Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-100a-The Deep Battle against the West

C de Waart; CdW Intelligence to Rent [email protected] In Confidence

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-100a-The Deep Battle against the West

A specter is haunting Europe—fear of the impact hundreds of European volunteers to the Syrian jihad might have on their home countries once they return. Perhaps nowhere is the potential danger of this Syrian blowback greater than in the Balkans. According to one estimate, Bosnia has provided more volunteers per capita for the Syrian jihad than any other country in Europe, and various reports suggest there are probably more than five hundred jihadis from southeastern Europe now in Syria.

Cees: Previous in my 2016 Part 17-100: Jhadist Threat Persists in Kosovo and Albania Despite Government Efforts Part 17-99: A "large scale, spectacular attack in Europe or the US": this is the prediction of the Netherlands' Intelligence Service (AIVD). And, they say, it could happen very soon.Part 17-92: The Black Flag In The Balkans: The Islamic State Has Spread To Bosnia

Let me recall: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2015 Part 17-32-The Deep Battle against the West It's only a matter of time before Daesh (ISIL) uses the Balkans to launch attacks across the rest of Europe . The Balkans are becoming an important transit route for ISIL allowing fighters to travel between Western Europe and the Middle East. There are several hundred fighters from the Balkans fighting in Iraq and Syria. These foreign fighters have even formed a so-called Balkans Battalion for ISIL

As Bosnia and Kosovo attempt to work through a bloody recent history, the introduction of extremist Islam (especially Saudi-backed), institutional weakness, and economic distress, ISIS and other militant groups have established recruiting efforts within both countries.

An Islamic State propaganda video last year entitled “Honor is in Jihad: a message to the people of the Balkans” described the region as a “new front” for jihad in Europe.“Black days are coming to you,” a Kosovan fighter warns the governments of Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia. “You will be terrorised.”

This is Wahhabism coming into our society,” “The first thing the Wahhabis do is to take members of our congregation, who understand Islam in the traditional Kosovo way that we had for generations, and try to draw them away from this understanding,” “Once they get them away from the traditional congregation, then they start bombarding them with radical thoughts and ideas.”

“The main goal of their activity is to create conflict between people,” he said. “This first creates division, and then hatred, and then it can come to what happened in Arab countries, where war starts because of these conflicting ideas.” - Mr. Bilalli trained at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, and as a student he had been warned by a Kosovar professor to guard against the cultural differences of Wahhabism

Which Islamic country celebrates as a national hero a 15th-century Christian who battled Muslim invaders?

1The farther back you can look, the farther forward you are likely to see. –Winston ChurchillCees de Waart: CdW Intelligence to Rent Page 1 of 16

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Which Islamic country is so pro-American it has a statue of Bill Clinton and a women’s clothing store named “Hillary” on Bill Klinton Boulevard?

Which Islamic country has had more citizens go abroad to fight for the Islamic State per capita than any other in Europe?

The answer to each question is Kosovo, in southeastern Europe — and therein lies a cautionary tale. Whenever there is a terrorist attack by Muslim extremists, we look to our enemies like the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. But perhaps we should also look to our “friends,” like Saudi Arabia.For decades, Saudi Arabia has recklessly financed and promoted a harsh and intolerant Wahhabi version of Islam around the world in a way that is, quite predictably, producing terrorists. And there’s no better example of this Saudi recklessness than in the Balkans.Kosovo and Albania have been models of religious moderation and tolerance, and as the Clinton statue attests, Kosovars revere the United States and Britain for averting a possible genocide by Serbs in 1999 (there are also many Kosovar teenagers named Tony Blair!). Yet Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries poured money into the new nation over the last 17 years and nurtured religious extremism in a land where originally there was little.The upshot is that, according to the Kosovo government, 300 Kosovars have traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, mostly to join the Islamic State. As my colleague Carlotta Gall noted in a pathbreaking article about radicalization here, Saudi money has transformed a once-tolerant Islamic society into a pipeline for jihadists… Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism.

The origins of the militant Islamist movement in southeastern Europe can most directly be tied to the life and work of Bosnia’s late Islamist president, Alija Izetbegovic

Bosnia and Kosovo are two of the biggest exporters of jihadists joining the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria) from the Balkans.

When war broke out in Bosnia in the early 1990s, the ultra-conservative Sunni Islam movement known as Salafism was brought to Bosnia “by Saudi-sponsored mujahedeen fighters mobilized to fight alongside the drastically under-armed and under-funded Muslim Bosniaks against both Serbs and Croats,” explains Cipher Brief expert Tanja Dramac Jiries.

Economic instability and radical rhetoric can foment extremist ideology. Indeed Balkan Investigative Reporting Network investigators recently found that since 2012, at least 200 Bosnian men are believed to have fought with jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq

Kosovo’s story of extremist Islamic infiltration is similar to Bosnia’s.Besiana Xharra, a journalist based in Kosovo and a fellow at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, reports more than a hundred unlicensed mosques sprang up all over Kosovo in a matter of a decade.

Moreover, Shtuni says the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo and Chechnya (SJRC) – whose activities have been linked to al-Qaeda – “reportedly built ninety-eight primary and secondary schools in rural Kosovo in the first few years after the war.”

Authorities say around 300 Kosovans and up to 120 Albanians have left to wage jihad in Syria — placing them among the most affected per capita by the jihadist phenomenon.


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Exporting Jihad: Bosnia and KosovoJUNE 24, 2016 Bosnia and Kosovo are two of the biggest exporters of jihadists joining the Islamic State (ISIS) and al-Nusra Front (al-Qaeda’s affiliate in Syria) from the Balkans. As The Cipher Brief reported last month, legacies of the Communist era and the wars of the 1990s – presence of foreign fighters, economic and physical destruction, a lack of funding to rebuild, and the near eradication of moderate Islamic institutions – paved the way for Islamic extremist groups to establish a foothold in both countries. Now, ISIS recruiters are targeting Bosnia and Kosovo, and many Bosnians and Kosovars have left to fight in Syria and Iraq.

