/ world today news/ About 3,000 EU citizens and fighters from the Balkan countries are fighting in Syria and Iraq on the side of the Islamic State, where Muslim training and recruitment camps operate in support of the jihadists, writes the Czech edition of the Euroactiv portal.
Czech MEP Tomasz Zdehovski points out that secret services and security agencies are concentrating on monitoring people traveling to Syria and Iraq, but not those traveling to the Balkans.
The analysis indicates that a group of radical Islamists is active in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia, recruiting and training new IS members.
Europol’s January report notes that “besides the training camps in Syria, there are also smaller training camps in the EU and the Balkans”.
Counter-terrorism expert Philip Tesar of the Institute of International Affairs warns that the EU-wide threat should not be downplayed by thinking it only affects the Balkans because Balkan Islamists are going to live there.
Tesar emphasizes that at least five Albanian Islamic radicals, originally from Macedonia, and five from Kosovo lived in Western Europe – in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Sweden, Norway. And other Albanians who wanted to go to Syria and Iraq were arrested in Great Britain, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
According to the survey, the problem does not only concern Albanians. A fifth of Bosnia and Herzegovina citizens who were in Syria and Iraq to help radical Islamists visited friends and relatives in Western Europe and the US and worked there legally or illegally.
The expert specifies that militant Islam is a legacy of the war in the former Yugoslavia and is spread mainly in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the Albanian government, there are 110 Islamists in the country, and according to unofficial estimates there are 200. The situation is similar in Kosovo and Macedonia, the report says.
Politicians do not talk about these threats at all. But in the Balkans, after the military conflicts and along with the amnesties, people have several million units of automatic weapons, grenades and explosives. This could be a huge threat, warns MEP Zdehovski.
The MEP points out that it is very important that there are no “black holes” in the information exchange network, into which some of the Balkan countries fall. In the past, Bosnia and Herzegovina was in a “black hole”, and now – Macedonia.
The goal is not only to have cooperation in the investigations, but also to apply their results in practice.
It is imperative to find a political solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina and Macedonia, because cooperation in the other Balkan countries is satisfactory, Zdehovski believes.
The Czech MEP is of the opinion that the candidates for EU membership, Albania and Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which does not yet have such status, should be required to start a vigorous fight against radical Muslims.
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