Did Lebanon’s US-backed army commander exploit the Syrian refugee crisis and incite clashes with them to catapult himself into the highly-contested Lebanese presidency? The US silence on Joseph Aoun’s illegal deportations last week is deafening.
When the Ukraine war interrupted Beijing’s land route to Europe, Azerbaijan and its neighborhood became a vital alternative pathway, but adversaries may seek to disrupt that.
Introduction
This concept note was commissioned by the Global Community Engagement and Resilience
Fund (GCERF) to contribute to a better understanding of current efforts to prevent and counter
violent extremism (P/CVE) in the Western Balkans, and more specifically to provide an
overview of the most immediate needs in rehabilitation and reintegration (R&R) of ex-ISIL
fighters and their family members in the region. Such a mapping exercise was assumed to
produce useful recommendations for policy planning and budgeting of P/CVE and R&R
activities in the Western Balkans. In order to fulfill this goal, the scope of this paper was
widened to include supplemental data and analysis that should provide more factual background
and context-specific insight. Though a slight diversion from the original extent and format of
the paper, this change allows for the presentation of more nuanced complexities and,
consequently, to more fine-tuned policy responses to P/CVE and R&R in the Western Balkans.
Abstract: The primary purpose of this article is to explain the meaning and consequences of foreign fighters’ participation from Western Balkan countries (WB6) in armed conflicts in Syria and Iraq. In the first part, the issue of foreign fighters is discussed in historical terms. The author focuses on the examples o
the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the ethno-religious conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the second part of the text, the definition framework of foreign fighters’ concept and its evolution towards foreign terrorist-fighters is discussed. Then, a detailed analysis of the main problem is conducted,
and several research questions are answered: 1) What is the scale of the phenomenon of Balkan volunteers (e.g., their number, the structure of origin, and others) in comparison to fighters from other regions? 2) What are their motivations and goals, and what are their recruitment process and ways of
moving into the war zone? 3) What is the threat posed by returning fighters to the security of the Western Balkans, and how do individual states counteract this phenomenon? The author uses mainly the following research methods: critical content analysis (literature, scientific articles, documents, reports, press materials), and historical and comparative analysis. The author’s visits to this country in 2018-2020 constituted an essential contribution to the part concerning the case of Kosovo.
Abstract: Over 1,000 adult male foreign fighters, women, and minors from the Western Balkans spent time in Syria and Iraq and around 500 from the region are still there, including children born in theater. After seven years of fighting and at least 260 combat deaths, the last active jihadi unit from the Western Balkans in Syria and Iraq is a modest ethnic Albanian combat unit fighting with Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham in Idlib. The rest of those remaining in Syria and Iraq, mostly minors, are held in Kurdish-controlled IDP camps. Some 460 others have gradually returned home, making the Western Balkans the region with the highest concentration of returning foreign terrorist fighters in Europe and creating a long-term security challenge compounded by inadequate resources and the threat posed by homegrown jihadi militants.
Introduction and context
In recent years there has been an increasing concern about the potential for violent right-wing extremism
(VRWE) in the Western Balkans: Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Kosovo*1, Montenegro, North
Macedonia and Serbia. The region has been historically perceived as politically volatile with a history of
violence that stems from right-wing (political) ideologies and actions.2 Experts and officials from the Western Balkans raise concerns about the spread of right-wing extremism (RWE) in the context of political conflict.
Thus, this paper focuses on both not-yet-violent and violent extremist movements and activities in the
Western Balkans.
Summary
• Kosovo, a country with no prior history of religious militancy, has become a prime source of
foreign fighters in the Iraqi and Syrian conflict theater relative to population size.
• About three in four Kosovan adults known to have traveled to Syria and Iraq since 2012 were
between seventeen and thirty years old at the time of their departure. By mid-2016, about
37 percent had returned.
• The vast majority of these known foreign fighters have moderate formal education. In com-
parative terms, this rate appears to be superior to the reported national rate. Two-thirds live
in average or above-average economic circumstances.
• Five municipalities—four of which are near Kosovo’s Macedonian border—judging from their
disproportionately high recruitment and mobilization rate, appear particularly vulnerable to
violent extremism. More than one-third of the Kosovan male combatants originate from these
municipalities, which account for only 14 percent of the country’s population.
• Long-term and targeted radicalization, recruitment, and mobilization efforts by foreign-funded
extremist networks have been primarily active in southern Kosovo and northwestern Macedo-
nia for more than fifteen years. These networks have often been headed by local alumnae of
Middle Eastern religious institutions involved in spreading an ultra-conservative form of Islam
infused with a political agenda.
• Despite substantial improvements in the country’s sociopolitical reality and living conditions
since the 1998–1999 Kosovo War, chronic vulnerabilities have contributed to an environment
conducive to radicalization.
• Frustrated expectations, the growing role of political Islam as a core part of identity in some
social circles, and group dynamics appear to be the telling drivers of radicalization, recruit-
ment, and mobilization in Kosovo.
« Le dollar c’est notre monnaie et votre problème. » (John Connelly, secrétaire d’État à l’Économie)
« Quand tout est troublé, que l’avenir est imprévisible et inquiétant, la « relique barbare », moquée par lord Keynes, retrouve l’attrait qu’elle a toujours eu en période de dangers. L’or redevient l’ancre de la sécurité. » (Eric le Boucher, Les Échos, janvier 2010)
The government of South Sudan has expressed deep concern over the fighting in neighboring Sudan, which it fears could spill across the border and threaten its fragile peace process.
The conflict between the Sudanese army and a paramilitary group in Khartoum has raised concerns about the potential for a full-fledged civil war, which could affect neighboring South Sudan.
The conflict in Sudan is multidimensional, and could generate instability that spreads to the broader region.
Since April 15, fighting between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) across Sudan, especially in the capital Khartoum, has left more than 450 people dead and over 4,000 injured. The fighting erupted after months of tensions between the leaders of both forces, the SAF’s General Abdel-Fattah al-Burhan, who is also the head of Sudan’s Transitional Sovereignty Council, and the RSF’s commander, General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, better known as “Hemedti,” who is the council’s deputy head.