Bosnia When war broke out in Bosnia in the early 1990s, the ultra-conservative Sunni Islam movement known as Salafism was brought to Bosnia “by Saudi-sponsored mujahedeen fighters mobilized to fight alongside the drastically under-armed and under-funded Muslim Bosniaks against both Serbs and Croats,” explains Cipher Brief expert Tanja Dramac Jiries. Some of these foreign fighters received citizenship and stayed in Bosnia after the war, says Adrian Shtuni, an expert on violent extremism in the Balkans.

Jiries notes that today, “Extremist communities [offer] an attractive refuge to young men and women deprived of any opportunity for economic prosperity.” The number of those lacking economic wealth – and potentially turning toward extremist groups for both sociological and monetary reasons – continues to grow in Bosnia.

A report released this month by Bosnia-based think tank Social Overview Service finds the Bosnian economic model unsustainable due to “budget deficits that are growing on almost all administrative levels” and a “serious liquidity crisis.” This, according to the report, is delaying salaries, pensions, and social benefits and causing deep unrest within society.In addition, Bosnia is gearing up for local elections in October, which means polarizing pre-election campaigns have already begun. Jiries explains, “Local and general elections have become the ideal stage for nationalist leaders to not only remind citizens of the dangers that permeate their country, but also to lay out their plans for protecting their respective ethnic community – be it Croat, Serb, or Bosniak.”

Economic instability and radical rhetoric can foment extremist ideology. Indeed Balkan Investigative Reporting Network investigators recently found that since 2012, at least 200 Bosnian men are believed to have fought with jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq. Bosnia’s State Investigation and Protection Agency puts that number at 280 and reports about 120 of those are still fighting with ISIS or al-Nusra Front.The U.S. State Department, in its recently released 2015 report on terrorism, notes the large number of Bosnians traveling to Syria and Iraq to join terrorist groups. But what may be even more worrying is that 50 Bosnians are believed to have returned home. And Bosnia’s complex security system of 15 different police agencies, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Court means coordination and intelligence sharing is difficult, if not non-existent.

One positive: The State Department report praises Bosnia’s 2015 Strategy for Preventing and Combating Terrorism, the first of its kind for a Balkan nation. Plus, in


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April this year, CIA director John Brennan stopped in Sarajevo to discuss this issue of weak intelligence sharing and the problems it poses to fighting terrorism.

Kosovo Kosovo’s story of extremist Islamic infiltration is similar to Bosnia’s. During the 1998 – 1999 Kosovo war, foreign fighters flocked to the country to participate, although in lesser numbers than in Bosnia. As the conflict came to an end, a handful of Saudi-funded faith-based charities set up shop in Kosovo, a predominantly Muslim nation, says Shtuni. “Besides providing much needed humanitarian aid, building schools, hospitals, orphanages, and community centers, they also erected Wahhabi mosques,” he explains.Besiana Xharra, a journalist based in Kosovo and a fellow at the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, reports more than a hundred unlicensed mosques sprang up all over Kosovo in a matter of a decade.Moreover, Shtuni says the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo and Chechnya (SJRC) – whose activities have been linked to al-Qaeda – “reportedly built ninety-eight primary and secondary schools in rural Kosovo in the first few years after the war.”

However, Cipher Brief expert Haki Abazi, program director for the Western Balkans at Rockefeller Brothers Fund, notes that institutions such as mosques or schools don’t necessarily mean followers. Saudi efforts to introduce radical Islam into Kosovo, he says, have proved largely unfruitful. “New mosques built by wealthy individuals from Saudi Arabia stand empty. Saudi Arabia’s indoctrination efforts are producing nothing but disappointment for their investors,” he told The Cipher Brief.

Still, according to Cipher Brief expert Anita Rice, the Kosovo government believes at least 300 Kosovars have fought with jihadi groups in Syria and Iraq since 2012, with around 70 still fighting there and 130 who have returned home. And Shtuni claims that among the Balkans and greater European countries, Kosovo has the highest rate of recruitment for violent jihad relative to its population size.

The country’s economic woes and weak governance do not help. Kosovo has the highest rate of unemployment in the region, and it has been “struggling to establish proper accountable democratic institutions,” says Abazi.

Kosovo’s institutions for combatting terrorism – including investigative and prosecutorial apparatuses – remain weak as well. The State Department 2015 terrorism report notes Kosovo has limited capacity, resources, and experience to handle terrorism cases effectively, although Kosovo’s efforts to track and prosecute terror suspects are a positive sign, the report states.As Bosnia and Kosovo attempt to work through a bloody recent history, the introduction of extremist Islam (especially Saudi-backed), institutional weakness, and economic distress, ISIS and other militant groups have established recruiting efforts within both countries. But the governments and their citizens are fighting back. Abazi points out, “In the last six months, not a single case of recruitment by ISIS or other extremist groups has been recorded in Kosovo.”That does not mean the international community should believe the issue will fade away without help. Indeed, as Albania’s Former Defense Minister Fatmir Mediu told The Cipher Brief last month, the Balkans will need greater support from the U.S. and the EU in building institutional capacity and regional cooperation. - Kaitlin Lavinder is an International Producer with The Cipher Brief.

Exporting Jihad: Bosnia and KosovoJUNE 24, 2016 Three years ago, Albert and Yassin left their homes in Kosovo and Albania to wage jihad in Syria. Now they’re back, swelling the ranks of jihadists in a region the Islamic State has called a “new front” in Europe. Yassin, 30, who now works as a halal butcher in a downtrodden suburb of Albania’s capital Tirana, refused to give his real name out of fear of repercussions.


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Wounded in Syria’s battered northern city of Aleppo in 2014, the father-of-three told AFP he left “to help the Syrian people” and hopes Allah will recognise his sacrifice, even if he did not die a martyr.Albert Berisha, a 29-year-old political science graduate, says he took an “emotional decision” to leave for the Middle East “after seeing on TV and social media what was happening in Syria.” Berisha has not escaped the attention of the authorities however: Last month, he was sentenced to three and a half years behind bars.Authorities say around 300 Kosovans and up to 120 Albanians have left to wage jihad in Syria — placing them among the most affected per capita by the jihadist phenomenon. Around 30 combatants have returned to Albania and 120 to Kosovo, according to government estimates. Albanian religious affairs analyst Ermir Gjinishi warned that “if we do not integrate them back into society, if we marginalise them, former combatants returning to the country could … be provoked into extreme actions.”Muslims in Kosovo and Albania have historically been liberal but on the streets of Pristina, women in full veils and bearded men with trousers cropped at the ankles hint at a latent radicalisation. Ilir Kulla, former head of Albania’s “State Committee of Cults”, said would-be jihadist recruiters find their job made easier by “the economic situation, a (low) level of education and Internet brainwashing.” According to World Bank figures, the average monthly wage in Kosovo is a measly $330 (290 euros), slightly higher in Albania at $370.And while money is not the main driving force behind the departures for Syria, an Albanian police officer said a fighter in an IS unit would earn more than double that and $2,000 as a commander.

