When Omar left home in 2013, his parents thought he was going to help out at a refugee camp for the victims of Syria's brutal civil war. But the soft-spoken Danish student wasn't on a humanitarian mission -- he had joined the ranks of a jihadist brigade fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But Omar -- whose name has been changed to conceal his identity -- soon realized that what he was seeing on the battlefield was different from what he thought he'd signed up for.

"The place I was in, there was some chaos between different groups and there was violence between different groups," Omar, who is in his early twenties, told CNN. "I went there to fight Bashar al-Assad and not to fight other Islamic groups."

Omar didn't want to be a part of that. Fed up with the infighting, he decided to return home.

In 2013, a U.N.-sponsored panel declared Denmark the world's happiest place to live, citing a number of factors including life expectancy, social support and the freedom to make life choices. But the wealthy Scandinavian country is also becoming known for something altogether more worrying -- one of Europe's highest rates of jihadi fighters.

At least 100 Danes are believed to have left the country to fight in Syria and Iraq. Of 25 countries CNN surveyed last month, only three had a higher proportion of Muslims leaving to fight.

The country is facing a dilemma: what to do when these fighters come home?

Aarhus, Denmark's second largest city, thinks it has the answer -- a controversial program for rehabilitating jihadis returning home from Syria that doesn't necessarily involve jail time.

Here's how the program works: Any returning fighter is eligible for help getting a job, a house, an education, and psychological counseling -- just like any other Danish citizen.

Those returning must be screened by police, and anyone found to have committed a crime will be put through the courts and possibly prison.

The program does not try to change the fundamentalist beliefs of the returning fighters -- as long as they don't advocate violence.

Aarhus seems to have an especially acute problem with foreign fighters. More than 30 young people -- including Omar -- left the city last year to fight in Syria. Sixteen of them have since returned.

Omar was pursuing an engineering degree at university before he went to Syria. He has been there twice since.

Omar said he wasn't nervous about coming back home. Unlike in some other countries, it is not a crime in Denmark to fight in Syria.

"It wasn't illegal to fight in Syria unless you fought for a group that was a terrorist organization," Omar explained. "It was not a big deal for me to come back and get back to the daily life I had before I left."

Omar knows the people who run the de-radicalization program, but he hasn't joined it because he doesn't think he needs help reintegrating into society. But some of friends have joined the program and are satisfied with it.

Police here say it's a Danish solution that's not particularly special -- it's simply a crime prevention program with a focus on jihadis.

"We can't just put young people in custody because they plan to go to Syria," explained Aarhus Police Commissioner Jorgen Ilum. "It is not illegal according to Danish law to go to Syria, but we could try to persuade the young people not to go to Syria."

(CNN)