieve 80 percent success, that is still

success.”

The everyday horror of life in the Is-

lamic State soured some women on radi-

calism, Ms. Nadirshina, the psycholo-

gist, said. The very insecurity of their

lives in recent years and months can be

put to use in the deradicalization

process, she said, by offering the women

a safe and secure environment.

Still, most analysts of radicalism re-

ject the view of Islamic State brides as

merely browbeaten young women un-

der the thumb of terrorist husbands.

Some fought, while others at the least

nurtured their zealot spouses. Handling

the women has become a puzzle, as they

lie on a scale someplace between vic-

tims and perpetrators.

Ms. Sarina said she was cured. She

said that soon after they arrived in Syr-

ia, her husband died and she vanished

into a so-called house of widows in

Raqqa, the capital of the Islamic State.

Fighters regularly stopped by to pick

out new brides, she said, but Ms. Sarina

did not remarry.

As the fighting intensified, the Islamic

State official in charge of evacuating

widows instead abandoned them in the

desert, she said. They survived by eat-

ing grass. Some children froze to death

on cold nights.

Now, Ms. Sarina said she was a men-

tor for other returning women in Ka-

zakhstan, telling them the Islamic State

failed to protect them so they should

now trust the government. “I want the

world to know it’s wholly realistic to re-

habilitate us,” she said.

Still, Kenshilik Tyshkhan, a professor

of religion who tries to persuade women

in the program to adopt a moderate form

of Islam, said in an interview that some

women “express these ideas that a non-

believer can be killed.” And many show

little remorse, he said.

“Everybody has a right to make a mis-

take,” Gulpari Farziyeva, 31, said of her

journey to Syria and her marriages to a

succession of Islamic State militants

over six years. Even three weeks into

treatment, she seemed remarkably un-

troubled by the militant group’s ways.

One day in Syria, she recalled, she

was host at a dinner party at her apart-

ment. While cooking dumplings and

baking a cake, she dashed out to the

market for a tablecloth she had forgot-

ten to buy on an earlier trip.

At the market she saw a ghoulish

scene, “five or six headless bodies,” on

the ground along with “a lot of blood.” A

public execution had taken place be-

tween her two trips. She averted her

eyes, she said.

Nonetheless, she said, she bought the

tablecloth and the dinner party went

swimmingly, with all the guests having a

good time.

At another point, Ms. Farziyeva said,

a militant living across the street was

presented with an enslaved Yazidi con-

cubine as a gift. “I was sorry for her,” she

said. “She was a woman, too.” But as a

non-Muslim, she said, the woman could

not be taken in as a wife, with such

rights as that entailed.

In the end, though, Ms. Farziyeva ex-

pressed repentance. “I haven’t met any

sister with some ideology left inside

her,” she said. “We understand we were

wrong.”

Kazakhstan welcomes ISIS women, warily

AKTAU, KAZAKHSTAN

They’re treated as patients,

not criminals, but are still

viewed with deep suspicion

BY ANDREW E. KRAMER

At a rehabilitation center in Aktau, Kazakhstan, psychologists try to persuade women who were once affiliated with the Islamic State to adopt a moderate form of Islam.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY TARA TODRAS-WHITEHILL FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A small audience watching a play that teaches morality lessons on the pitfalls of radical-

ization. Studies of deradicalization programs have failed to show clear benefits.

“Governments are not big

fans of experimenting with

this group because the

risks are too high.”

It was one of the warmest days of the

year, and Ciara was wearing a T-shirt to

try to blend in with the vacationers at

the Belfast airport. But as soon as she

boarded her flight to London, she no-

ticed people staring at the dark purple

bruises on her arm and the baby bump

that stretched the fabric of her shirt.

“I’m sure some of it was paranoia, but

I could tell from the way some folks

looked at me that they figured out I was

traveling for an abortion,” she said.

Ciara, who is 32 and has two children,

has asked to be identified in this article

only by a childhood nickname, to protect

her from her abusive former partner,

who she said had threatened to kill her if

she terminated the pregnancy.

While the Republic of Ireland voted to

legalize abortion last year, Northern Ire-

land — which is part of the United King-

dom — has shown no signs of liberaliz-

ing its draconian laws, allowing the pro-

cedure only when the mother’s life is in

danger.

That has led many women, like Ciara,

to travel for abortions, something that

can be difficult for those who lack the re-

sources to finance the trip. With some

states in the United States — most re-

cently Alabama — passing legislation

that mirrors the laws in Northern Ire-

land, many American women could be

just a Supreme Court decision away

from finding themselves in a similar po-

sition.

Northern Ireland’s legislature has not

met since 2017, and in that power vac-

uum, Britain’s Parliament recently

passed a measure that would liberalize

Northern Ireland’s abortion laws in Oc-

tober unless a restored regional govern-

ment intervenes.

Arlene Foster, who leads the region’s

largest political force, the ultraconserv-

ative Democratic Unionist Party, said

last week that she was determined to re-

store the assembly before the deadline.

