Up until about half a year ago, Ana was still living with the self-proclaimed Islamic State
in Syria. And although she is now back home in Kosovo, Ana insists on wearing her niqab,
or full-body veil.
While 90 percent of the population in Kosovo are Sunni Muslim, few women wear the niqab.
Most people here practise a more liberal form of Islam.
Anytime I go outside they look at us like a UFO. Aliens. For me it is not a problem.
But it's normal for them because in this time when they see so much (unintelligible) I can
see it's bizarre for them to see us like this. But for me it's not a problem…
Ana stayed until IS lost its last holdout, Baghouz, in a military strike.
With approval from federal authorities, we meet Ana at a lake outside Kosovo's capital,
Pristina.
Like all returnees, she lives under house arrest -- awaiting trial.
Ana is the first Kosovo returnee to speak on-camera about her experience.
We wanted to know what she thought about the beheadings and other reported crimes against
humanity committed in the name of the Islamic State, but Ana avoided our questions and focused
instead on her own suffering.
But the airstrikes, when they came, they just bombed a house, you know, a big building.
There were kids (there), there were women, mothers, everything in it.
At the Pristina airport, one night in April, Europe’s youngest country -- and one of
its poorest – brought 32 women, 74 children and four male fighters back home.
All of them had been imprisoned in Kurdish camps in Northern Syria after the military
defeat of the Islamic State.
The operation was a strategic move for the Kosovar government.
And was based on the belief that back home, under official observation, the returnees
pose less of a security risk than if they remained abroad.
The aim is to reintegrate all of them into society. Including the men, who were sent
to prison right away.
Meanwhile, the authorities are closely monitoring the women and children, and offering them
counselling.
We didn't see any resistance from them to be part of our programmes. and maybe this
also is due to the fact that they know, that it was Kosovo authorities who took the decision
to repatriate them to Kosovo. Otherwise they would have remained in the conflict zone.
The Kosovar approach is unique - no other European government has undertaken similar
steps.
Rich Western democracies such as Germany, France and Britain have so far rejected any
organized return of their citizens who joined the self-proclaimed Islamic State.
The fear of not being able to control the returnees appears to be too great.
Ana tells us she didn’t know what she was getting herself into when she followed her
husband to Syria in 2014.
I was going go somewhere else with my husband. And I didn't know that I'm going there. My
husband prepared everything to go there but he didn't tell me. Suddenly I found myself
in Syria.
After her husband died in battle, she married another fighter whose fate remains unclear.
Early this year, after the military defeat of the Islamic State, Ana surrendered.
Like thousands of others, she ended up in the Al Hol refugee camp. ‘A living hell,’
she says.
Ana cannot understand why other European countries are refusing to take their citizens back.
Because we are human, we are people. If someone will do a mistake one time, we shouldn't just
leave them like that. The women, they are so sensitive. The kids: what is their fault,
you know? So we should help them.
Friday prayer in a mosque in central Pristina.
After the ethnic wars of the 1990s, religious organizations and charities from Saudi Arabia
and other Gulf states had a growing influence in Kosovo.
With them came a much more conservative school of Islam. One that taught the supremacy of
the Sharia law and ideas of violent jihad.
More than 400 young Kosovars joined extremist groups in Syria and Iraq between 2012 and
2017.
The highest rate per head in Europe.
The Authorities are convinced that the Saudi influence was the driving force behind their
radicalization.
I believe that the idea of the NGOs and the extremists that brought ideology here, was
to change the very core value of the society, to introduce political Islam in Kosovo and
also to establish a network that one day they may have also political power and become a
political factor.
The Iman of this mosque in central Pristina - which itself is considered to be rather
conservative - points to other reasons:
In our country, many young people didn’t have any future perspectives in the last 20
years. The main reasons are: Poor economic situation, the social state of the country,
lack of prospects. But we should not deny the role Youtube played in radicalisation.
I would like to point out that these people have not been radicalised by their religious
representatives.
We are on our way to another of the 32 female returnees.
Vlora agreed to an interview only on the condition of total anonymity.
We are not allowed to show where and how she lives.
Her first two husbands are dead, the third imprisoned in a camp.
Like Ana, Vlora spent several years in Syria.
I was very young. I didn’t think, I just followed my husband. Ich expected something
totally different in life. That is why I feel betrayed.
It was a mistake. War is not a place for women and children. War is bad for everyone. I would
never go there again.
So far, Vlora doesn’t have any concrete plans for the future. Just hopes.
I want to live as a free person, integrated into society. I hope that the people will
accept me as I am - even with my hijab.
Vlora, Ana and the other women - psychiatrist Valbona Tafilaj knwows them all.
The psychiatrist is in charge of the government’s rehabilitation and reintegration programme
for the female returnees and their children.
Due to doctor-patient-confidentiality Tafilaj won’t say whether she thinks some of the
women might possibly be dangerous. She and her team talk to the returnees on a regular
basis -- in the clinic and in their homes.
All the children and women who returned from Syria were traumatized. They came back from
a war zone, where they witnessed cruel crimes and heavy bombing - which has led to trauma
and post traumatic stress disease.
There have been a number of activities specially designed to help the children cope with what
they have been through.
Young, innocent victims of a war their parents dragged them into.
Back in a safe environment, they can finally play like other children.
The older kids just started regular school after the summer holidays.
It is too early to talk about greater improvements, but we are seeing some progress back to a
normal life in Kosovo.
Kacanik. About 50 kilometres south of Pristina.
The small town of about 10,000 inhabitants at the border to Macedonia was considered
one of the hotbeds of radicalization.
About two dozen people are said to have left for the war zones in Syria and Iraq from Kacanik
and the surrounding area alone.
On the streets, people seem supportive of taking them back.
They have made mistakes. We have to help them reintegrate into our society.
They are our people. It was a good decision to bring them
back, I support this initiative. These people shouldn’t have gone to Syria. We are in
Kosovo, on the Balkans, we don’t need wars. We have been through war ourselves.
I don't think these people have come back to do harm here – like they did
there. That is why we should not exclude them.
Ana wants to leave the past behind.
She says she feels accepted by her family and neighborhood. No one talks to her about
her time in Syria.
Ana is still making sense of why she is under house arrest.
We came from a war place. It is very normal they are investigating us. But in the end
they will understand that we don't have any fault. We didn't do nothing. Maybe our mistake
is that we were there, we lived there.
Ana is still convinced that she didn’t do anything wrong.
But ultimately, that’s up to Kosovo’s authorities to decide.