Balkan jihadists Return Disillusioned by I SIS

Hilmiu, an ethnic Bosniak, went to Syria hoping that life at the Islamic state Califat would be an ideal religious environment, but he managed to escape 16 months later, disappointed with what he had found there.

There was nothing there. No electricity, no books, no internet, nothing”, Hilmi told BIRN.

I had about 400 euros in savings, which was quickly spent on food. Then I started getting about $50 a month after reporting that I was sick. My wife helped other elderly women, so she sometimes received a payment. I was going crazy, and all the time I thought about how to save my family and get out of there, he's coming back to mind.

“Look,” he went on, opening his laptop and showing a video.

There's no nature, there's no bar. Everything was dead, abandoned. Look at the weak sheep! The only thing we could do was get a little bit around”, he said, before showing photos of his family and friends, some of whom never managed to return from Syria.

Hilmiu, who has Bosnian and Montenegrin citizenship, is just one of 250 people who returned to the Balkans after spending time in war zones in Syria and Iraq some, like him, because they were disappointed by the ISIS.

Although many of them refuse to go to war, the Balkan states treat them all as terrorists after a series of laws were passed in 2015 and criminalised any kind of involvement in foreign conflicts.

But even though many of them were tried after returning, some have joined campaigns that convey messages against it in an effort to convince other Muslims not to make the same mistakes that led them to the battlefields in the Middle East.

Life on Caliphy

Hilmiu has been a Muslim throughout his life, and when he heard that the Islamic State had created a potassium, he was eager to go and find out if he was really guided according to the principles of maturity.

His destination was a province of Alepos, where his friend from Podgorica, capital of Montenegro, already lived. His friend guaranteed that there was nothing missing, that the fighting was too far away and that he and his family could stay there as his guests.

My plan was to go, check, and then return, sell the house, and go to Syria” forever, Hilmi recalls.

But when he arrived in February 2015, he got bad news. His friend died on the battlefield near Kobaan.

As the battles over Cobani grew in intensity, the Islamic State declared the state of emergency, took passports from all newcomers and informed them that they could not return because the perfect “society has already arrived”.