Visar Duriqi, a Kosovo-based expert in religion, noted: “Kosovo was economically devastated in the war and its economic recovery is still slow, which is creating many social problems.”The authorities in the region are fighting back and claiming some success.“No Kosovan has joined a terrorist group in the past six months,” said president Hashim Thaci, who told AFP in February he had himself received death threats from Islamic State. Albania’s deputy interior minister Elona Gjebrea said “no Albanian had left the country” for Syria since 2014.

Three years ago, Albert and Yassin left their homes in Kosovo and Albania to wage jihad in Syria. Now they’re back, swelling the ranks of jihadists in a region the Islamic State has called a “new front” in Europe.

Authorities say around 300 Kosovans and up to 120 Albanians have left to wage jihad in Syria — placing them among the most affected per capita by the jihadist phenomenon.Around 30 combatants have returned to Albania and 120 to Kosovo, according to government estimates.An Islamic State propaganda video last year entitled “Honor is in Jihad: a message to the people of the Balkans” described the region as a “new front” for jihad in Europe.“Black days are coming to you,” a Kosovan fighter warns the governments of Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia. “You will be terrorised.”

“This is Wahhabism coming into our society,” “The first thing the Wahhabis do is to take members of our congregation, who understand Islam in the traditional Kosovo way that we had for generations, and try to draw them away from this understanding,” “Once they get them away from the traditional congregation, then they start bombarding them with radical thoughts and ideas.”

“The main goal of their activity is to create conflict between people,” he said. “This first creates division, and then hatred, and then it can come to what happened in Arab countries, where war starts because of these conflicting ideas.”- Mr. Bilalli trained at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, and as a student he had been warned by a Kosovar professor to guard against


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the cultural differences of Wahhabism

PRISTINA, Kosovo — Every Friday, just yards from a statue of Bill Clinton with arm aloft in a cheery wave, hundreds of young bearded men make a show of kneeling to pray on the sidewalk outside an improvised mosque in a former furniture store.The mosque is one of scores built here with Saudi government money and blamed for spreading Wahhabism — the conservative ideology dominant in Saudi Arabia — in the 17 years since an American-led intervention wrested tiny Kosovo from Serbian oppression.Since then — much of that time under the watch of American officials — Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for jihadists.Kosovo now finds itself, like the rest of Europe, fending off the threat of radical Islam. Over the last two years, the police have identified 314 Kosovars — including two suicide bombers, 44 women and 28 children — who have gone abroad to join the Islamic State, the highest number per capita in Europe.They were radicalized and recruited, Kosovo investigators say, by a corps of extremist clerics and secretive associations funded by Saudi Arabia and other conservative Arab gulf states using an obscure, labyrinthine network of donations from charities, private individuals and government ministries.“They promoted political Islam,” said Fatos Makolli, the director of Kosovo’s counterterrorism police. “They spent a lot of money to promote it through different programs mainly with young, vulnerable people, and they brought in a lot of Wahhabi and Salafi literature. They brought these people closer to radical political Islam, which resulted in their radicalization.”After two years of investigations, the police have charged 67 people, arrested 14 imams and shut down 19 Muslim organizations for acting against the Constitution, inciting hatred and recruiting for terrorism. The most recent sentences, which included a 10-year prison term, were handed down on Friday.It is a stunning turnabout for a land of 1.8 million people that not long ago was among the most pro-American Muslim societies in the world. Americans were welcomed as liberators after leading months of NATO bombing in 1999 that spawned an independent Kosovo. After the war, United Nations officials administered the territory and American forces helped keep the peace. The Saudis arrived, too, bringing millions of euros in aid to a poor and war-ravaged land.

But where the Americans saw a chance to create a new democracy, the Saudis saw a new land to spread Wahhabism.“There is no evidence that any organization gave money directly to people to go to Syria,” Mr. Makolli said. “The issue is they supported thinkers who promote violence and jihad in the name of protecting Islam.”Kosovo now has over 800 mosques, 240 of them built since the war and blamed for helping indoctrinate a new generation in Wahhabism. They are part of what moderate imams and officials here describe as a deliberate, long-term strategy by Saudi Arabia to reshape Islam in its image, not only in Kosovo but around the world.Saudi diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks in 2015 reveal a system of funding for mosques, Islamic centers and Saudi-trained clerics that spans Asia, Africa and Europe. In New Delhi alone, 140 Muslim preachers are listed as on the Saudi Consulate’s payroll.All around Kosovo, families are grappling with the aftermath of years of proselytizing by Saudi-trained preachers. Some daughters refuse to shake hands with or talk to male relatives. Some sons have gone off to jihad. Religious vigilantes have threatened — or committed — violence against academics, journalists and politicians.


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The Balkans, Europe’s historical fault line, have yet to heal from the ethnic wars of the 1990s. But they are now infected with a new intolerance, moderate imams and officials in the region warn.How Kosovo and the very nature of its society was fundamentally recast is a story of a decades-long global ambition by Saudi Arabia to spread its hard-line version of Islam — heavily funded and systematically applied, including with threats and intimidation by followers.

The Missionaries ArriveAfter the war ended in 1999, Idriz Bilalli, the imam of the central mosque in Podujevo, welcomed any help he could get. Podujevo, home to about 90,000 people in northeast Kosovo, was a reasonably prosperous town with high schools and small businesses in an area hugged by farmland and forests. It was known for its strong Muslim tradition even in a land where people long wore their religion lightly. After decades of Communist rule when Kosovo was part of Yugoslavia, men and women mingle freely, schools are coeducational, and girls rarely wear the veil. Still, Serbian paramilitary forces burned down 218 mosques as part of their war against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians, who are 95 percent Muslim. Mr. Bilalli needed help to rebuild.

