Leila described to me an “amazingly luxurious villa” where she had stayed with Khamzat in Aleppo. On the wall was a list of dozens of suicide bombers—Chechen jihadists celebrated every time one of them became a “shahid,” or martyr. Khamzat became a shahid in 2013, just months after she left him. Three months after that, her second son called her from Austria to tell her that he was going on jihad, too. “My old mother, who also lost two sons in the war in Abkhazia, begged my youngest son not to go to war,” Leila said. “Have your jihad by taking care of me. But he was gone too, and we don’t know whether he is alive.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/11/isil-moms-chechnya-jihad-syria-213396#ixzz3tC4alDPn