Kosovo

While Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, and other Balkan countries have been plagued by radical Islamist incursions, Albanian prime minister Sali Berisha, who is Muslim, told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronoth at the end of November that he considers Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his Iranian government “the new Nazis, and the world must learn from the Holocaust and stop them before it is too late.”

Kosovo’s top Islamic cleric, Naim Ternava, last month purged the two most outspoken anti-radical preachers from the local Sunni religious apparatus.

Arif Uka is a 21-year-old German-Albanian Muslim whose family came from the ethnically divided region of Mitrovica in northern Kosovo. He is being held by German police after the shooting deaths Wednesday of two U.S. Air Force members, and injury to two more—one seriously—in a group headed for Afghanistan via the sprawling Frankfurt International Airport and nearby American military base at Ramstein.

The Kosovo Republic’s official stance against girls wearing the Muslim headscarf (hijab) in state-supported primary and secondary schools, has brought the country’s main Muslim leader, Naim Ternava, out of a pattern of silence about the penetration of radical Islam in that country.

Kosovo media have reported that an Islamist ideologue from that country, Fuad Ramiqi, was among the participants in the ill-fated attempt to break Israel’s naval blockade at Gaza. Ramiqi was joined by three Albanian Muslims from Macedonia--Sami Emini, Jasmin Rexhepi, and Sead Asipi.

Last week, the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo, who have demonstrated their aversion to radical Islam in a series of recent clashes with extremist infiltrators, took another  significant step toward ridding their new republic of Muslim fanatics.  A self-proclaimed imam, Xhemajl Duka, who had come to Kosovo from his native Albania, was deported back there.   The mosque he had erected in the village of Marina, near the central Kosovar city of Skenderaj, was closed by local authorities.

Over the past decade, since the U.S.-led NATO intervention to defend the Kosovar Albanians against the terrorism of the late Slobodan Milosevic, Artemije Radosavljevic, bishop of the Serbian Orthodox church in Kosovo, has gained considerable local and global publicity. Artemije’s media career began with his admission that Serbian nationalists had subjected the Kosovars to abuse. He later moved on to demands that the remaining Serb minority in the territory benefit from permanent international protection. Bishop Artemije became a frequent visitor to the United States, and, after September 11, 2001, emerged as a favorite of those who falsely accuse the entire Kosovar Muslim community of jihadism. He directed this flamboyant propaganda, which attributed unspeakably horrible crimes to the Albanians, from a large enclave at the Serbian monastery of Gracanica, near the Kosovo capital of Pristina. There Artemije and his cohort have been assiduously guarded by Swedish as well as NATO forces.

For almost 11 years, Kosovo has been ruled by foreigners: mainly the United Nations through its former mission in the country (UNMIK), along with the European Union (EU) and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Most Americans are aware of the derelictions of the U.N. in crises afflicting countries from Rwanda through Israel to Kashmir. And Americans have a healthy suspicion about the EU, because of its political competition with the U.S. and its intrigues with Russia. Unfortunately, few Americans have heard of OSCE, to which the United States belongs, alongside (among others) Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan—bastions of antidemocratic politics and sources of regional instability. Yet the OSCE intervenes boldly and often crudely in “managing” the transition to democracy in the troubled Balkans and other states.

Islamist infiltration of the Albanian-speaking areas in the Balkans began even before the U.S.-led Kosovo intervention of 1999. (The offensive by radical Islam continues in Kosovo has previously been chronicled here, here, here, and here, with attacks focused on moderate Muslim clerics.) The upsurge of armed struggle for Kosovo independence in 1998 was accompanied by the unexpected emergence of Saudi-financed radicalism in the Albanian-majority zone of western Macedonia.  The syndrome is too widespread to be coincidental. Wherever local Muslim-majority communities resist post-Communist abuses – including Kosovo and Macedonia – Islamist radicals show up (beards, short pants, and all), allegedly in emulation of the Prophet Muhammad. The religious extremists assault moderate Muslims and Christians, dividing the forces of national freedom.

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Reading J. Bottum's The Usefulness of Daniel Goldhagen, it appears that there is no end to Goldhagen's outrageous lies and exaggerations. One case in point is his statement about the World War II Croatian Nazi puppet state's Jasenovac camp.

WITH ALL EYES currently focused on Iraq, the Balkans have mostly faded from view in Washington. This is unfortunate, for events are afoot in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo that starkly illustrate the rigors of nation-building. They demonstrate why, in effecting the liberation of Iraq, the United States should probably ignore the wishes of Europe--and in rebuilding the country afterward, should go it alone.

On October 5, Bosnian citizens went to the polls to elect their national parliament.