When two imams in their 30s, Fadil Musliu and Fadil Sogojeva, who were studying for master’s degrees in Saudi Arabia, showed up after the war with money to organize summer religion courses, Mr. Bilalli agreed to help. The imams were just two of some 200 Kosovars who took advantage of scholarships after the war to study Islam in Saudi Arabia. Many, like them, returned with missionary zeal. Soon, under Mr. Musliu’s tutelage, pupils started adopting a rigid manner of prayer, foreign to the moderate Islamic traditions of this part of Europe. Mr. Bilalli recognized the influence, and he grew concerned.

“This is Wahhabism coming into our society,” Mr. Bilalli, 52, said in a recent interview.Mr. Bilalli trained at the University of Medina in Saudi Arabia in the late 1980s, and as a student he had been warned by a Kosovar professor to guard against the cultural differences of Wahhabism. He understood there was a campaign of proselytizing, pushed by the Saudis.

“The first thing the Wahhabis do is to take members of our congregation, who understand Islam in the traditional Kosovo way that we had for generations, and try to draw them away from this understanding,” he said. “Once they get them away from the traditional congregation, then they start bombarding them with radical thoughts and ideas.”“The main goal of their activity is to create conflict between people,” he said. “This first creates division, and then hatred, and then it can come to what happened in Arab countries, where war starts because of these conflicting ideas.”From the outset, the newly arriving clerics sought to overtake the Islamic Community of Kosovo, an organization that for generations has been the custodian of the tolerant form of Islam that was practiced in the region, townspeople and officials say.Muslims in Kosovo, which was a part of the Ottoman Empire for 500 years, follow the Hanafi school of Islam, traditionally a liberal version that is accepting of other religions.But all around the country, a new breed of radical preachers was setting up in neighborhood mosques, often newly built with Saudi money. In some cases, centuries-old buildings were bulldozed, including a historic library in Gjakova and several 400-year-old mosques, as well as shrines, graveyards and Dervish monasteries, all considered idolatrous in Wahhabi teaching.

From their bases, the Saudi-trained imams propagated Wahhabism’s tenets: the supremacy of Sharia law as well as ideas of violent jihad and takfirism, which authorizes the killing of Muslims considered heretics for not following its interpretation of Islam.The Saudi-sponsored charities often paid salaries and overhead costs, and financed courses in religion, as well as English and computer classes, moderate imams and investigators explained. But the charitable assistance often had conditions attached. Families were given monthly stipends on the


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condition that they attended sermons in the mosque and that women and girls wore the veil, human rights activists said. “People were so needy, there was no one who did not join,” recalled Ajnishahe Halimi, a politician who campaigned to have a radical Albanian imam expelled after families complained of abuse.

Threats IntensifyWithin a few years of the war’s end, the older generation of traditional clerics began to encounter aggression from young Wahhabis.

Paradoxically, some of the most serious tensions built in Gjilan, an eastern Kosovo town of about 90,000, where up to 7,000 American troops were stationed as part of Kosovo’s United Nations-run peacekeeping force at Camp Bondsteel. “They came in the name of aid,” one moderate imam in Gjilan, Enver Rexhepi, said of the Arab charities. “But they came with a background of different intentions, and that’s where the Islamic religion started splitting here.”

One day in 2004, he recalled, he was threatened by one of the most aggressive young Wahhabis, Zekirja Qazimi, a former madrasa student then in his early 20s. nside his mosque, Mr. Rexhepi had long displayed an Albanian flag. Emblazoned with a double-headed eagle, it was a popular symbol of Kosovo’s liberation struggle. But strict Muslim fundamentalists consider the depiction of any living being as idolatrous. Mr. Qazimi tore the flag down. Mr. Rexhepi put it back. “It will not go long like this,” Mr. Qazimi told him angrily, Mr. Rexhepi recounted. Within days, Mr. Rexhepi was abducted and savagely beaten by masked men in woods above Gjilan. He later accused Mr. Qazimi of having been behind the attack, but police investigations went nowhere.

Ten years later, in 2014, after two young Kosovars blew themselves up in suicide bombings in Iraq and Turkey, investigators began an extensive investigation into the sources of radicalism. Mr. Qazimi was arrested hiding in the same woods. On Friday, a court sentenced him to 10 years in prison after he faced charges of inciting hatred and recruiting for a terrorist organization.Before Mr. Qazimi was arrested, his influence was profound, under what investigators now say was the sway of Egyptian-based extremists and the patronage of Saudi and other gulf Arab sponsors.

By the mid-2000s, Saudi money and Saudi-trained clerics were already exerting influence over the Islamic Community of Kosovo. The leadership quietly condoned the drift toward conservatism, critics of the organization say. Mr. Qazimi was appointed first to a village mosque, and then to El-Kuddus mosque on the edge of Gjilan. Few could counter him, not even Mustafa Bajrami, his former teacher, who was elected head of the Islamic Community of Gjilan in 2012. Mr. Bajrami comes from a prominent religious family — his father was the first chief mufti of Yugoslavia during the Communist period. He holds a doctorate in Islamic studies. Yet he remembers pupils began rebelling against him whenever he spoke against Wahhabism. He soon realized that the students were being taught beliefs that differed from the traditional moderate curriculum by several radical imams in lectures after hours. He banned the use of mosques after official prayer times.Hostility only grew. He would notice a dismissive gesture in the congregation during his sermons, or someone would curse his wife, or mutter “apostate” or “infidel” as he passed.In the village, Mr. Qazimi’s influence eventually became so disruptive that residents demanded his removal after he forbade girls and boys to shake hands. But in Gjilan he continued to draw dozens of young people to his after-hours classes.“They were moving 100 percent according to lessons they were taking from Zekirja Qazimi,” Mr. Bajrami said in an interview. “One hundred percent, in an ideological way.”

Extremism SpreadsOver time, the Saudi-trained imams expanded their work.By 2004, Mr. Musliu, one of the master’s degree students from Podujevo who studied in Saudi Arabia, had graduated and was imam of a mosque in the capital, Pristina.


