A reliable analysis carried out by NATO and KFOR marks the southern Serbian province as a transitional route for extremists from Islamic countries into Europe.
By Milovan Drecun
Translation: Bojan Ratkovic
[November, 2007
Since the arrival of international forces in http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=3496 Arabia in particular. To peer into that parallel world of Islamic extremism, Wahhabism, the Mujahedeen, and terrorists is very difficult and extremely dangerous.
Members of KFOR and UNMIK don’t peer into it themselves, or do so quite rarely. The knowledge of its existence is gained mostly through the information they receive from whistleblowers and through spying on certain Islamic extremists. The main headquarters of these extremists are infiltrated only by sporadic helicopter flights high above. Instead of publicly exposing these realities, UNMIK, under the directive of Joachim Riker, is trying to conceal information about the activities of Islamic extremists and terrorists and about their increasing strength so as not to upset the international community. News that Kosovo has become a strong base for http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2957 argument against independence for the southern Serbian province. The first step in exposing and understanding this parallel jihad universe in Kosovo is the reliable NATO and KFOR analysis entitled “Kosovo in focus of interest for Islamic extremists”, in which the southern Serbian province was, on the one hand, marked as a route for extremists who come from Islamic Gulf states into Europe using the weak border control in Kosovo as well as the virtually non-existent rule of law in the province. On the other hand, Kosovo was also marked as a potential recruiting ground for Islamic extremists. The large numbers of young Muslims living in abject poverty in Kosovo plays ideally into the hands of terrorist recruiters. The city of Prizren was identified as the primary center of Islamic extremism in Kosovo, and Ekrem Avdiju, from the southern part of Kosovksa Mitrovica, was identified as one of the main propagandists of extremist Islam in the province. The analysis also identified Islamic NGOs that are linked with extremism and that are operating in Kosovo.
Of particular importance was information provided by U.S. marine Thomas Gimble, top expert in the field of national security and former chief of the OSCE intelligence agency in Kosovo, where he resided from 1999 until 2004. In December of 2006, Gimble claimed that Kosovo has become the largest reservoir of potential jihadi terrorists in the world, and that al-Qaeda is investing massive amounts of money in the region. According to Gimble’s sources, Saudi Arabia, Iran, al-Qaeda and Hezbollah are jointly working on establishing an Islamist army in Europe made up of as many as 750.000 soldiers. The army is quickly arming itself with modern weaponry, and a select few recruits are being sent to private flight schools, particularly in Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. Recruiting centers are located in hundreds of newly-erect mosques throughout Kosovo, Bosnia, FYR of Macedonia and Albania, whose building expenses are covered by numerous Arab countries. ‘In Kosovo I came to the conclusion,’ Gimble says, ‘that initiatives for the spreading of radical Islam are much larger and more complicated than I could have possibly imagined.’
According to the OSCE intelligence sources that Gimble revealed, the Islamic terrorist web in Kosovo has attained an enormous operating capacity. Al-Qaeda is extremely interested in the region because the Muslim families are large and teenagers make up half of Kosovo’s population, making Kosovo a prime reservoir for the recruitment of young Mujahedeen. The Pakistani method of indoctrinating and training terrorists in mosques and religious schools has been exported into Albania, Kosovo, south-central Serbia, FYR of Macedonia, and Montenegro. In Kosovo, Arab humanitarian organizations provide help to the residents of a particular village only if the villagers consent to build a new mosque there. The mosque’s Imam then receives direct orders from the Saudi intelligence agency and the preachers there often double as military instructors. These instructors are Iranian and Iraqi military figures as well as members of al-Qaeda that fought in Afghanistan against the US. The mosques attract young men of 15 or 16 who later enroll into religious madrasas where combat is an integral part of the curriculum.
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/ratkovic/004.shtml