Pyotr ISKENDEROV Serbia: dismemberment of the country, consolidation of Islamism
While the Serbian leaders are making persistent efforts to push through the country’s regionalization plan, that’s been imposed by the European Union and that ignores Serbia’s historical and cultural realities, an altogether different scenario is being implemented in the region consistently and steadily. Radical Islamists are modelling a future fundamentalist state for Serbia under the guise of creating “Euro-regions” in Serbia. The trial of four Wahhabis that drew to a close in Belgrade on September 8th shows graphically the sort of future that the ideologists of Islamic extremism have prepared for Serbia and other Balkan countries. The Wahhabis, accused of masterminding acts of terror and other “unconstitutional moves”, have been sentenced to various prison terms, ranging from four years to eight years. The investigators have established that the four had planned terrorist attacks in the city Novi-Pazar, the centre of the Sanjak historical area, which is predominantly Muslim-populated and located in the south of Serbia, on the border with Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina; they also planned “other violent acts to create an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in Serbia”. Specifically, the Wahhabis in question planned acts of terror at the Novi-Pazar stadium during football matches that are traditionally attended by large numbers of fans. The list of things, seized from the terrorists, is quite indicative. Aside from an ample quantity of arms, ammunition and explosives, the list features DVDs with the recorded scenes of assassination of US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Russian servicemen in Chechnya. What’s more, the Belgrade-based judge Milan Ranic points out that the gangsters “have been trained in piloting aircraft and have come into and maintained contact with people of the same fold in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania, Georgia and Syria”. This makes it safe to assume that the four would have by no means limited themselves to the Novi-Pazar stadium or police stations when launching their planned terrorist attacks; the more so since in July a Belgrade court had already sentenced another group of 12 Islamic militants, accused of terrorism, to long prison terms. But the sentences pronounced, however important, make one feel concerned, rather than set their mind at rest. On the 8th of September it was only two of the four terrorists that were in the courtroom when the sentence was being pronounced, while the other two were tried and got their prison terms in absentia. But the main problem seems to be that the Serbian police efforts (it is the previous Serbian government under Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica who get the credit for the arrest of the Islamic militants) are local in character and cannot per se settle the problem of Islamic fundamentalism in the Balkans. Belgrade is actually out of control of not only Kosovo, which is now a key segment of a single Wahhabi front, but also the southern Serbian communities with mixed Serbian-Albanian population. The broad self-government rights that the Serbian Government has granted to local Albanians prevent the state law enforcement bodies from monitoring the situation. Now, as regards other Balkan areas that have already been ensnared by fundamentalist networks, such as Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, the processes under way there have wrested out of control of the world community, whose only concern is to make local elections look the least democratic and prevent these countries from an immediate break-up along ethnic, religious or clan lines. A conversation that the author has had with a leading Serbian expert on interethnic relations in the region, Chairman of the Serbian Democratic Party’s Economic Council, Member of the Serbian Parliament Nenad Popovic casts some light on the essence of the problem of Islamic extremism and terrorism in the Balkans. When a member of the Vojislav Kostunica government, he held important posts in the government coordination centres for Kosovo and Metohija, and also for southern Serbian communities of Presevo, Medveđa and Bujanovac. According to him, the information that the Serbian law enforcement bodies have gathered makes it safe to claim that a single centre has been set up in the Balkans to create in the region a terrorist state of extremists, radical fundamentalists and drug dealers. The main motive force of the process is the radically-minded Albanians as the European ethnos that’s best organized militarily and politically. But rather than countering that very real threat, international and European organizations split the problem into component parts, which, experts claim (NATO and European Union experts specifically), are in no way interconnected. As interpreted by international “centres of power” and their news media, the list of the problems in question looks as follows: speedy international recognition of Kosovo’s independence, major cultural and national empowerment of Albanians in south-Serbian communities, Serbia’s regionalization according to the European standard (the carving-out of Presevo, Medveđa and Bujanovac, and also Sanjak to turn them into separate self-governed areas with the broadest possible discretion authority is currently under discussion), more energetic involvement of Macedonian Albanians in the central bodies of government of the former Yugoslav republic, countering “Serbian nationalism” in Bosnia-Herzegovina etc. But no mention is normally made of the fact that all these phenomena and processes are links in the same chain of creating in the Balkans a Muslim fundamentalist state that would control regional and world finances, arms and drug flows. Now, if the threat is mentioned, then it is said to be a propaganda effort of the Serbian nationalist forces in Belgrade, Kosovska-Mitrovica and Banja-Luka. And this is what the Chairman of the Serbian Progressive Party’s Executive Committee Milan Bacevic told the author when commenting on the regionalization concept as imposed on Serbia by the West: “As a party, we are opposed to regionalization in the form it was conceived. Speaking of regionalization from a special point of view, the Serbian Progressive Party and I personally, as one who has been dealing with the problem professionally, would like to tell you the following: the economic aspects of regionalization are acceptable, necessary and even indispensable to any state, irrespective of what political party may be at the helm there. But the kind of regionalization that’s been imposed on Serbia can do Serbia no good”. Crystal-clear, isn’t it? Piotr Akhmedovich ISKENDEROV – Senior Fellow with the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Slavonic Studies, Cand. Sc. (History), international observer with the Vremya Novostei daily. http://en.fondsk.ru/article.php?id=2458
