ianstone
10-13-2010, 10:37 PM
Extremism Militant Islam gains ground in the Balkans
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,5988084_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488,00.html) some Muslim charities could encourage Wahhabism (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488,00.html)
A recent online music video featuring Macedonians praising Osama bin Laden has fueled fears that Southeastern Europe could be emerging as the latest breeding ground for homegrown Islamist militants.
It has also focused attention on Muslim charities active in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia and European Union member Bulgaria since the wars in former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s. Many of those charities are funded by oil-rich Saudi Arabia and propagate Wahhabism - the kingdom's austere and puritan interpretation of Islam.
A majority of Wahhabis favor peaceful proselytizing of Islam while Saudi King Abdullah has been seeking to soften Wahhabi practices as part of his reforms in the kingdom. Militant groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Taliban and jihadists in Somalia have however embraced significant elements of Wahhabism as part of their ideology.
Jasmin Merdan, a young Bosnian who wrote a book after disassociating himself from Wahhabis groups in Bosnia, warned that "they express their convictions with violence, introduce anarchy in mosques and preach intolerance." Women in the Albanian city of Skadar have reportedly started covering their heads or wearing the niqab, a full body covering that hides everything but the eyes, in newly found religiosity.
The video posted on YouTube is one of several produced by home grown jihadists in the Balkans and circulating in the region. "Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims’ honor," a group of Macedonian men chant in Albanian on the video. "In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you." Similar songs calling on Southeastern European Muslims to join the jihad have been produced in Bosnian.
Governments and security forces fear that that increased Wahhabi activity will produce committed jihadis that could destabilize already fragile nations in southeastern Europe and, in the case of Bulgaria - where one sixth of the country's 7.6 million people is Muslim - produce a pool of jihadists whose EU passports would grant them easy access to Western Europe and allow them to blend into society.
Bulgaria seen as potential breeding ground
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,4867087_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_1,00.html) Most Bulgarian Muslims are of Turkish ethnicity (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_1,00.html)Bulgaria is the only EU member whose Muslim population are not recent immigrants. Most Bulgarian Muslims like those elsewhere in the Balkans are descendants of ethnic Turks who arrived during five centuries of Ottoman rule.
Three ethnic Albanian brothers from Macedonia were convicted to life in prison in 2008 on charges of plotting to attack the US Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey. A fourth member of the group from Kosovo was sentenced to five years in jail.
Across the Balkans, minority Wahhabi groups seek to convert mainstream Islam to their more militant interpretation through the operation of cultural centers, mosques, schools and at times by battling for control of majority Muslim organizations and community-owned property. A majority of the region's Muslims are secular and analysts caution against overstating the Wahhabi threat.
"It should not be ignored, but neither should it be exaggerated," said Hajrudin Somun a former Bosnian ambassador to Turkey and history professor at Sarajevo's Philip Noel-Baker International University.
The analysts say militant Islam is gaining ground on the fringe of a more general return to religion in the Balkans. Several thousand Orthodox Christian Bulgarians demonstrated in Sofia recently demanding that religious instruction be made compulsory in schools - a demand supported by mainstream Muslim organizations.
Muslim organizations are believed to have spent large amounts of money over the last decade to build some 150 new mosques and educational centers in predominantly Orthodox Bulgaria. A minority are believed to promote Wahhabism.
Analysts say that radical Islam has gained ground in southern and northeastern Bulgaria where militant Islamists, according to former Bulgarian chief mufti Nedim Gendzhev, are seeking to create a "fundamentalist triangle" in areas of Bosnia, Macedonia and Bulgaria's Western Rhodope mountains.
Fears of increasing radicalism
Bulgarian authorities last year arrested a mayor and a village teacher in the south of the country on charges of preaching radical Islam. In 2003, authorities shut down several Islamic centers because they were financed by Saudi-funded Muslim groups believed to have links to militant Islamic organizations and "to prevent terrorists getting a foothold in Bulgaria." Some analysts estimate that 3,000 young Muslims have graduated from militant schools still operating in Bulgaria; it was not immediately clear what they went on to do following their graduation.
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,5988247_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_2,00.html)
Relations are tense between Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_2,00.html)The threat posed by the Wahhabis is a major bone of contention in tense relations between Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, which so far has successfully neutralized Wahhabi influence by controlling the appointment of imams in mosques and teachers at Islamic educational institutions and employing law enforcement.
