With US support, Kosovo on Friday facilitated the return of 110 of its citizens from Syria, mainly family members of Islamic State fighters. Four were immediately arrested on suspicion of terrorism, while Kosovo Kosovo authorities have begun interviewing several women from the group under suspicion of being part of terrorist groups fighting in Syria.

A 24-year-old Bosnian citizen was also sent back to his home country from Syria in a separate deportation on March 20. He has been charged with organising a terrorist group, the illegal establishment of and association with foreign paramilitary or para-police formations, and terrorism, the Bosnian prosecution announced.

BIRN this month also identified at least 85 children born to ethnic Albanian women from Albania, Kosovo and North Macedonia under the Islamic State, now stuck in a Kurdish-run camp in Syria. Their families in the Balkans are pleading with authorities for their safe return.

BIRN has tried unsuccessfully for two weeks to get any information from the Serbian Interior Ministry regarding the Serbian women in Syria.

An official in the Serbian Foreign Ministry, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the ministry knew of around 20 Serbian women in Syria, but said the camps were “under the competence” of the United Nations. “We haven’t had any contact with them [the women],” the source said.

In Novi Pazar, Esad Kundakovic, whose son died fighting in Syria in 2013 and is in touch with the families of the women still stuck in Syria, said the families needed to join forces to bring pressure on the Serbian state to act.

“Now, every family is searching for a solution on its own, through personal contacts,” said Kundakovic, who since his son’s death has worked on preventing other Serbians from travelling to fight in Syria.

“The families are ready to accept them back, they only need support from the state and the community,” he told BIRN.

“States from the Balkans are not ready to accept these people. We, as the community, are not ready.”

The authorities, he said, must also think about the children of these women born in Syria.

“First, a system must be created, laws adopted. Someone needs to start acting.”

Children ‘must be saved’