BEIRUT– Kurdish-led authorities in northeastern Syria on Thursday handed over 50 women and children — relatives of Islamic State militants — to a delegation from Tajikistan for repatriation home.
The 17 women and 33 children, all citizens of Tajikistan, were handed over to a delegation led by Tajikistan’s ambassador to Kuwait, Zubaydullo Zubaydzoda, Syrian Kurdish officials said.
After the Islamic State group declared its caliphate in much of Syria and Iraq in June 2014, thousands of foreigners, including hundreds from Tajikistan, came to Syria to join IS and live with their families in the so-called caliphate.
After the defeat of IS, most of the militants’ relatives were held in the sprawling al-Hol camp and the smaller Roj camp in northeastern Syria.
The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said the women and children were taken to Qamishli airport, where they boarded a plane “to reunite with their families” in Tajikistan on Thursday.
The repatriation came almost a month after an attack on a concert hall in suburban Moscow that killed 144 people. The massacre was carried out by four alleged attackers who were arrested and identified as Tajik citizens. IS claimed responsibility and said four of its fighters had attacked the lounge in Russia.
In recent years, thousands of people, mostly Iraqis, have been repatriated from al-Hol, which is home to tens of thousands, mostly wives and children of IS militants, but also supporters of the militant group.
Heavily guarded al-Hol, overseen by Kurdish-led Syrian forces allied with the United States, was once home to 73,000 people, mostly Syrians and Iraqis. In recent years, the population has dropped to about 43,000 people, according to Sheikhmous Ahmad, a Kurdish official who oversees camps for displaced people in northeastern Syria.
Tajikistan has said that at the height of IS, more than 1,000 of the country’s fighters joined extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, including IS. One of the most prominent was Gulmurod Khalimov, a Tajik special forces officer who defected and joined IS in Syria in 2015.
Khalimov rose through the ranks of IS to become one of its top military commanders. In September 2017, the Russian military said he had been killed in a Russian airstrike in Syria’s eastern province of Deir el-Zour, bordering Iraq.
Thursday’s repatriation of Tajik citizens is not the first. Last May, 104 Tajik citizens were returned to their homes, including 31 women and 73 children. And the previous year, 146 women and children were repatriated.