More Than 200 Kosovars Join ISIL in Iraq, Syria

Over 200 citizens from Kosovo left the country for the Middle East to join the terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria, including the ISIL, the Kosovar Center for Security Studies (KCSS) said. The KCSS report showed that by mid-January 2015, at least 232 citizens from Kosovo left the country to join the most extremist groups in Iraq and Syria.

There are 232 confirmed cases of Kosovo citizens fighting for radical groups, including the ISIL, according to the report. The first Kosovar, who was killed in Syria was Naman Demolli from Pristina, whose death was announced in a video uploaded to YouTube in November 2012.

In September, a senior EU official announced that the number of Europeans joining the ISIL terrorists in Syria and Iraq has surged to about 3,000 from 2,000. EU Counter-Terrorism Chief Gilles de Kerchove said the flow of Europeans may have been boosted by the ISIL declaration in June of a “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq.

“My own assessment is that we’re about 3,000,” he said, when asked how many European fighters have flocked to the ISIL cause in Syria and Iraq. “The flow has not been dried up and therefore possibly the proclamation of the caliphate has had some impact,” de Kerchove said.

The European fighters, he said, come mainly from France, Britain, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden and Denmark but a few come from Spain, Italy, Ireland and now Austria. “Even a country like Austria I think has now foreign fighters, which I was not aware of before,” he added.

The EU counter-terrorism coordinator nonetheless said he would check his figures with those of European security service chiefs in the next couple of weeks, saying their numbers may be more conservative.