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In Podujevo, he set up a local charitable organization called Devotshmeria, or Devotion, which taught religion classes and offered social programs for women, orphans and the poor. It was funded by Al Waqf al Islami, a Saudi organization that was one of the 19 eventually closed by investigators.

Secrets of the KingdomMr. Musliu put a cousin, Jetmir Rrahmani, in charge. “Then I knew something was starting that would not bring any good,” said Mr. Bilalli, the moderate cleric who had started out teaching with him. In 2004, they had a core of 20 Wahhabis.“That was only the beginning,” Mr. Bilalli said. “They started multiplying.”Mr. Bilalli began a vigorous campaign against the spread of unauthorized mosques and Wahhabi teaching. In 2008, he was elected head of the Islamic Community of Podujevo and instituted religion classes for women, in an effort to undercut Devotshmeria.As he sought to curb the extremists, Mr. Bilalli received death threats, including a note left in the mosque’s alms box. An anonymous telephone caller vowed to make him and his family disappear, he said. “Anyone who opposes them, they see as an enemy,” Mr. Bilalli said.He appealed to the leadership of the Islamic Community of Kosovo. But by then it was heavily influenced by Arab gulf sponsors, he said, and he received little support.When Mr. Bilalli formed a union of fellow moderates, the Islamic Community of Kosovo removed him from his post. His successor, Bekim Jashari, equally concerned by the Saudi influence, nevertheless kept up the fight.

“I spent 10 years in Arab countries and specialized in sectarianism within Islam,” Mr. Jashari said. “It’s very important to stop Arab sectarianism from being introduced to Kosovo.”Mr. Jashari had a couple of brief successes. He blocked the Saudi-trained imam Mr. Sogojeva from opening a new mosque, and stopped a payment of 20,000 euros, about $22,400, intended for it from the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami. He also began a website, Speak Now, to counter Wahhabi teaching. But he remains so concerned about Wahhabi preachers that he never lets his 19-year-old son attend prayers on his own. The radical imams Mr. Musliu and Mr. Sogojeva still preach in Pristina, where for prayers they draw crowds of young men who glare at foreign reporters.Mr. Sogojeva dresses in a traditional robe and banded cleric’s hat, but his newly built mosque is an incongruous modern multistory building. He admonished his congregation with a rapid-fire list of dos and don’ts in a recent Friday sermon.

Neither imam seems to lack funds.In an interview, Mr. Musliu insisted that he was financed by local donations, but confirmed that he had received Saudi funding for his early religion courses. The instruction, he said, is not out of line with Kosovo’s traditions. The increase in religiosity among young people was natural after Kosovo gained its freedom, he said. “Those who are not believers and do not read enough, they feel a bit shocked,” he said. “But we coordinated with other imams, and everything was in line with Islam.”

A Tilt Toward TerrorismThe influence of the radical clerics reached its apex with the war in Syria, as they extolled the virtues of jihad and used speeches and radio and television talks shows to urge young people to go there.Mr. Qazimi, who was given the 10-year prison sentence, even organized a summer camp for his young followers.

“It is obligated for every Muslim to participate in jihad,” he told them in one videotaped talk. “The Prophet Muhammad says that if someone has a chance to take part in jihad and doesn’t, he will die with great sins.” “The blood of infidels is the best drink for us Muslims,” he said in another recording.Among his recruits, investigators say, were three former civilian employees of American contracting


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companies at Camp Bondsteel, where American troops are stationed. They included Lavdrim Muhaxheri, an Islamic State leader who was filmed executing a man in Syria with a rocket-propelled grenade. After the suicide bombings, the authorities opened a broad investigation and found that the Saudi charity Al Waqf al Islami had been supporting associations set up by preachers like Mr. Qazimi in almost every regional town.

Al Waqf al Islami was established in the Balkans in 1989. Most of its financing came from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain, Kosovo investigators said in recent interviews. Unexplained gaps in its ledgers deepened suspicions that the group was surreptitiously funding clerics who were radicalizing young people, they said. Investigators from Kosovo’s Financial Intelligence Unit found that Al Waqf al Islami, which had an office in central Pristina and a staff of 12, ran through €10 million from 2000 through 2012. Yet they found little paperwork to explain much of the spending. More than €1 million went to mosque building. But one and a half times that amount was disbursed in unspecified cash withdrawals, which may have also gone to enriching its staff, the investigators said. Only 7 percent of the budget was shown to have gone to caring for orphans, the charity’s stated mission.By the summer of 2014, the Kosovo police shut down Al Waqf al Islami, along with 12 other Islamic charities, and arrested 40 people. The charity’s head offices, in Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands, have since changed their name to Al Waqf, apparently separating themselves from the Balkans operation.Asked about the accusations in a telephone interview, Nasr el Damanhoury, the director of Al Waqf in the Netherlands, said he had no direct knowledge of his group’s operations in Kosovo or the Balkans.The charity has ceased all work outside the Netherlands since he took over in 2013, he said. His predecessor had returned to Morocco and could not be reached, and Saudi board members would not comment, he said. “Our organization has never supported extremism,” Mr. Damanhoury said. “I have known it since 1989. I joined them three years ago. They have always been a mild group.”

Unheeded WarningsWhy the Kosovar authorities — and American and United Nations overseers — did not act sooner to forestall the spread of extremism is a question being intensely debated.

As early as 2004, the prime minister at the time, Bajram Rexhepi, tried to introduce a law to ban extremist sects. But, he said in a recent interview at his home in northern Kosovo, European officials told him that it would violate freedom of religion. “It was not in their interest, they did not want to irritate some Islamic countries,” Mr. Rexhepi said. “They simply did not do anything.”

