03 Sep 14
Pranvera Zena issued her emotional appeal after her husband took their eight-year-old son with him when he went to fight in the war in Syria.

Nektar Zogjani
BIRN
Pristina

Syrian insurgents in Aleppo | Wikimedia Commons

“Arben, how is it possible that lessons about wars, tanks and jihad are better than lessons about nature, art, animals and sport?” Pranvera Zena wrote in a message to her husband posted on Facebook after he took their child to Syria.

Two months ago, the boy’s father Arben said he was taking the child for a weekend trip in the Rugova Mountains in Kosovo, but instead, he went to fight in Syria with the eight-year-old.

Zena said was shocked when she got a SMS from Arben telling her where they had gone. She told Kosovo public television that she was “willing to do anything” so her son could return to her and his friends at school.

She explained in the letter to her husband posted on Facebook that the family was happy until Arben tried to convince her to wear the hijab.

“I am aware that our life had good and bad days, especially since you started practicing religion and tried to convince me to cover myself,” she wrote.

She admitted however that she was aware that her husband wanted to go to Syria.

“You lied when you said you would not go to Syria without improving living conditions for me and Erion, and that you would not go without paying the debts to the bank,” she wrote.

“Repentance is part our tradition and also our Islamic belief, so be a man, Arben, and bring back my son,” she concluded the letter.

The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, a think-tank based in London, believes that some 300 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania, have joined radical Islamist groups fighting in Syria.

Kosovo police say that 16 people from the country have died in fighting in Syria and Iraq so far.

In August, police arrested 40 suspected Islamist militants who they believe were participating in the fighting in Syria and Iraq.