AQTOBE, Kazakhstan -- After six years with the Islamic State (IS) extremist group in Syria followed by four years in a Kazakh prison on terrorism charges, Aqmaral Almaghambetova says she is "full of regret" about her past as she tries to restart her life.
"One of my biggest regrets is not being able to ask forgiveness from my mother, when she was alive, for everything I'd put her through," Almaghambetova, 36, says.
"I had been in contact with my mother by phone from prison until one month before her death [in 2021]. She said she had forgiven me, but talking on the phone is not the same as speaking in person and hugging each other," she told RFE/RL.
Almaghambetova's story is different from hundreds of other Kazakh women who were repatriated from Syria after the defeat of the so-called IS caliphate there.
Most of the women were allowed by the government to reunite with their families and try to rebuild their lives. Almaghambetova, however, was jailed and her children taken away by authorities.
In July 2019, two months after Almaghambetova was brought back to Kazakhstan as part of the government's repatriation operation, Zhusan, she was handed a jail sentence on charges of propagating terrorism and inciting religious violence.
Almaghambetova -- who was released from prison this summer -- admits to her wrongdoing, saying she doesn't blame anyone but herself.
A native of Aqtobe in Kazakhstan's oil-rich northwest, Almaghambetova went to Syria in 2013, leaving behind her husband and their three children. The housewife, who was 26 at the time, says a man she befriended on the Internet helped her to get to Syria through Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.
Almaghambetova is reluctant to talk about her time under IS, only giving some details of her life there. She recalls contacting her husband from Syria and asking him to take their children and join her to live in the "caliphate."
Those text messages -- in which she explicitly supported the extremist IS ideology -- were used as evidence against her in a Kazakh court some six years later.
Her husband refused to join her.
Almaghambetova then remarried twice, to IS members, each of whom was killed in Syria. She gave birth to two more children -- a boy and a girl -- who went to Kazakhstan along with their mother but who have been placed in foster care by Kazakh authorities.
Kazakhstan, a predominantly Muslim country in Central Asia, has repatriated more than 600 people -- including at least 413 children -- from Syria between January 2019 and February 2021.
At least 14 children of Kazakh citizens were taken to Astana from Iraq in 2019 in a separate repatriation operation called Rusafa.
Shaming The Family
When Almaghambetova went to trial in Aqtobe her mother, Raisa Erdauletqyzy, was the only family member who came to support her. All of her other relatives cut ties with her, saying she brought disgrace to the family.
"The relatives tell me, 'Why are you going to court?' [They said: 'She] brought nothing but shame to [the family].' But I could not stay home, I am her mother," Erdauletqyzy told RFE/RL at the time.
The mother and daughter saw each other for the first time in six years when Almaghambetova was escorted to the courtroom.
Almaghambetova now lives in an apartment her mother her in her will so that she could have a roof over her head once she was released from jail.
She hasn't been able to meet any of her five children since being released from prison and returning to Aqtobe. The three older children live with their father and the two younger children remain with their foster parents.
"My ex-husband has remarried to a good wife and is happy with her and I am happy for them," Almaghambetova said. "His wife looked well after my children, cooking for them and doing their laundry, and I'm very grateful for it. I speak to my children over the phone and always tell them to respect [their stepmother.]"
Almaghambetova "deeply" regrets abandoning her marriage after "falling under the influence of radicals on the Internet." She says she's determined to make amends.
"My first husband is a good man who loved me and took care of me, and I wanted for nothing," she told RFE/RL. "Now we live in the same city again and I will apologize to him if we bump into each other on the street. I'm also going to ask forgiveness from my former in-laws."
Almaghambetova is now focused on her volunteer work at the Ansar Information-Analytic Center that involves speaking to groups about how religious extremists brainwashed her online. She receives an equivalent of $150 a month from social services.
Almaghambetova no longer wears the Islamic hijab and says she stopped praying five years ago. Her only dream now is to "stand on [her] own feet" and get her two younger children out of foster care.
"Once I had everything in life, but took it for granted," she said. "Now, happiness for me is just looking at the peaceful sky."
