DUSHANBE -- Tajik authorities are deciding where to place the repatriated children of citizens who joined the "Islamic State" (IS) and went to the Middle East, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL)'s Tajik service reported Tuesday (July 2).
The 84 children were among those who arrived en masse on a special flight from Iraq on April 30. Their parents are either dead or in Iraqi prisons.
A Tajik governmental commission this week determined whether they would join their relatives or be sent to children's homes and boarding schools, reported RFE/RL.
It did not report how many children the commission assigned to their own families or to institutions.
The government will make decisions on all such returnee children in two days, said Shodikhon Jamshed, deputy health and social protection minister.
The authorities' concerns include relatives' ability to support the children, who number as many as five for some families; the children's psychological state; and proper identification of children who have acquired as many as "three or four names" in their wanderings, he said.
Since 2014, about 1,900 Tajik citizens went to Syria and Iraq, and about 300 of them are known to have died there, according to the government.
