Radical Islamism and Islamic terrorism in the Balkans

This article includes Radical Islamism and Islamic terrorism in the Balkans. While there is a significant community of Muslims in the Balkans, Wahhabism only began to spread after the Yugoslav Wars. There is an increase in incidents involving radical Islamism in the Balkans since the 1990s.^[1]

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Background

In 1990, Alija Izetbegović was the president of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA).^[2] The Party won the November 1990 elections in Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[2] During the Bosnian War, Bosniaks (Bosnian Muslims) received financial aid from Iran and Saudi Arabia, and foreign fighters numbering up to 4,000 waged jihad in the war.^[2] There were several strict Muslim special units in the ARBiH, such as the 7th Muslim Brigade, Black Swans, Green Berets, Green Legion, El Mujahid, and Patriotic League.^[3] The Bosnian mujahideen (El Mujahid) was made up of foreign fighters and radical Bosniaks.^[2] In 1995, Izetbegović invited the jihadists to leave the country in return for American peacekeepers, leading to his denouncement from other Islamists.^[4]

In 1995, veterans of the Bosnian mujahideen established the Active Islamic Youth, regarded the most dangerous of the Islamist groups in Bosnia and Herzegovina.^[5]

Incidents

• A terrorist attack occurred in Mostar in 1997, and the executor was Handala and his two associates, also linked with the SHC. They managed to escape, but Handala was arrested after the September 11 attacks and detained in the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.^[6] The same year, an employer of the SHC, Saber Lahman, was arrested under suspicion that he planned to carry out an attack on the USA Embassy in Sarajevo. He was convicted, but was pardoned later after he served two thirds of punishment in prison. He was arrested again in 2002 for participation in al Qaeda's plan for Bosnia and Herzegovina and was sent to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.
• On Christmas Eve 2002, Muamer Topalović, a Wahhabist, killed three Bosnian Croat returnees in their home.^[7]
• A gunman, a Wahhabi Islamist, fired on the embassy on 28 October 2011, resulting in one local policeman guarding the embassy being wounded in the arm by the gunman, while the shooter was wounded by a police sniper.^[8] On April 24, 2012, Mevlid Jašarević, 23, a citizen of Serbia, was indicted by a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia on charges of attempted murder and other violations in connection with his alleged machine gun attack on the United States Embassy, Sarajevo, on October 28, 2011.^[9] A Bosnian court sentenced him on 6 December 2012 to 18 years in prison.
• Husein Bosnić "Bilal", a Bosnian Muslim cleric and unofficial leader of the Salafist movement in Bosnia, was arrested in September 2014 and is currently on trial for recruiting ISIS fighters.^[10] In 2013 he called for an non-Muslim tax on Serbs and Croats, modeled after Ottoman practises.^[11] In his various khutbas, he also advocated the "victory of Islam", promoting war and bloodshed. Moreover, in 2012 he called for other Muslims to join the Jihad and to defend Islam, for which he was briefly arrested and soon released.^[12]
• Zvornik police station shooting
• Operation Ruben
• 2015 Sarajevo shooting

Organisations

• Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and Herzegovina
• Bosnian mujahideen

Kosovo

• Islamist volunteers in the Kosovo Liberation Army from Western Europe of ethnic Albanian, Turkish, and North African origin, were organized by Islamist leaders in Western Europe allied to Bin Laden and Zawahiri.^[13] Some 175 Yemeni mujahideen arrived in early May 1998.^[13]
• Islamist arrests in Kosovo: The Kosovo Police arrested some 40 suspected Islamist militants on 11 August 2014.^[14]
• By April 2015, a total of 232 Kosovo Albanians had gone to Syria to fight with Islamist groups, mostly commonly the Islamic State.^[15] Forty of these are from the town of Ferizaj (Srbica), according to Kosovo police reports.^[16] As of September 2014, a total of 48 ethnic Albanians have been killed fighting in Syria.^[17]

Republic of Macedonia

• Smilkovci lake killings (12 April 2012), five Macedonians killed by Islamic fundamentalists
• Operation Mountain Storm (2007), raid on Albanian wahhabists and separatists

Croatia

• 1995 Rijeka bombing

References

Sources

• Ina Merdjanova (2013). Rediscovering the Umma: Muslims in the Balkans between Nationalism and Transnationalism. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-996404-8. 
• Iztok Prezelj (2008). The Fight Against Terrorism and Crisis Management in the Western Balkans. IOS Press. ISBN 978-1-58603-823-6. 
• Christopher Deliso (2007). The Coming Balkan Caliphate: The Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-99525-6. 
• Brian R. Farmer (2010). Radical Islam in the West: Ideology and Challenge. McFarland. ISBN 978-0-7864-6210-0. 
• D Gibas-Krzak (2013). "Contemporary Terrorism in the Balkans: A Real Threat to Security in Europe". The Journal of Slavic Military Studies. Taylor & Francis. doi:10.1080/13518046.2013.779861. 
• Steven Woehrel (November 2010). Islamic Terrorism and the Balkans. DIANE Publishing. pp. 8–. ISBN 978-1-4379-3832-6.