Not everyone was unaware of the dangers, however.At a meeting in 2003, Richard C. Holbrooke, once the United States special envoy to the Balkans, warned Kosovar leaders not to work with the Saudi Joint Relief Committee for Kosovo, an umbrella organization of Saudi charities whose name still appears on many of the mosques built since the war, along with that of the former Saudi interior minister, Prince Naif bin Abdul-Aziz.A year later, it was among several Saudi organizations that were shut down in Kosovo when it came under suspicion as a front for Al Qaeda. Another was Al-Haramain, which in 2004 was designated by the United States Treasury Department as having links to terrorism.Yet even as some organizations were shut down, others kept working. Staff and equipment from Al-Haramain shifted to Al Waqf al Islami, moderate imams familiar with their activities said.In recent years, Saudi Arabia appears to have reduced its aid to Kosovo. Kosovo Central Bank figures show grants from Saudi Arabia averaging €100,000 a year for the past five years.

It is now money from Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — which each average approximately €1 million a year — that propagates the same hard-line version of Islam. The payments come from foundations or individuals, or sometimes from the Ministry of Zakat (Almsgiving) from


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the various governments, Kosovo’s investigators say.But payments are often diverted through a second country to obscure their origin and destination, they said. One transfer of nearly €500,000 from a Saudi individual was frozen in 2014 since it was intended for a Kosovo teenager, according to the investigators and a State Department report.Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations were still raising millions from “deep-pocket donors and charitable organizations” based in the gulf, the Treasury under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, David S. Cohen, said in a speech in 2014 at the Center for a New American Security.While Saudi Arabia has made progress in stamping out funding for Al Qaeda, sympathetic donors in the kingdom were still funding other terrorist groups, he said. Today the Islamic Community of Kosovo has been so influenced by the largess of Arab donors that it has seeded prominent positions with radical clerics, its critics say.Ahmet Sadriu, a spokesman for Islamic Community of Kosovo, said the group held to Kosovo’s traditionally tolerant version of Islam. But calls are growing to overhaul an organization now seen as having been corrupted by outside forces and money. Kosovo’s interior minister, Skender Hyseni, said he had recently reprimanded some of the senior religious officials. “I told them they were doing a great disservice to their country,” he said in an interview. “Kosovo is by definition, by Constitution, a secular society. There has always been historically an unspoken interreligious tolerance among Albanians here, and we want to make sure that we keep it that way.”Families DividedFor some in Kosovo, it may already be too late.Families have been torn apart. Some of Kosovo’s best and brightest have been caught up in the lure of jihad.One of Kosovo’s top political science graduates, Albert Berisha, said he left in 2013 to help the Syrian people in the uprising against the government of President Bashar al-Assad. He abandoned his attempt after only two weeks — and he says he never joined the Islamic State — but has been sentenced to three and a half years in prison, pending appeal.Ismet Sakiqi, an official in the prime minister’s office and a veteran of the liberation struggle, was shaken to find his 22-year-old son, Visar, a law student, arrested on his way through Turkey to Syria with his fiancée. He now visits his son in the same Kosovo prison where he was detained under Serbian rule.And in the hamlet of Busavate, in the wooded hills of eastern Kosovo, a widower, Shemsi Maliqi, struggles to explain how his family has been divided. One of his sons, Alejhim, 27, has taken his family to join the Islamic State in Syria.It remains unclear how Alejhim became radicalized. He followed his grandfather, training as an imam in Gjilan, and served in the village mosque for six years. Then, two years ago, he asked his father to help him travel to Egypt to study.Mr. Maliqi still clings to the hope that his son is studying in Egypt rather than fighting in Syria. But Kosovo’s counterterrorism police recently put out an international arrest warrant for Alejhim.“Better that he comes back dead than alive,” Mr. Maliqi, a poor farmer, said. “I sent him to school, not to war. I sold my cow for him.”Alejhim had married a woman from the nearby village of Vrbice who was so conservative that she was veiled up to her eyes and refused to shake hands with her brother-in-law.The wife’s mother angrily refused to be interviewed. Her daughter did what was expected and followed her husband to Syria, she said.Secretly, Alejhim drew three others — his sister; his best friend, who married his sister; and his wife’s sister — to follow him to Syria, too. The others have since returned, but remain radical and estranged from the family.Alejhim’s uncle, Fehmi Maliqi, like the rest of the family, is dismayed. “It’s a catastrophe,” he said.


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“Saudi Arabia is destroying Islam,” Zuhdi Hajzeri, an imam at a 430-year-old mosque here in the city of Peja, told me sadly. Hajzeri is a moderate in the traditional, tolerant style of Kosovo — he is the latest in a long line of imams in his family — and said that as a result he had received more death threats from extremists than he can count.Hajzeri and other moderates have responded with a website, Foltash.com, that criticizes the harsh Saudi Wahhabi interpretation of Islam. But they say they are outgunned by money pouring in from Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain to support harsh variants of Islam through a blizzard of publications, videos and other materials.“The Saudis completely changed Islam here with their money,” said Visar Duriqi, a former imam in Kosovo who became a journalist who writes about extremist influences. Duriqi cites himself as an example: He says he was brainwashed and underwent an extremist phase in which he called for imposing Shariah law and excusing violence. Those views now horrify him.

This is not a Kosovo problem, but a global problem. I first encountered pernicious Saudi influence in Pakistan, where the public school system is a disgrace and Saudis filled the gap by financing hard-line madrasas that lure students with free tuition, free meals and full scholarships for overseas study for the best students.Likewise, in traditionally moderate, peaceful countries like Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in West Africa, I’ve seen these foreign-financed madrasas introduce radical interpretations of Islam. In the Balkans, Bosnia is particularly affected by Gulf support for extremists.I don’t want to exaggerate. I saw fewer head scarves on my trip through Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania than I do in New York City, and any jihadist would tear his hair out at seeing women with bare heads and shoulders, not to mention shorts.There are still pillars of pro-American feeling and ecumenism (there is great reverence among Albanian Muslims for Mother Teresa, who was Albanian). Moreover, after a series of arrests of radical imams in Kosovo and Albania, the situation may have stabilized, and jihadists no longer seem to be traveling to Syria from here.But the world needs to have tough conversations with Saudi Arabia about its role. It’s not that it is intentionally spreading havoc, more that it is behaving recklessly; it has made some painstaking progress in curbing extremist financing, but too slowly.It’s particularly dispiriting because much of the extremist funding seems to come from charity: One of the most admirable aspects of Islam is its emphasis on charity, yet in countries like Saudi Arabia this money is directed not to fight malnutrition or child mortality, but to brainwash children and sow conflict in poor and unstable countries.I asked Hajzeri, the imam, whether he was worried by foreign threats to Islam, like the Danish cartoonist who mocked the Prophet Muhammad. “Cartoonists can just hurt our feelings,” he snorted. “But damaging the reputation of Islam? That’s not what the cartoonists are doing. That’s what Saudi Arabia is doing.”

