Fitim Lladrovci travelled to Syria to fight a holy war. Now back in Kosovo, he continues to call for jihad. Alexander Clapp is granted a rare interview

See at: https://bit.ly/2KHtIso

“EVERY idiot with a map and rifle is getting excited,” says an international official in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, still barred from membership of the United Nations ten years after it unilaterally declared independence from Serbia. Serbs and Albanians have been transfixed as their leaders have recently discussed swapping pieces of territory populated by tens of thousands of people. It is an idea that is raising hopes and fears across the Balkans and provoking political turmoil in Kosovo itself.

IN 1991 Armend Malazogu leapt off the back of an army lorry. Then aged 18, the Kosovo Albanian was escaping being drafted into Serbia’s fight with Croatia. The Yugoslav civil wars were just beginning and would eventually spread to Kosovo. Now, 18 years after the end of the Kosovo war and almost ten after the statelet declared independence, most indicators paint a bleak picture. Unemployment is around 33% and GDP per person, at $3,660, is the lowest in the region.

Europe’s inner courtyard is drifting towards crime and authoritarianism

http://econ.st/2sWwAWU

Aid, warplanes and propaganda convince Serbs that Russia is their friend

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21717390-aid-warplanes-and-propaganda-convince-serbs-russia-their-friend-moscow-regaining-sway

Today’s war-crimes tribunals have more modest aims than in the past

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21714385-todays-war-crimes-tribunals-have-more-modest-aims-past-yugoslav-tribunal-shuts

The end of an era in Kosovo, Bosnia, Serbia and beyond

A region still enthusiastic about the European Union is being rebuffed

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21700685-region-still-enthusiastic-about-european-union-being-rebuffed-applications-deferred

THERE is something supremely changeless about the daily rites of an Orthodox Christian monastery, such as the 700-year-old community of Visoki Decani on the western fringe of Kosovo, which occupies one of the most aesthetically graceful, and gloriously decorated, religious monuments in Europe. But in recent days the abbot, Sava Janjic, has been combining his liturgical duties as a Serbian Orthodox priest with another activity: using social media to explain why his community has opposed Kosovo's admission to UNESCO, the UN's cultural arm.

EVER since the end of the Balkan wars in 1999, the most important question in the region has been when and how to join the European Union. Slovenia made it in 2004 and Croatia followed in 2013. For the rest, however, the goal is still far off. The prospects of Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia—all at different stages of EU integration—have appeared stuck for some time.

http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21662601-balkan-laggards-harbour-new-hopes-entering-eu-knocking-heavens-door