A few days ago, the news broke on IS social media that Abu Aisha Kazakhi, an IS militant from Kazakhstan, had been killed. Here are some of the facts I have gleaned about Abu Aisha in my several months of tracking him.

Abu Aisha claimed to be from Atyrau, Kazakhstan’s main Caspian Sea port. He said that he was 30 years old and was stationed with his children in Mosul, Iraq, where he was actively seeking another wife.

But before I go any further, you may like to know that I have written about Abu Aisha several times for RFE/RL, a lot of these stories are about how Abu Aisha strongly promoted the idea that young Central Asian children should fight or be militarized.

Here you can read about how Abu Aisha burned his Kazakh passport and posted the photos online.

I wrote about how Abu Aisha posted images of young Central Asian children online. Abu Aisha has posted many photos of his own young son, Abdourahman, posing with guns. I mentioned him in this story about the “IS babies” trend among Russian-speaking IS militants. And Abu Aisha once again lauded child militants when he shared a video of a young boy, possibly his own son, undergoing military training.

Now to the main story…

Bringing the kids to Syria, via Turkey

Abu Aisha posted on one of his many (they kept getting banned) Facebook accounts about how he came to IS-controlled Syria via Turkey. He posted many photos of his children in Turkey before he took them to IS-controlled territory.

He wrote (my translation from his very misspelled Russian):

I flew to Turkey with [the] wife [and] kids. And [we] had to wait for a connected brother who was supposed to take us. By the will of Allah my battery was low and we decided to walk around a bit and find a charger and eat somewhere. We sailed in a boat 🙂 … We went to the apartment an IS apartment there were brothers of various nationalities some where around 15 brothers. After about an hour the turkish special forces broke in :)) all of us lay on the floor tied with a sort of hand cuff. they tortured us five hours then left. They only took one brother with them he had no passport. You understand I reckon.

Abu Aisha posted about how he wanted to “educate” his children in the “caliphate” (IS’s term for the lands under its control).

Child militants

Abu Aisha, as I have said and as I have written about rather a lot, praised IS’s child militants and also posted many photos of his own son dressed in fatigues and holding guns and knives. You can see some of the images in the linked stories.

Abu Aisha posted an account about a meeting he had with a militant from Kyrgyzstan, who joined his katiba or brigade (IS has at least one brigade for Central Asians).

Once I saw him in the mosque and I wanted to get to know him I went up to him said salam and we sat [and] started to chat. I was surprised that our languages are very similar. It turned out he had a family and five sons the oldest one is already 16. One day we went to a battle. After the fajr [prayer] we started the attack. The battle went on to the zuhr [prayer]. with the help of Allah we cleaned many villages. many of the infidels manage to run away leaving their weapons….in the sky there were 2 drones and of course a MiG, how could they not be there. and i heard the noise of rockets an suddenly they hit the mountain where our Zushka was. there was the young Kyrgyz who was just 16 i heard how nothing was left of him…a couple days ago our brothers went to a battle and i heard that the second son of that Kyrgyz brother had also become a martyr. he was 15…finally i want to say brothers that these fathers are very rare who sacrifice their sons on the path of Allah.

Grief at losing friends

Abu Aisha also posted about his grief at losing his friends. In one post from June 8, 2015 he wrote:

How hard it is to lose your close friends on jihad. Abu Hamza he was like a brother to me.

Fight to the death

Abu Aisha reportedly posted (I have not seen this post, but others have described it and it fits with what other Russophone IS militants have done) that he had taken a pledge to fight to the death. This was shortly before he was reported killed, in Palmyra in Syria.

Abu Aisha’s death in Palmyra shows how IS moves around its militants between Iraq and Syria.