The Balkans - a hub of worldwide terrorist network

for 650 soldiers; the Kosovo-based Albanian paramilitary group targeted included a Wahhabi sympathizer who had been part of a foreign-sponsored plot to violently overthrow Macedonia’s Islamic leadership two years earlier





The December 2007 arrests in Germany of several extremists, including an ethnic Turk, planning attacks on German public transportation network





The January 2008 Turkish police operations against alleged members of former terrorist group, Turkish Hizbollah, in connection with prior bombings





The March 2008 arrest of five Wahhabi extremists in Bosnia, captured with weapons and other terrorist supplies, who were planning attacks against Catholic worshippers on Easter

Of even greater concern to many Western and regional terrorism experts in the long-term is also one of the most difficult to predict: the impact of foreign Islamic funding and proselytization on existing Balkan Muslim societies. Calculating this risk involves comparing a list of variables which include urbanization, economic development, demographic trends and the question of war, peace and Western intervention in the wider Muslim world as motivating factors in group and individual behavior. A short list of the social trends and incidents witnessed in the region, and pointing to an increasing fundamentalization of Islamic practice, might include:

The ongoing trend, witnessed everywhere in the region, towards unrestrained construction of new mosques in a Saudi (as opposed to traditional Ottoman) style, especially in areas of high public visibility or near Christian-majority areas

The rise, everywhere in the Balkans, of a new generation of non-governmental organizations which utilize the Western language of ‘human rights’ to aggressively and surreptitiously advance an Islamist agenda

The participation of Muslims in Macedonia and Serbian Sandzak in the ‘cartoon protests’ against the Danish cartoons depicting Prophet Muhammad

The creation of a very active and extensive publishing and distribution system for Islamist propaganda in the Balkans, including videotapes and other material glorifying jihad; these are also purveyed on a growing number of jihadist websites in local languages

Growing antagonism in certain towns in Albania between Christians and Muslims, threatening to undermine the traditional ethnic-based unity of Albanians

The violent attempt of foreign-funded Wahhabis to attack, threaten and depose the moderate leaders of Macedonia’s official Islamic Community in summer 2005

Death threats from Muslim groups against apparently ‘non-observant’ Albanian Muslims in Kosovo

A Wahhabi attempted ‘exorcism’ ...