More than 400 people from Kosovo joined terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq in 2017, the US State Department said in its Country Reports on Terrorism 2017, adding that 74 of them died there and more than 130 returned home.

The authors of the report said that Kosovo continued fighting the growing threat of terrorism with the government implementing a new counter-terrorism strategy and an updated action plan to combat violent extremism.

Kosovo's Ministry of Justice and Islamic Community have signed an agreement on engaging imams to help radicalised Muslims who have been arrested or jailed for terrorism.

Kosovo Justice Minister Abelard Tahiri on Friday signed a deal with the body representing the country's Muslim clerics, the BIK, on deradicalising prisoners charged or convicted of terrorism.

"We already have a proposal from the Islamic Community and we expect they will help in deradicalisation of those who have returned from the wars in Syria and Iraq," Tahiri said.

UNDP representative in Kosovo Andrew Russell has been a guest on the Slobodno Srpski talk show, produced by the New Press and Media Center in Caglavica.

He spoke with host Budimir Nincic about UNDP's recent report about citizens of Kosovo who joined extremist groups in Syria, to say that no such cases had been recorded in the past two years.

Russell recalled that 335 citizens of Kosovo, mostly young and unemployed, went to Syria between 2012 and 2015.

KFOR Commander General Salvatore Couci told the Vienna daily Kronen Zeitung that situation currently is "very safe".

"It depends much on whether people want change here. Primarily youth does it," Couci says.

To the conclusion that there are many fighters from the Balkans in the Islamic state and a questions of the daily what KFOR can do on this issue, the Italian general says that it is true that Kosovo has a large number of "foreign fighters", i.e. returnees from the war in Syria.

335 citizens from Kosovo are registered in Syria, including 54 women and 27 children, the UNDP report on factors contributing to join radical networks in Syria and other war zones said, KoSSev portal reported.

Those who are going there are between 18 and 25 years old, while 72 percent are unemployed. According to official figures, 52 persons from Kosovo died in a war in Syria.

A draft strategy developed by the government says fighters coming back from the Middle East, as Islamic State collapses, pose the next major challenge to the country's security.

The Kosovo government’s new National Strategy against Terrorism and Action Plan 2018-2022 says fighters returning from conflict zones in the Middle East, as the so-called Islamic State, ISIS, collapses, are the next challenge in the country’s battle against the threat of terrorism.

Report published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs criticizes media coverage of radicalization in Kosovo, claiming it both exaggerated the issue and simplified motives.

While international coverage of Kosovar foreign fighters in Syria managed to bring the issue of radicalization to international attention, quite often media reports were simplistic and lacked nuance, a new report published by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, NUPI, claims.

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Jovo Martinovic BIRN Podgorica

Some jihadis from the Balkans who travelled to the Syrian conflict zone to support Islamic State told BIRN that they returned home because they became disenchanted with the brutality, poverty and oppression.

Hilmi, an ethnic Bosniak, travelled to Syria hoping that life in Islamic State’s‘caliphate would be an ideal religious environment - but he managed to escape 16 months later, disillusioned with what he had found there.