Hard to return Albanian family members who went to war at ISIS

Lavrim Muharnier, a prominent Islamic State fighter from Kosovo who declared himself commander of Albanians fighting for the militant group in Syria and Iraq, was declared dead in mid-2017.

According to the Balkan Insight investigation, his Syrian-born children from marriage to an Albanian woman from Tirana are living in a Kurdish-run camp in northern Syria.

The two muhajer children are among the total of 85 children at the Al Holé camp of women with Albanian ethnicities, which are from Albania, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia. They have been identified by Balkan Insight.

According to the prestigious lists Balkan Insight has secured, at least 27 of these children are born in Syria. Many have lost at least one parent. And three children born to a Kosovo woman have reportedly died with their mother.

Currently, a group of 108 women and children from Albania, Kosovo and Northern Macedonia want to return to the Balkans from the “Al Hol” camp. Meanwhile, there is another smaller number, of households with Albanian ethnicities, in two other camps in Syria.

According to a 2017 study by New York's Sougan Centre (a global security - centered investigative body), about 90 people from Albania, 138 from Kosovo, and about 140 from northern Macedonia were still in the Islamic State.

Caliphate may have collapsed, but the house route for these women and children seems more complicated than they could have imagined. Authorities in all three Balkan countries still do not have a plan on how these persons can be repatriated.

Camp “Al Hol” is located in the Syrian province of El-Hasakah. According to the United Nations, there are currently some 73,000 people living there.

According to the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, about 65% of people in the camp are children under the age of 18. About 27 % of the total are women.

Internally displaced refugees and Iraqi refugees make up the great majority, but 15 %s of them are from so-called third countries citizens.

Kosovo (at least 14 children born in Syria)

Albania (Thirteen children born in Syria)

Northern Macedonia ʹ total 8 ʹ6 children and two women

A total of 108 people from all 3 countries

Many of the Albanian women and their children are desperate to return home.

They have us under surveillance and we are surrounded by wires and soldiers. I can't talk often, but please talk to our country to come and get us “, a child is heard crying, in an audio recording heard by Balkan Insight as he tells a relative in Albania.

Elody Schindler, a spokeswoman for Europe and Central Asia at the International Committee of the Red Cross, I The CRC, said women and children in the camps sought special protection.

Shindler said many children were without official citizenship, had no access to schooling and were vulnerable to abuse and disease.

The children in this story deserve our humanity, not our hatred. These children are victims that should not be punished for the sins of their parents... Many do not have enough food. They should be better treated “, Schindler told Balkan Insight.

Balkan Insight asked the interior ministries of Albania, Kosovo and northern Macedonia if they had identified and contacted their citizens in these camps, but the Albanian Interior Ministry did not respond. Kosovo refused to comment, while the Northern Macedonia Interior Ministry said it had identified four Macedonian women and their seven children.

“They have established contacts aimed at obtaining documents and facilitating transport from Syria to northern Macedonia“, a ministry spokesman said.

This ministry said it had no jurisdiction to facilitate their return from Syria and did not specify whether any other state institutions were dealing with the issue.

He said that since the beginning of the conflict in 2011, about 80 Macedonian citizens who were part of the Islamic state had returned home, including a woman and a child.

In Kosovo, Bedri Elez, director of Security Studies at the Kosovo Institute for International Studies, said the country had neglected the issue.

Elez told Balkan Insight that in September 2017, his institute contacted six women and 21 children in Syria who wanted to return to Kosovo, but that he was unable to facilitate an agreement with Kosovo authorities to return them.

The “Group stayed for a month near the Turkish border, awaiting the approval of Kosovo authorities to return, we contacted the foreign minister, the prime minister's office, the president, parliament speaker, but they failed to reach a solution,”.

The KNKK, Schindler said, encourages states to balance security and accountability issues with the need to deal with people in a human way.

“Source countries cannot turn their backs“, she said / Abc News.