Some Bosnian Wahhabis, estimated to number 3,000, are former foreign fighters who married Bosnian women and stayed in the country after the Bosnian war that ended in 1995. Bosnia recently stepped up its fight against militancy and organized crime to meet an EU requirement for visa-free travel for Bosnians and closer ties with the bloc.
In early September, Bosnian police uncovered a cache of weapons and detained a third suspect as part of their inquiry into a June bomb attack that killed one policeman and injured six others. The attack on a police station in the town of Bugojno was one of the most serious security incidents in Bosnia. Police arrested the suspected mastermind and an aide shortly after the blast.
Bosnia tries to crackdown on militants
Boris Grubesic, a spokesman for the Bosnian prosecutor's office, told reporters in mid-September that prosecutors were investigating several people from Bugojno and Gornja Maoca on suspicion of Wahhabi ties, terrorism and human trafficking.
In February, Bosnian and EU police raided Gornja Maoca and arrested seven men described as Wahhabis because of their beards and shortened trousers. Police said they were detained for suspected illegal possession of arms and threatening the country's "territorial integrity, constitutional order and provoking inter-ethnic and religious hatred."
Gornja Maoca was home to some 30 families who lived by strict Shariah laws, organized schooling in Arabic for their children outside the state system and opposed the primacy of Bosnia's mainstream Islamic Community. Nusret Imamovic, the town's self-proclaimed Wahhabi leader, endorsed suicide attacks on the group's Bosnian language website, saying they should be launched only in "exceptional circumstances." The site features statements by al-Qaeda and Islamic groups fighting in the Caucasus and celebrates suicide bombers as joyful Muslims.
Serbian officials say 12 alleged Wahhabis convicted last year to prison terms of up to 13 years for planning terrorist attacks, including on the US Embassy in Belgrade, had close ties to their brethren in Gornja Maoca. One of the convicted, Adnan Hot, said during the trial that Imamovic was one of only three Muslim leaders that he followed. Four other Wahhabis were sentenced in a separate case to jail terms of up to eight years on charges of planning to bomb a football stadium in the southern Serbian town of Novi Pazar.
In Macedonia, Suleyman Rexhepim Rexhepi, head of the official Islamic Religious Community (IVZ), recently called on the government and the international community to crack down on increasingly influential Wahabbi groups. Rexhepi is locked into a bitter battle with Ramadan Ramadani, the imam of the Isa Beg mosque in Skopje, that has caused a rift in the country's Muslim community.
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Extremism Al-Qaeda is a bigger threat today than 10 years ago, says terrorism expert
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,6087898_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6087974,00.html) (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6087974,00.html)
Al-Qaeda is far more dangerous than it was 10 years ago, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit tells Deutsche Welle in an interview. He is also worried about the increased domestic threat the West is facing.
Michael F. Scheuer is an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. A long time counterterrorism official, he was the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit. Scheuer is the author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America" (2003) and "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" (2004).
Deutsche Welle: There is some confusion about the current threat of terrorism in Europe, specifically in Germany, France and Britain. While the US, British and Australian authorities have issued a travel alert for Europe, German officials have downplayed the threat saying there were no indications of an imminent attack. Since the US and Europe share intelligence information, how do you explain the discrepancy in judgment?
Michael F. Scheuer: At least in the American case we have a government that's extraordinarily incompetent in terms of experience with these kinds of things. And they are covering their behinds as much as they can. Certainly in the last weeks running up to the midterm elections here in the United States they don't want to be blamed for any kind of a security failure. That said, it was very unusual in my experience for the United States to issue a travel alert for Europe. They are always very reluctant to do that because they are afraid to hurt the transatlantic economy. So I suspect there is something to the overall discussion of a current threat.
Law enforcement and intelligent officials are of course walking a fine line in deciding when to go public with a warning about a possible terrorism threat. It seems that the US government is generally quicker to issue terrorism warnings than European countries. From your experience what's the better approach?
I think every government has to decide that for themselves. But my own impression is that since 9/11 the approach by the United States government is often quite juvenile in the sense that they want to cover their backside so nothing happens that they can get blamed for. Certainly in my experience while I was working at the CIA the British and the European services were more willing to follow a threat a little longer than we were in order to try to break it up more thoroughly.
