IS LAVDRIM MUHAXHERI dead? At the end of July the leading Albanian jihadi fighting in Syria (pictured) was posting photos of himself on Facebook in which he appears to chop the head off a young man who he said was a spy. A few days ago the Balkan media were picking up reports from Kurdish television saying that the 24-year-old from Kosovo was dead. On social media however, a friend of his is denying it.
As the western world and its security agencies digest the murder of an American journalist, James Foley, apparently at the hands of a Briton, Balkan countries are getting to grips with their own versions of the problem. Hundreds of Muslim Albanians from Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania are reported to have gone to pursue jihad, along with Bosniak Muslims. A recent Islamic State video showed Mr Muhaxheri brandishing his Kosovo passport, besides other Albanians from Albania, Macedonia and Kosovo. Mr Muhaxheri waves a sword, promises to conquer Rome and Spain and then the Albanians destroy their passports.
But the phenomenon is not restricted to Muslims. In the past few weeks the issue of Orthodox Serbs going to fight in Ukraine has risen to the top of the political agenda. According to Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister, they are all mercenaries and what they were doing is “very harmful” for Serbia.
No one knows how many Serbs have gone to fight in Ukraine. Figures quoted in the media, attributed to intelligence sources, put the numbers at between 30 and 100. Mr Vucic says they are fighting on both sides; the vast majority are likely to be on the side of pro-Russian rebels.
On August 18th Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic, announced that 14 Serbs had just turned up to fight. Kosovo Front, a Russian website, gives information to Serbs on how to help the rebels and how to join the “Jovan Sevic Unit”, named after an 18th-century Serb who fought in what is now eastern Ukraine at a time when there were Serbian settlements there.
The Kosovo Front linkman in Serbia, Zeljko Djurovic, gives his phone number and e-mail out here for anyone wanting to help. Kosovo Front is headed by Aleksandr Kravchenko, who says he fought on the Serbian side during the Bosnian war. The website also says that the only way to liberate Kosovo from its mainly Muslim-Albanian people is by liberating Novorossiya, as the pro-Russian rebels call their territory.
For many of the Serbs lured to fighting in Russia there is a quasi-religious, Slavic brotherhood element, which mirrors the lure of religious war for Muslims to go to Syria and Iraq. Both fly eerily similar black and white flags, except that one is emblazoned with words from the Koran, whereas the Orthodox Serb one has a skull and crossbones, crosses and a declaration of Christian faith. Many of the Serbs also sport big bushy beards like their jihadi counterparts.
Both Serbia and Kosovo are now preparing legislation to ban their citizens fighting in foreign wars. Bosnia passed its own in April. On August 11th the Kosovo police arrested 40 people it linked to “terrorist groups operating in Iraq and Syria”. According to the police 16 Kosovars have been killed in Syria and Iraq.
In March the authorities in Albania arrested eight people linked to recruitment for jihad in Syria. Most Albanians are strongly pro-American and this week it was revealed that Albania, which has vast stocks of communist-era arms, will send millions of rounds of ammunition, including 32,000 artillery shells, to Iraq and 10,000 Kalashnikov rifles to Afghanistan.
Meanwhile the press in Kosovo have reported that an agent of the Kosovo Intelligence Agency was executed in Syria earlier this year after he had been caught as infiltrator among Albanian jihadis.
