France repatriates children of jihadist fighters

The decision by France to repatriate five young children of jihadist fighters from Northern Syria last week was made with consideration for their “specific vulnerability” and in close cooperation with Western-backed Syrian Democratic forces, according to the French Foreign Ministry.

The children — aged five and under, who were either orphans or unaccompanied in the camps — were flown home in a military aircraft and placed under medical supervision, the ministry said. It is understood their mothers are dead and their fathers are either dead or missing.

The camps are housing women and children who fled the Islamic State group’s last bastion. It is seen as a controversial move as the fate of the children’s jihadist fathers is not known. France is not repatriating any adult French IS jihadists.

The situation of the children had gained urgency as the battle against IS nears an end in the jihadists’ last holdout in the Syrian village of Baghouz. A few hundred IS fighters and their families are still holding out in the village, under an intense siege by the SDF.

“The decision was taken in view of the situation of these very young children, who are particularly vulnerable,” the Foreign Ministry said, adding that the government was in touch with their French relatives.

France and other European governments have been agonizing over what to do with the wives and children of jihadists who have died fighting in Syria or Iraq or been taken prisoner there.

According to the UN children’s agency UNICEF, around 3,000 foreign children from 43 countries are housed at the Al-Hawl camp alone, which has taken in most of the people leaving IS’s self-proclaimed “caliphate” in recent weeks.

Russia has repatriated dozens of children and placed them with family members or foster parents, but countries such as Belgium and Britain have taken a hardline stance on jihadists’ families.

On Wednesday, French President Emmanuel Macron said his government was taking a “humanitarian” case-by-case approach to the children but that the government’s position on “adult fighters and jihadists who followed IS to the Middle East had not changed”. “They must be tried in the place they committed their crimes,” he said.

Up to 1,700 French nationals are thought to have traveled to Iraq and Syria to fight with the jihadists between 2014 and 2018, according to government figures. Some 300 are believed to have died in combat.

The UK is in a similar dilemma concerning jihadist mothers who want to return home.

Shamima Begum, who joined IS in Syria aged 15, begged to return home shortly before giving birth to a son, but the UK government refused to let her back.

She did not renounce her allegiance to IS and the government removed her citizenship. There was public sympathy for her plight when her baby died this month.

jonathan@mail.chinadailyuk.com