Intelligence officials point to an increased amount of chatter as a reason for the terror alert and the German interior minister said there is a high level of abstract threat for Germany. Can you explain what that means from your experience in practical terms?
Very often information about terrorism is not clear cut one way or another. You are trying to figure out what they are saying, they are using code words, so it's very hard to tell whether it's imminent. I think what he (Germany's interior minister - the ed.) means by abstract is that people are debating whether to do it or not or whether they have the capability to do it.
In the European context though I think one thing that perhaps Europeans don't realize is that they are begging to be attacked, they have done virtually everything they can to make sure that they will be attacked whether it's the caricatures of the prophet Mohamed in a Danish newspaper that are now published in a book, the French ban on the burka. At least in cultural terms, many of the Europeans countries appear to have declared war on Islam and its traditions. And so the idea that we are getting this threat now and that there is a lot of chatter about it should not be a surprise to the Europeans.
From your perspective, have European governments done enough to secure their countries from an attack?
No of course not. Like the United States they have no idea who is in their country. Their immigration policies have been anything from a shambles to a disgrace for the last 20 years. They have no idea who is in Germany or Spain or Italy or the United Kingdom. So the police authorities really don't have an ability to preempt these things with any degree of certainty. They do a very good job, but the politicians flooded the playing field if you will with players that no one can identify.
You have worked closely with European and German authorities during your long career with the CIA. How would you rate the work of German intelligence services and the transatlantic cooperation on intelligence matters?
I thought that the German BND was always a little bit standoffish, who were not always ready to cooperate in terms of terrorism activities. That may have changed, I have not been working now for five years. On the other hand, the state and the federal police force in Germany were always very helpful and eager to help protect their citizens.
Basically I found the same thing in Britain, that the external service was a little less cooperative than MI5 for example. The MI5 was always an extremely good ally and a very competent service.
And finally, you have been tracking al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for years. How dangerous is al-Qaeda nine years after 9/11 and what's bin Laden's role within the organization today?
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,5988084_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488,00.html) some Muslim charities could encourage Wahhabism (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488,00.html)
A recent online music video featuring Macedonians praising Osama bin Laden has fueled fears that Southeastern Europe could be emerging as the latest breeding ground for homegrown Islamist militants.
It has also focused attention on Muslim charities active in Bosnia, Kosovo, Serbia, Albania, Macedonia and European Union member Bulgaria since the wars in former Yugoslavia in the mid-1990s. Many of those charities are funded by oil-rich Saudi Arabia and propagate Wahhabism - the kingdom's austere and puritan interpretation of Islam.
A majority of Wahhabis favor peaceful proselytizing of Islam while Saudi King Abdullah has been seeking to soften Wahhabi practices as part of his reforms in the kingdom. Militant groups such as Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda, the Taliban and jihadists in Somalia have however embraced significant elements of Wahhabism as part of their ideology.
Jasmin Merdan, a young Bosnian who wrote a book after disassociating himself from Wahhabis groups in Bosnia, warned that "they express their convictions with violence, introduce anarchy in mosques and preach intolerance." Women in the Albanian city of Skadar have reportedly started covering their heads or wearing the niqab, a full body covering that hides everything but the eyes, in newly found religiosity.
The video posted on YouTube is one of several produced by home grown jihadists in the Balkans and circulating in the region. "Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims’ honor," a group of Macedonian men chant in Albanian on the video. "In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you." Similar songs calling on Southeastern European Muslims to join the jihad have been produced in Bosnian.
Governments and security forces fear that that increased Wahhabi activity will produce committed jihadis that could destabilize already fragile nations in southeastern Europe and, in the case of Bulgaria - where one sixth of the country's 7.6 million people is Muslim - produce a pool of jihadists whose EU passports would grant them easy access to Western Europe and allow them to blend into society.
Bulgaria seen as potential breeding ground
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,4867087_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_1,00.html) Most Bulgarian Muslims are of Turkish ethnicity (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_1,00.html)Bulgaria is the only EU member whose Muslim population are not recent immigrants. Most Bulgarian Muslims like those elsewhere in the Balkans are descendants of ethnic Turks who arrived during five centuries of Ottoman rule.
Three ethnic Albanian brothers from Macedonia were convicted to life in prison in 2008 on charges of plotting to attack the US Army's Fort Dix military base in New Jersey. A fourth member of the group from Kosovo was sentenced to five years in jail.
