Arianna Pagani

Despite most of the European governments refused to take responsibility for kids and women, leaving them stuck in a stateless, unstable territory, some governments have decided to repatriate them. That's the case ofKosovo. Last April, with an unprecedented operation in Europe,Kosovohas repatriated 110 people from Syria, most of them wives and children of Isis jihadists. The youngest state in Europe has launched a unique rehabilitation project involving psychiatrists, family psychotherapists, imams and female preachers, called “Mualime”.

« I’m a kind of bridge between them [the women] and the society. I visit them and I help them to understand what is the real value of Islam and to live again a normal life », explains Sanie Gashi Mehmeti, a Muslim preacher from Lipjan, with more than ten years of experience in women’s prisons. « At the same time, I work with the society to help them to reintegrate those women and children », she says.

Valbona Tafilaj is the is the coordinating doctor for mental health under the government's rehabilitation and reintegration programme for women and children in their homes. «The program is long it changes according to each women. With some it will take years but since we started the initial psychotherapy,the most visible symptoms for everyone, either women and children sessions are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), backtracking and depression »

The repatriation and rehabilitation program, studied and developed for more than two years, is extremely complicated and has no guaranteed result, but « It is the best solution for this situation and is managed by the state », explains Mensur Hoti, director of the Department for Public Safety inKosovo. « The main reason we are doing this project are children. They are not guilty for being born there or because their parents brought them to Syria. If we leave them there, in ten years we will have another Isis or something similar ».