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RUSSIA BEYOND THE HEADLINES
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Terrorism Russian woman stayed in touch with IS after a failed attempt to reach Syria
How model student was seduced by IS Varvara Karaulova, who was caught at the border between Turkey and Syria this spring, has been charged with terrorism. YEKATERINA SINELSCHIKOVA RBTH
TASS
The story of Moscow State University student Varvara Karaulova, who left home in an attempt to join the Islamic State (IS) radical militant group this summer and was caught at the Turkish border, has returned to the Russian headlines following her arrest and the start of court proceedings against for terrorism charges. A criminal case over the preparation for taking part in a terrorist organisation (punishable by up to 15 years in prison) was opened against the 19-year-old woman following her arrest in late October, and on November 10 she was charged with terrorism for attempt-
ing to join IS. According to media reports, the reason was the discovery of Karaulova’s correspondence with an IS militant, with whom she had allegedly fallen in love, and the suspicion that she might be a recruiter. Back in July 2015, after Karaulova had already returned to Russia, investigators said they had no case against her, questioned her as a witness, but did not detain her, arresting instead two Russians who had accompanied her on her attempt to join IS. Following the scandal, the student took a sabbatical and started a rehabilitation program. The incident caused widespread disbelief among the Russian public at the time, who struggled to understand how a straight-A student from a well-to-do family and an intellectual fluent in five languages become the vic-
Varvara Karaulova attends a court hearing in Moscow on October 28.
Karaulova a gifted student Varvara Karaulova has an impressive academic record. She has won national competitions and graduated from high school with honours before going on study at the Faculty of Philosophy’s Department of Cultural Studies at the prestigious MSU. Boys, fashionable clothing, cosmetics – none of this was for her.
tim of IS recruiters? Nonetheless, it appeared that the story had died down – until Karaulova’s arrest on October 28. Karaulova was returned to Russia almost immediately: Her father Pavel Karaulov had good connections in the FSB and the Russian Foreign Ministry. “She has a very broad vision, and the ability to learn languages has enabled her to explore primary sources, including in Arabic,” said Karaulov in an interview with RBTH.
That is why the appearance of the Koran in the house and her interest in Islam was not immediately noticed. In addition, alongside Islam she studied other religions. When Karaulova disappeared,“connections” helped – the trace led to Turkey. “When I was travelling there, one of the versions I had was that she was going on holiday to Turkey, in order to plunge into the range of interests of the Islamic world,” said her father. After Karaulova was detained by the Migration
Service alongside other Russians, it became clear that the trip had nothing to do with a holiday, though her father insists that her sole motive was“strong affection.” “This was the only boy, she has never had any other. And only virtual communication. It is almost obvious for us now that this person is a synthetic image, and its creation involved several people.” However, RBTH managed to learn from her classmates that, in reality, Karaulova did have a boyfriend; they attended a special course in Arabic together “until she dumped him”. After her failed escape, according to her father, Karaulova said, “Please, just take away everything from me. If necessary, I will ask.” No one in the family knew that Karaulova was continuing to correspond with her IS lover, her parents say. Her father sees the arrest as a “tragic mistake”. Based on his experience, the student’s former lawyer, Alexander Karabanov, admits that the young woman was probably the best candidate for the dissemination of IS ideas among similarly well-educated young people.
Extremism Lack of meaning in their lives may explain why youth join the IS
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Like many European states, Russia is encountering a new threat: Its citizens are travelling to the Middle East to join radical Islamic causes like Islamic State. OLEG YEGOROV RBTH
Varvara Karaulova’s story is not an isolated case. According to the FSB (Russia’s security service), in the course of the last year recruiters from religious extremist groups have been able to attract more than 1 700 Russian citizens into their ranks. Some experts say the number is much higher. The majority of Russian citizens that join the ranks of the extremists are people from the country’s Muslim republics but sometimes they are ethnic Russians. This is not a new phenom-
enon: There have been cases in which Russians fought on the side of Wahhabists even before the appearance of IS. For example, Said Buryatsky, one of the ideological leaders of the Caucasian terrorist underground at the end of the 2000s, was a Russian whose real name was Alexander Tikhomirov. Buryatsky was eliminated in 2010. And even as far back as the Soviet campaign in Afghanistan during the early 1980s there were documented cases of ethnic Russians converting to Islam and going over to the side of the Mujahideen to fight against their former comrades-inarms. As Georgy Mirsky, an expert on the Arab world and Doctor of Historical Sciences, pointed out to RBTH,
Russia is far from the only country whose young citizens are travelling to Syria and Iraq to join IS. “In the last month 1 733 people alone left France to join IS, and statistically, one-fifth of them did not
Russia is not the only country whose young citizens are travelling to Syria and Iraq to join IS come from Muslim families but were recruited,” said Mirsky, who pointed out that 30 per cent of the women joining IS were“still not Muslim until recently.” What is prompting young people, who grew up in secular western families, to change their outlooks so radically and join terrorist
groups like IS? Russian psychologist Pavel Ponomaryov is convinced that the problem lies in an existential crisis that many young people are experiencing. “If we speak about Karaulova, we will see that she tried to commit social suicide, that is, she attempted to completely delete herself from the society in which she lived and find a new identity in a different world,” said Ponomaryov. “Students and other young people are going through a crisis: Society is not giving them a chance to express themselves, [and is] imposing harsh restrictions. The intention to free oneself from this society and obtain everything and immediately in a different system is so great that people are ready to give their lives for it.”