Across the Balkans, minority Wahhabi groups seek to convert mainstream Islam to their more militant interpretation through the operation of cultural centers, mosques, schools and at times by battling for control of majority Muslim organizations and community-owned property. A majority of the region's Muslims are secular and analysts caution against overstating the Wahhabi threat.
"It should not be ignored, but neither should it be exaggerated," said Hajrudin Somun a former Bosnian ambassador to Turkey and history professor at Sarajevo's Philip Noel-Baker International University.
The analysts say militant Islam is gaining ground on the fringe of a more general return to religion in the Balkans. Several thousand Orthodox Christian Bulgarians demonstrated in Sofia recently demanding that religious instruction be made compulsory in schools - a demand supported by mainstream Muslim organizations.
Muslim organizations are believed to have spent large amounts of money over the last decade to build some 150 new mosques and educational centers in predominantly Orthodox Bulgaria. A minority are believed to promote Wahhabism.
Analysts say that radical Islam has gained ground in southern and northeastern Bulgaria where militant Islamists, according to former Bulgarian chief mufti Nedim Gendzhev, are seeking to create a "fundamentalist triangle" in areas of Bosnia, Macedonia and Bulgaria's Western Rhodope mountains.
Fears of increasing radicalism
Bulgarian authorities last year arrested a mayor and a village teacher in the south of the country on charges of preaching radical Islam. In 2003, authorities shut down several Islamic centers because they were financed by Saudi-funded Muslim groups believed to have links to militant Islamic organizations and "to prevent terrorists getting a foothold in Bulgaria." Some analysts estimate that 3,000 young Muslims have graduated from militant schools still operating in Bulgaria; it was not immediately clear what they went on to do following their graduation.
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,5988247_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_2,00.html)
Relations are tense between Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6100488_ind_2,00.html)The threat posed by the Wahhabis is a major bone of contention in tense relations between Muslims and Serbs in Bosnia, which so far has successfully neutralized Wahhabi influence by controlling the appointment of imams in mosques and teachers at Islamic educational institutions and employing law enforcement.
Some Bosnian Wahhabis, estimated to number 3,000, are former foreign fighters who married Bosnian women and stayed in the country after the Bosnian war that ended in 1995. Bosnia recently stepped up its fight against militancy and organized crime to meet an EU requirement for visa-free travel for Bosnians and closer ties with the bloc.
In early September, Bosnian police uncovered a cache of weapons and detained a third suspect as part of their inquiry into a June bomb attack that killed one policeman and injured six others. The attack on a police station in the town of Bugojno was one of the most serious security incidents in Bosnia. Police arrested the suspected mastermind and an aide shortly after the blast.
Bosnia tries to crackdown on militants
Boris Grubesic, a spokesman for the Bosnian prosecutor's office, told reporters in mid-September that prosecutors were investigating several people from Bugojno and Gornja Maoca on suspicion of Wahhabi ties, terrorism and human trafficking.
In February, Bosnian and EU police raided Gornja Maoca and arrested seven men described as Wahhabis because of their beards and shortened trousers. Police said they were detained for suspected illegal possession of arms and threatening the country's "territorial integrity, constitutional order and provoking inter-ethnic and religious hatred."
Gornja Maoca was home to some 30 families who lived by strict Shariah laws, organized schooling in Arabic for their children outside the state system and opposed the primacy of Bosnia's mainstream Islamic Community. Nusret Imamovic, the town's self-proclaimed Wahhabi leader, endorsed suicide attacks on the group's Bosnian language website, saying they should be launched only in "exceptional circumstances." The site features statements by al-Qaeda and Islamic groups fighting in the Caucasus and celebrates suicide bombers as joyful Muslims.
Serbian officials say 12 alleged Wahhabis convicted last year to prison terms of up to 13 years for planning terrorist attacks, including on the US Embassy in Belgrade, had close ties to their brethren in Gornja Maoca. One of the convicted, Adnan Hot, said during the trial that Imamovic was one of only three Muslim leaders that he followed. Four other Wahhabis were sentenced in a separate case to jail terms of up to eight years on charges of planning to bomb a football stadium in the southern Serbian town of Novi Pazar.