Regards Cees** *. As so often we ignored the signals when they were flashed.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2014Jihad in the Balkans: The Next GenerationA specter is haunting Europe—fear of the impact hundreds of European volunteers to the Syrian jihad might have on their home countries once they return. Perhaps nowhere is the potential danger of this Syrian blowback greater than in the Balkans. According to one estimate, Bosnia has provided more volunteers per capita for the Syrian jihad than any other country in Europe, and various reports


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suggest there are probably more than five hundred jihadis from southeastern Europe now in Syria. While the Muslims of southeastern Europe remain the world’s most moderate Islamic populations, an estimated five to ten percent has become indoctrinated in the more extreme forms of Islam typical of places such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt. This is not an accident—the rise and growth of militant Islamism in southeastern Europe is the result of long-term efforts by extremists to radicalize local populations. Over the past several decades, the militant Islamist movement in southeastern Europe has created a sophisticated infrastructure consisting of local safe havens in isolated villages and in mosques controlled by radical clergy, along with a wide array of electronic and print media propagating news from various jihad fronts, relaying orders from al-Qaeda leaders, and attempting to convert impressionable young people to join their cause. All of this is funded by generous Middle Eastern donors and supported by small groups of local extremists who have infiltrated influential political, religious, and social institutions. Iran in the BalkansGordon N. Bardos | ESSAYIran’s largest diplomatic contingent in Europe resides in tiny Sarajevo. And the Islamist presence—including terror cells and training camps—continues to threaten the region, and the West.T he origins of the militant Islamist movement in southeastern Europe can most directly be tied to the life and work of Bosnia’s late Islamist president, Alija Izetbegovic. In the late 1930s, Izetbegovic and a conspiratorial group of like-minded Islamist extremists formed an organization called the Mladi Muslimani (“Young Muslims”), a Balkan version of the Muslim Brotherhood whose goal, as Izetbegovic himself frequently noted, was the creation of a “great Muslim state,” or as one author has described it, an “Islamistan,” throughout the Balkans, northern Africa, and the Middle East. Toward this goal, the Mladi Muslimani swore an oath promising perseverance on their “path of jihad” and their “uncompromising struggle against everything non-Islamic.” Tellingly, the name of their underground journal was Mudzahid (“Holy Warrior”).Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the 1990s opened the doors for a second generation of militant Islamists to establish itself in the region. Composed mostly of foreign transplants from Afghanistan and other jihadi fronts, it was even more extreme and dangerous than Izetbegovic’s original group. Mostly concentrated in a unit Izetbegovic formed in August 1992 named the Katibat al-Mujahideen, veterans of the Bosnian jihad in the 1990s included people such as Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, mastermind of the 9/11 attacks; Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, involved in the attack on the USS Cole; Mamdouh Mahmud Salim, involved in the August 1998 US embassy bombings in East Africa; Abu Hamza al-Masri, the spiritual father of the July 2005 London Underground bombings; and Zaki ur-Rehman Lakhvi, one of the participants in the November 2008 Mumbai bombings. Ali Hamad, a Bahraini-born al-Qaeda operative, has claimed that al-Qaeda figures would visit Bosnia with “state protection,” and both the US and Saudi Arabia accused the Izetbegovic regime of giving Bosnian passports to known terrorists. Unfortunately, these people did not simply pack up and leave when the Dayton Peace Accords brought an end to the Bosnian War in December 1995. Instead, together with local extremist allies, an entire infrastructure supporting militant Islamist causes (and not infrequently outright terrorism itself) was created during the latter part of the decade, the consequences of which are still plaguing the region today.Thus, in remote, isolated villages around the Balkans, militant Islamists have developed a network of extra-territorial, sharia-run enclaves that serve as recruiting stations for local converts and safe havens for jihadis from around the world. According to writer Janez Kovac, in the central Bosnian village of


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Bocinja Donja, for instance, inhabited by some six hundred people, extremists live “separate lives untroubled by local police, tax-collectors, or any other authorities. Outsiders never set foot in the small community.” Another Bosnian village, Gornja Maoca, is the headquarters of Bosnia’s main Wahhabi leader, Nusret Imamovic. Gornja Maoca has frequently been used as a way station for extremists joining jihads in Chechnya, Afghanistan, and Yemen. In October 2011, Mevlid Jasarevic, a Wahhabi from the Sandzak region, left the village with two other residents on the day he attacked the US Embassy in Sarajevo.Throughout the western and southern Balkans, extremist-led mosques also serve as bases for militant Islamists. The Saudi-funded King Fahd Mosque and Cultural Center in Sarajevo, which the researcher Juan Carlo Antunez has called “the epicenter of the spreading of radical ideas” in Bosnia, for a number of years functioned autonomously under the direct supervision of the Saudi Embassy in Bosnia. The White Mosque in Sarajevo is the headquarters of Sulejman Bugari, a Kosovo Albanian–born imam whom the global intelligence firm Stratfor has described as a go-between for Albanian and Bosnian extremists. In Kosovo, the journalist Mohammad al-Arnaout has reported that the Makowitz mosque on the outskirts of Pristina and the Mitrovica mosque are recruiting militants to fight alongside Islamist groups in Syria. In Macedonia, Wahhabi extremists have been engaged in a struggle with the country’s official Islamic community to take control of Skopje’s Yahya Pasha, Sultan Murat, Hudaverdi, and Kjosekadi mosques.Militant Islamists support their efforts in southeastern Europe through a network of “NGOs,” “charities,” and “humanitarian aid” organizations, often funded by known al-Qaeda financial donors. The CIA has estimated that one-third of the Bosnian NGOs operating worldwide have terrorist connections or employ people with terrorist links. In the aftermath of 9/11, a raid on such a “charity” in Sarajevo, the Saudi High Commission for Aid to Bosnia, according to the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network, netted “maps of Washington, material for making false State Department identity cards, and anti-American manuals designed for children.”Militant Islamists in the Balkans have developed an extensive array and network of print periodicals, bookstores, websites, and YouTube spots spreading religious intolerance, glorifications of violence, and anti-American, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic messages. Islamic bookstores from Belgrade to Novi Pazar distribute tracts by extremists such as the contemporary Islamist ideologue Yusuf al-Qaradawi and the mid-century Marx of Islamism Sayyid Qutb. Militant Islamist websites promote jihad, suicide bombings, and the killing of non-Muslims. These websites also relay news from other jihadi fronts, sermons by extremist preachers from the Middle East, and messages from al-Qaeda leaders. For instance, the Bosnian website Put Vjernika (“Way of the Believer”) recently carried “A New Order from Zawahiri: Focus on Attacks on American Interests.”According to Fahrudin Kladicanin, the co-author of a recent study on Balkan extremists’ use of the Internet and social media, “the number of those who are ‘liking,’ making comments, and sharing the content of these pages, especially when it comes to religious leaders, extreme Islamists, and Wahhabists, is rising on a daily basis.” The Facebook page “Krenaria Islame” (Albanian for “Islamic Pride”), which posts pictures and stories of Albanians fighting in Syria, has twenty-five hundred followers. According to Arjan Dyrmishi, a security expert based in Tirana, the Albanian capital, “if all the followers of this page were identified as terrorists, they would make a small army and pose a major problem. Such a large number of followers would pose a concern, even if these people were to be identified only as supporters of political Islam.” The ideology spread through the militant Islamists’ media routinely involves the vilest forms of hate speech and intolerance. A Wahhabi leader from Bosnia, Bilal Bosnic, recently gave a sermon in which he claimed, “We have to love the one who loves Allah, and hate the one who hates Allah. We have to hate infidels, even if they are our neighbors or live in our homes.” Grade-school textbooks for Islamic


