How One Mother Is Trying To Get Her Kidnapped Son Back From Syria

Indira Karakayeva, a young woman from the southern Russian city of Stavropol, has not seen her son for over a year. He was three then. The last time she saw him was on the screen of her phone, during a video call with her estranged husband, who kidnapped him and took him to Raqqa, to bring him up as a "lion" for the Islamic State. Indira is one of several hundred Russian citizens who are trying to rescue their children from Syria. Many of those children have been taken there by their parents (some are now dead), and hundreds more were born in IS territory. Some live in prisons with their parents, stuck in legal limbo, while their relatives desperately try to get them back. Children did not choose to go to Syria, and yet they face all the challenges adults face: recovering from trauma and starting a new life, trying to avoid the stigma of being associated with terrorists.