“We strongly believe that it should be

elected representatives from Northern

Ireland, taking decisions on issues of life

and the protection of the unborn child,”

she told her local newspaper, The Im-

partial Reporter.

Emphasizing that her party would

“always speak up for the unborn child,”

she said that abortion was “one issue

where alliances have developed” be-

tween some Protestants and Catholics

in the region.

Even with the new law in sight, activ-

ists say the stigma and deep divisions

surrounding the issue will not fade any-

time soon. Ciara, for one, felt the pull of

those forces. “I was so sure of my deci-

sion before I got on that plane,” she said.

“But because of the way we have been

conditioned culturally and such, I still

spent the whole flight feeling dread and

even shame.”

For decades, women in Northern Ire-

land — even victims of rape and incest,

or in cases where fetal abnormalities

meant the fetus wouldn’t survive out-

side the womb — have had either to

carry the pregnancy to term or travel

outside the region for an abortion. The

police have raided houses and work-

places in search of abortion pills, and

anyone caught procuring an abortion in

Northern Ireland can face life impris-

onment.

Abortion services are fully funded in

England, but many women have diffi-

culty making the trip for a variety of rea-

sons — disability, lack of funds for air-

fare and accommodations, domestic

abuse or not being able to find child care.

Ciara was assisted by several charities.

While some women in Northern Ire-

land opt for medical abortions using

pills obtained illegally online, that was

not an option for Ciara because she

would have been taking the medication

at home, and when she found out she

was pregnant, she was living in tempo-

rary housing with an abusive husband.

“We were with a counselor when I told

my husband about the idea of having an

abortion,” she said. “It was a safe space,

or that’s what I thought.”

She soon learned differently.

“When we got back to the hostel, he

grabbed me by the arm, put it down on

the table and beat it with a metal spat-

ula,” she said. “He said he would have

done worse, but he didn’t want to hurt

the baby.”

When Ciara went back to social serv-

ices to report the abuse, she was told she

would be moved to a shelter that night.

But as she waited for the police to arrive

to take her statement, the counselor

tried to talk her out of getting an abor-

tion.

“We have a moral conservatism that’s

much stronger even than in the south of

Ireland,” Emma Campbell, co-chair-

woman of the Northern Irish reproduc-

tive rights group Alliance for Choice.

“We’re operating in a post-conflict, co-

lonial environment where people’s iden-

tity is absolutely tied up to their reli-

gious upbringing. We’re moving toward

secularism, but slowly.”

Activists say that changing the

stigma attached to abortion will be

much harder than providing the serv-

ices. “People are starting to think and

talk about it a lot more, but a lot of people

around here are still very much under

the belief that abortion is murder and

that’s that,” said Ashleigh Topley, who in

2013 was forced to carry a fetus to term

knowing that it had a fatal abnormality

and would not survive.

When Ms. Topley, who lives in the

small town of Portadown, found out

about the fetal abnormality, she was re-

ferred to a specialist hospital in Belfast

for a second opinion. She was told that

the Belfast hospital would sign off on an

abortion.

But when she went back to the local

hospital trust where she was registered,

the consultant immediately dismissed

the recommendation, saying, “That’s

not going to happen.” Ms. Topley asked

for a psychological assessment because

she was under treatment for depression

and the law permits abortions if there is

a permanent threat to the woman’s men-

tal health.

But even before she could meet the

psychiatrist, the hospital had reached

the conclusion that she would have to go

through with the pregnancy.

“There are still so many people who

won’t even consider a conversation

about it,” Ms. Topley said as she sat

cradling a newborn daughter.

“And now one of the biggest chal-

lenges will be to break this hierarchy of

abortions,” she said.

“There are pro-life people who would

have been O.K. with me having an abor-

tion,” she continued, “because they view

mine as ‘worthy,’ because I wanted that

child and I wasn’t out wearing a red, lacy

thong to attract a one-night stand. Peo-

ple will judge you depending on the way

you became pregnant and the reason

you don’t want the baby.”

The way the law is enforced has also

contributed to the trauma of women

seeking to end an unwanted pregnancy.

Several women have been prosecuted

after police officers raided their homes

or workplaces and found pills, including

a mother who had helped her 15-year-

old daughter order them.

“Her daughter was in a very physi-

cally and emotionally abusive relation-

ship, so having weighed up her options,

she didn’t want to continue with the

pregnancy,” said Grainne Teggart, Am-

nesty International’s campaign man-

ager for Northern Ireland, who has been

helping the family.

Later, when the teenager went to a

counselor about the abusive relation-

ship and mentioned her abortion, she

was reported to the police and had her

medical file sent to the authorities with-

out her consent.

“What has just passed in Westminster

will mean that as of Oct. 22 she will no

longer face prosecution,” Ms. Teggart

said. “But the trauma cannot be erased.”

Can Northern Ireland cling to its hard-core abortion laws?

BELFAST

BY CEYLAN YEGINSU

Ashleigh Topley was made to carry a previous pregnancy to term despite knowing that the fetus had a fatal abnormality.

MARY TURNER FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

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