ANALYSIS: Repatriate or reject: What countries are doing with IS group families

Date created : 11/06/2019 - 14:43  GMT/ZULU

Delil Souleiman, AFP | US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) escort a woman and child in the northern Kurdish city of Qamishli as they are handed over to diplomats from Uzbekistan, May 2019.

by Leila Mohamed and Biodun Iginla, France24 News Analysts, Beirut

Since the fall of the Islamic State group's so-called "caliphate" in March, the international community has been torn over what to do with the families of foreign jihadists captured or killed in Syria and Iraq.

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Some 12,000 foreigners from as many as 40 countries – 4,000 women and 8,000 children – are currently stranded, mainly in Al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria.

The Kurdish authorities are pressing for them to be returned to their countries of origin.

Here are several examples of how countries around the world are dealing with the issue:

Russia, Kosovo, first

Nearly 4,500 Russian citizens went abroad to fight alongside the IS group and it was the first to organise returns over a year ago.

By February around 200 women and children had returned, originating mainly from Russia's Islamic republics in the Caucasus. Moscow estimates that nearly 1,400 children are still stranded.

Kosovo, which is 90 percent Muslim, announced in April it is repatriating 110 nationals from Syria, almost all of them wives and children of jihadists.

France and Belgium: 'case by case'

After months of hesitation amid hostile public opinion, 12 orphaned children of French jihadists were flown homefrom Syria on Monday.

France repatriated five orphans from Syria in mid-March, as well as a three-year-old girl whose mother was sentenced to life imprisonment in Iraq.

Paris has said it is studying the files of all its citizens held in northeastern Syria on a case-by-case basis.

>> France taken to court for refusing to repatriate the children of jihadists

Like France, Belgium has been one of the biggest sources of foreign fighters for the IS group.

The authorities recorded more than 400 travelling from 2012 while 160 children and adolescents have been born with at least one Belgian parent involved.

Belgium says it will help the repatriation of children younger than 10, as long as the link with a Belgian parent is proven. "For the others it is case by case," the government says.

Germany: children repatriated

A dozen children of jihadist fighters have been repatriated from Iraq to Germany since March.

The German authorities, while cautious, say that the children are "victims" and that they should be repatriated if they have family to take them in.

Children who have been radicalised will be placed in a special institution but will not be locked up.

Denmark: stripped of nationality

The Danish government in late March drew up draft legislation under which children born abroad to jihadists will not have Danish nationality.

United States

The United States has urged Western countries to take their nationals back and has started repatriating some of its own.

Two American women and six children from families of suspected IS group members were repatriated in early June.

In July 2018 Washington brought home three IS group fighters for prosecution and also repatriated one woman with her four children.

Tunisia: no repatriation

Some 5,000 Tunisians have joined the IS group in Syria and Libya, according to the UN in 2015 – one of the biggest contingents.

No children have been brought home from Syria or Iraq, according to Human Rights Watch in February.

Tunisia's government worries that repatriating children will only accelerate the return of their jihadist parents, according to a local rights group, the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad. 

Turkey

In late May, Iraq repatriated to neighbouring Turkey 188 children of Turks accused of belonging to the IS group, a capital offence in Iraq.

Tajikistan, Uzbekistan

Tajikistan, from where more than 1,000 travelled to fight for the IS group, said in May that 84 children had been brought back from Iraq, where their parents had been either jailed or killed in battle.

On May 30, Uzbekistan said it had repatriated 156 nationals, mostly women and children.

• CHILDREN
• FRENCH JIHADISM
• ISLAMIC STATE (IS) GROUP
• SYRIA

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After joining Islamic State, German woman, aged 15, asks to go home

Date created : 02/02/2019 - 09H:40: GMT/UTC/ZULU

Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces Leonora, a 19-year-old German national who married into the Islamic State group, awaits screening and registration by the Syrian Democratic Forces AFP

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Beirut

by Nasra Ismail and Biodun Iginla, France24, Beirut

Four years after leaving Germany to live under the Islamic State group, 19-year-old Leonora has fled the jihadists' last bastion in eastern Syria and says it's time to go home.

"I was a little bit naive," she says in English, wearing a long billowing black robe, and a beige headscarf with white spots.

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US-backed forces are fighting the last IS jihadists in a final shred of territory in eastern Syria near the Iraqi border, causing thousands of people to flee.

Just beyond the frontline village of Baghouz, Leonora and her two small children are among the thousands of men, women and children to have scrambled out this week.

The young German woman says she first came to Syria aged 15, just two months after converting to Islam.

"After three days, I married my German husband," she tells us at France24, at a screening centre for the displaced run by the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces.

Leonora says she became the third wife of German jihadist Martin Lemke, after he travelled to Syria with his first two wives.

IS had the year before swept across large swathes of Syria and neighbouring Iraq, declaring a "caliphate" in areas it controlled.

Leonora first lived in the extremist group's de-facto Syrian capital of Raqa, but says she was just a housewife.

"I was just at home, in (the) house cooking, cleaning -- stuff like this," says the pale faced German, clutching the youngest of her two children, an infant aged just two weeks.

- 'Change house every week' -

Syria's Kurdish authorities hold hundreds of foreign alleged IS fighters in detention, as well as thousands of their wives and children in camps for the displaced.

The Kurds have repeatedly urged Western governments to take back their nationals, but these powers have been reluctant.

At first life in Raqa was easy, Leonora says, but that changed when the SDF started advancing against the jihadists, with support from US-led coalition air strikes.

The Kurdish-led SDF overran Raqa in 2017, after years of what residents described as IS's brutal rule, which included public beheading and crucifixions.

"Then they lose Raqa, and we started to change our house every week because they lost every week a city," she says.

When they came under attack by the Kurdish-led SDF, Leonora says the IS fighters left their families to fend for themselves.

"They left the women alone, no food, they don't care about you," she says. The enemy was advancing "and you were sitting alone in an empty city with your kids".

They ended up in a tiny patch on the eastern banks of the Euphrates in Deir Ezzor province.

The SDF have cornered IS into a patch of less than four square kilometres (around 1.5 square miles) in recent days.

- 'Big, big mistake' -

Eventually, she says, she picked up her children, and fled with her husband, and his second wife into SDF-held territory.

US-backed forces detained Lemke on Thursday.

Leonora claims Lemke worked mostly as a technician for IS.

"He makes technical stuff, computer stuff, repairs computer, mobiles," she says.

But investigations published in German newspapers portray Lemke, who is now believed to be 28, as an influential figure among foreign jihadists in Syria.

More than 36,000 people have fled the SDF assault on the so-called "Hajin pocket" since early December, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor that relies on a network of sources inside the country.

Among them, 3,200 have been detained as alleged jihadists.

On arid farmland near Baghouz, a group of men sit on the ground as SDF and coalition personnel stroll nearby.

Not far off, a group of women and their children -- most from neighbouring Iraq -- wait to be driven north to a Kurdish-held camp for the displaced.

After four years under a now near-extinct IS caliphate, Leonora says she wants to go home.

"I want to go back to Germany to my family, because I want my old life back," she says.

"Now I know that it was a big, big mistake."