In Macedonia, Suleyman Rexhepim Rexhepi, head of the official Islamic Religious Community (IVZ), recently called on the government and the international community to crack down on increasingly influential Wahabbi groups. Rexhepi is locked into a bitter battle with Ramadan Ramadani, the imam of the Isa Beg mosque in Skopje, that has caused a rift in the country's Muslim community.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Extremism Al-Qaeda is a bigger threat today than 10 years ago, says terrorism expert
http://www.dw-world.de/image/0,,6087898_1,00.jpg (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6087974,00.html) (http://www.dw-world.de/popups/popup_lupe/0,,6087974,00.html)
Al-Qaeda is far more dangerous than it was 10 years ago, the former head of the CIA’s bin Laden unit tells Deutsche Welle in an interview. He is also worried about the increased domestic threat the West is facing.
Michael F. Scheuer is an adjunct professor of security studies at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. A long time counterterrorism official, he was the former head of the CIA's Osama bin Laden unit. Scheuer is the author of "Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam & the Future of America" (2003) and "Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror" (2004).
Deutsche Welle: There is some confusion about the current threat of terrorism in Europe, specifically in Germany, France and Britain. While the US, British and Australian authorities have issued a travel alert for Europe, German officials have downplayed the threat saying there were no indications of an imminent attack. Since the US and Europe share intelligence information, how do you explain the discrepancy in judgment?
Michael F. Scheuer: At least in the American case we have a government that's extraordinarily incompetent in terms of experience with these kinds of things. And they are covering their behinds as much as they can. Certainly in the last weeks running up to the midterm elections here in the United States they don't want to be blamed for any kind of a security failure. That said, it was very unusual in my experience for the United States to issue a travel alert for Europe. They are always very reluctant to do that because they are afraid to hurt the transatlantic economy. So I suspect there is something to the overall discussion of a current threat.
Law enforcement and intelligent officials are of course walking a fine line in deciding when to go public with a warning about a possible terrorism threat. It seems that the US government is generally quicker to issue terrorism warnings than European countries. From your experience what's the better approach?
I think every government has to decide that for themselves. But my own impression is that since 9/11 the approach by the United States government is often quite juvenile in the sense that they want to cover their backside so nothing happens that they can get blamed for. Certainly in my experience while I was working at the CIA the British and the European services were more willing to follow a threat a little longer than we were in order to try to break it up more thoroughly.
Intelligence officials point to an increased amount of chatter as a reason for the terror alert and the German interior minister said there is a high level of abstract threat for Germany. Can you explain what that means from your experience in practical terms?
Very often information about terrorism is not clear cut one way or another. You are trying to figure out what they are saying, they are using code words, so it's very hard to tell whether it's imminent. I think what he (Germany's interior minister - the ed.) means by abstract is that people are debating whether to do it or not or whether they have the capability to do it.
In the European context though I think one thing that perhaps Europeans don't realize is that they are begging to be attacked, they have done virtually everything they can to make sure that they will be attacked whether it's the caricatures of the prophet Mohamed in a Danish newspaper that are now published in a book, the French ban on the burka. At least in cultural terms, many of the Europeans countries appear to have declared war on Islam and its traditions. And so the idea that we are getting this threat now and that there is a lot of chatter about it should not be a surprise to the Europeans.
From your perspective, have European governments done enough to secure their countries from an attack?
No of course not. Like the United States they have no idea who is in their country. Their immigration policies have been anything from a shambles to a disgrace for the last 20 years. They have no idea who is in Germany or Spain or Italy or the United Kingdom. So the police authorities really don't have an ability to preempt these things with any degree of certainty. They do a very good job, but the politicians flooded the playing field if you will with players that no one can identify.
You have worked closely with European and German authorities during your long career with the CIA. How would you rate the work of German intelligence services and the transatlantic cooperation on intelligence matters?
I thought that the German BND was always a little bit standoffish, who were not always ready to cooperate in terms of terrorism activities. That may have changed, I have not been working now for five years. On the other hand, the state and the federal police force in Germany were always very helpful and eager to help protect their citizens.
Basically I found the same thing in Britain, that the external service was a little less cooperative than MI5 for example. The MI5 was always an extremely good ally and a very competent service.
And finally, you have been tracking al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden for years. How dangerous is al-Qaeda nine years after 9/11 and what's bin Laden's role within the organization today?