(Kosovo) Kosovo: Outpost in Battle for Universal Caliphate (Pyotr Iskenderov, Strategic Culture Foundation, 28 febbraio 2013)
It’s a possibility the next parliamentary elections in Kosovo may take place this year bringing about real changes in Europe. It’ll be the first time the Islamic Movement to Unite, or LISBA, its Albanian-language acronym, will take part in elections. The party was registered in February 2013. It has already announced the launching of a large scale campaign going beyond the Kosovo boundaries to encompass the whole Muslim world. This is the first out-and-out Islamist party in the Balkans that has set the goal of making the Balkans a part of Islamic Caliphate… (1)
It had been hard to call the Kosovo Albanians Islamists until recently. The Albanians ethnos doesn’t have its roots in religion like it takes place in case of, say, the Serbs, the Bulgarians, the Greeks or the Croats.
Pashko Vasa known as Vaso Pasha or Vaso Pasha Shkodrani, was an Albanian writer, poet and publicist of the Albanian National Awakening, and Governor of Lebanon from 1882 until his death. He said, «The religion of Albanians is Albanism». The phrase is a good example testifying to the fact the Albanian ideology had no religious basis back then.
The League for the Defense of the Rights of the Albanian Nation, commonly known as the League of Prizren, was an Albanian political organization founded in 1878 in Prizren, in the Kosovo province of the Ottoman Empire. It stuck to the same ideology. The League spread its activities beyond Albania, covering the lands in the Balkans that the Albanians considered as theirs: Serbian Kosovo, Macedonian Debar and Skopje, Greek Yanina. Abdul Bey Frashлri said addressing the Albanian League 1881 assembly in Prizren, «We’ll be Albanians and create Albania». The polls conducted in the 1990s-2000s showed the majority of Kosovo Muslims belonged to its moderate branch – Sufism.
After independence was proclaimed unilaterally in 2008 the radicalization started to rapidly spread.
The results of the study conducted in October-December in 2006 in line with the United Nations Development Program were made public in March 2007. Only 2.5% of Kosovo Albanians thought the unification with Albania was the best solution to the Kosovo issue. To the contrary, 96% wanted Kosovo to be an independent state within the contemporary boundaries (2). According to Gallup Balkans Monitor poll conducted in January 2010, the majority of Albanians and Kosovars supported the idea of Greater Albania. 74.2 % said yes in Kosovo, 70.5% supported the idea in Albania. 47.3 % of respondents in Kosovo and 39.5% of respondents in Albania think the unification within the large ethnic boundaries was possible in the near future. (3)
The data proves there is a perilous re-thinking process going on and it is bolstered by Muslim funds, institutes and other structures flooding Kosovo today. They invest hundreds of thousands dollars into the construction of mosques, religious education and other projects. There is a creeping Islamisation of the Kosovo Albanians. Pristina has 22 mosques for the population of 200 thousand, the number keeps on growing. Saudi Wahhabites and the Muslim Brothers supporters are especially active, the last ones becoming more popular after they came to power in Egypt.
A creation of an Islamic fundamentalist LISBA is no surprise, as well as the growing popularity of the Self-Determination movement, which openly declares the creation of Greater Albania as its goal.
The Islamic Movement to Unite has two leaders. Its head is Arsim Krasniqi but Fuad Ramiqi is more popular. They have tacitly divided the functions. Krasniqi is responsible for management while Ramiqi controls with international activities. The Party of Democratic Action, a Bosniak national political party in Bosnia and Herzegovina, is LISBA’s close ally. It was founded in May 1990 by Alija Izetbegoviж, who published a manifesto entitled the «Islamic declaration” back in 1970. He proclaimed the idea of a united transnational Islamic state in accordance with the Quran laws, «Islam has become love and compassion... He who rises against Islam will reap nothing but hate and resistance... In one of the theses for an Islamic order today we have stated that it is a natural function of the Islamic order to gather all Muslims and Muslim communities throughout the world into one. Under present conditions, this desire means a struggle for creating a great Islamic federation from Morocco to Indonesia, from the tropical Africa to the Central Asia (put in extra bold by the writer)”. He also said, «There's no peace or coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions».
The movement is close to the same type of Albanian organizations in Macedonia, some of which become more openly radicalized. Fuad Ramiqi enjoys support in the Middle East, especially after he took part in the «Gaza Freedom Flotilla” in 2010. He got involved in politics for the first time taking part in protests against a legal ban on girls wearing headscarves (hijab) in public schools. Now his political activities have acquired a larger scope going beyond Kosovo and spreading across the Balkans.
Ferid Agani, the head and founder of the Justice Party, is another important figure on the Kosovo’s political scene. They see themselves as the allies of the Justice and Development Party in Turkey led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. They got three seats at the last Kosovo parliamentary elections in December 2010. The party has significantly radicalized since then, now Ferid Agani resorts more often to street protests.
Europe does see the growing threat of converting Kosovo into an instrument of creating the Greater Albania and Eurasian Caliphate. Miroslav Lajибk, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign and European Affairs of the Slovak Republic, has recently expressed his concern over the Islamic offensive. Germany's foreign minister Guido Westerwelle has joined in saying the nationalist sentiments should be under control and treated with greater responsibility and attention.
But the root of the problem is that the West is a hostage to its own Kosovo project. For instance, let’s take those who are critical towards the Albanian radicalization: Miroslav Lajибk and Guido Westerwelle. The first one held the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Those days he stubbornly denied the «Kosovo precedent” was of any threat for the Balkans. According to him, there was nothing in common between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo. Westerwelle has the reputation of as leading advocate of Albanian separatists in Kosovo and a tough opponent of Serbia, the country he is pressing for the earliest recognition of Kosovo’s independence.
While the Europeans are pursuing their geopolitical interests, the Balkans, and Kosovo in particular, are rapidly converting into an important outpost of the forces waging fight for establishing a universal caliphate.