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religious classes in Bosnia now include the following: “Today Islamic countries are confronted with a form of blackmail: thus, if they want to join the United Nations, they have to tacitly renounce jihad as an organized form of Muslim interest.”Misogyny and homophobia are prominent elements of the militant Islamists’ ideology. In Kosovo, the mufti of Prizren, Irfan Salihu, publicly claimed in a recent sermon, “Any woman who has intimate acts without being married according to provisions of the Islam [sic] is a slut and a bitch.” Glorifications of violence and support for suicide terrorism are frequent tropes of militant Islamists in the Balkans. For instance, Bosnic, the Bosnian Wahhabi leader, has posted a song on YouTube in which he sings:The beautiful jihad has risen over BosniaAnd the Bosnian started calling “Allah Akbar” and prayingAmerica had better know I am performing dawahGod willing, it will be destroyed to its foundationsIf you try to harm the mujahedin once more, oh infidels,Our Taliban brothers will come from all over, And they will sentence you with their swords. America and all the other tyrants had better knowThat all the Muslims are now like the Taliban, Jihad, Jihad, oh Allah, will be the redemption of the believers. Allah Akbar. Allah is my Lord.Listen, all my brothers, believers from all the world, With explosives on our chests we pave the way to Paradise.This unending din of propaganda is having an effect on a new generation. Over the past decade, militant Islamists indigenous to the Balkans have been involved in numerous actions and conspiracies: the October 2002 attack on the US Embassy in Vienna, the May 2007 Fort Dix bomb plot, the July 2009 Raleigh Group conspiracy, the 2009 New York City subway attack conspiracy, the October 2011 attack on the US Embassy in Sarajevo, a January 2012 plot to bomb nightclubs in Tampa, and the murder of two US servicemen at Frankfurt Airport in February 2012. Most recently, a young man from Kosovo became “the Balkans’ first suicide bomber,” killing fifty people in an attack in Baghdad in March 2014. According to Bulgaria’s former chief mufti, Nedim Gendzhev, militant Islamists in southeastern Europe are trying to create a “fundamentalist triangle” formed by Bosnia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria’s western Rhodope Mountains. Although their chances of succeeding are minimal, they can nevertheless still do tremendous damage to Western security interests in the region, and to the possibilities for creating stable democratic societies in southeastern Europe.With a new generation of Balkan Muslim clerics increasingly being educated in places such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, and hundreds of millions of dollars being invested by Middle Eastern donors to build Islamic schools and madrassas in the Balkans, the distinction between the more moderate form of Islam traditionally practiced in southeastern Europe and the more extreme and violent forms practiced further to the east is becoming less apparent. As Esad Hecimovic, a leading expert on the Bosnian jihadi movement, has noted, “There is now a new generation of Islamic preachers in Bosnia who were educated after the war at Islamic universities in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria, and other countries. . . . Thus, it is no longer possible to distinguish between ‘imported’ and ‘local’ versions of Islam in Bosnia and Herzegovina anymore.”Unfortunately, the international response to militant Islam’s rise in southeastern Europe has ranged from neglect to outright denial. For instance, after 9/11, the then high representative in Bosnia, Wolfgang Petritsch, somewhat incredibly claimed in a New York Times op-ed that “no evidence has


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been produced that [Bosnia] has served as a base for al-Qaeda,” while the current high representative in Bosnia, Valentin Inzko, for his part, has similarly argued that the Wahhabis in Bosnia “pose no danger to Europe.” Yet as Evan Kohlmann, a leading specialist on al-Qaeda’s campaign in Bosnia, has put it, individuals who deny that al-Qaeda is operating in the Balkans “are either lying or have no idea what they are talking about.”Militant Balkan Islamists are not even bothering to hide their long-term intentions. As a Bosnian jihadi fighting in Syria recently noted, “I left Bosnia with the intention only to return with weapons in my hand. I am a part of the revolution and this is the morning of Islam . . . [by allowing us to leave Bosnia] your intelligence agencies made a mistake thinking that they would be rid of us, however, the problem for them will be the return of individuals trained for war.”Gordon N. Bardos is the president of SEERECON, a political risk and strategic advisory firm specializing in southeastern Europe.


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Documents

Al-Qaida chief Ayman al-Zawahiri The Coordinator 2016 Part 17-100a-The Deep Battle against the West