Warns former I fighter SIS: There could be terrorist attacks in Kosovo

Kosovo, a small Muslim majority country of about 1.8 million people, has produced more foreign daily fighters than any other Western country since the Islamic State declared its potassium in 2014, which has already not been operational. Four hundred and thirteen Kosovo citizens joined this group and other factions of Islamic extremists at the time.

Now trying to join the European Union, Kosovo has been under pressure to eradicate the problem of radicalism, and authorities say it has succeeded. Since 2013, Kosovo police say they have charged over 120 suspected terrorists and arrested more, including well-known conservative mothers suspected of recruiting people to fight abroad, reports “The Washington Post”.

“Now we no longer see terrorism as a threat”, says Metom Bytyqi, one of the top government analysts for security policies, as well as the Kosovo strategy leader to combat violent extremism. “Now dominates a complete silence. All imams, even if they want to say something, are fearing the government”, broadcasting Koha.net.

But many of those suspected terrorists, convicted under an old anti-terrorism law that limits prison sentences of up to five years, are now being released. And some say that attempts to rehabilitate them have failed.

We're becoming more powerful and wiser”, says Fitim Ladrovci, 28, former I fighter SIS and former prisoners, referring to extremists. “Terrorists will not be reintegration, and there may be attacks here”.

Anne Speckhard, a psychiatrist who runs the International Centre for the Study of Distremistant Extremism, says Lardrovci's contempt for rehabilitation and for strengthening radical beliefs are likely the emblems of “several other militants turned away from Kosovo”. However, she says the trend “is bad for all of us”.

It's a potentially ominous development for policy enforcement efforts across the continent. “We need to provide a portable model for all of Europe”, says Garentina Kraja, senior foreign researcher for the Kosovar Centre for Security Studies. We are predominantly Muslim societies, but we are secular Europeans. So, I feel that if there's an example to be found somewhere, there's this place that should offer an answer to”.

Kosovo, according to Daniel Koehler, director of the German Institute for Radicalism Studies and Deradikalism, may also be the entry point into the EU to conduct attacks. At the beginning of June, Kosovo authorities arrested several suspects for planning NATO troops' attacks on Kosovo, as well as in other public places in France and Belgium, Coha.net broadcasts.

Since April, the US Department of Justice has helped implement the rehabilitation problems in Kosovo prisons for suspects charged with terrorism. Prior to that, the country did not have any comprehensive programme for rehabilitation of fighters, according to the European Commission's Kosovo report for 2018.

The majority of European countries have more stable programmes established. In Germany, in the United Kingdom and France, there are longer stories of social welfare and prison infrastructure than in Kosovo”, Koehler says. Kosovo is still clearing itself of its 1998-99 war against Serbia, and suffers from corruption in the public sector and problems of rule of law”.

The new US-led programme sends psychologists, sociologists, social workers and moderate governmental issue from the Islamic Community of Kosovo to work with prisoners on charges of terrorism.

That strategy, the rehabilitation of extremists through Islamic reformation, has previously been tested in Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries, says Koehler, “but this approach rarely works”. Ladrovci, who was released from prison three months ago after staying there for more than three years, ridicules the idea of sending moderate imams sent from intelligent services. According to him, returnees will not accept those names “because they are not true Muslims”.

Anne Speckhard, a psychiatrist who runs the International Centre for the Study of Distremetic Violence, also says that the programme has the wrong goal: The obedience of individuals not to resort to violence rather than to try to demean it all together broadcasts Koha.net.

Speckhard believes doordating should be the goal; a truly debugized person, she says, “will not turn into terrorism easily”, while the one who is “cut off” from violence but which is ideologically still committed, there is “much more likely to return”.

Liridon Kabashi, 31, another member of the Islamic State, says he has never faced any attempts at prison treatment. For two years I've heard talk about the programme, but I've never really seen”, says Kabashi, who returned to Kosovo in 2013 and served a three-year prison sentence.

Unlike Ladrovci, he regrets that he has joined the Islamic State and has never justified terrorist attacks across Europe. He says the “returns to” embrace a radical ideology and need real “debugisation and reintegration” before becoming more sophisticated and organise attacks in the future in Kosovo or abroad.

This report is backed by the Pulitzer Centre for Crisis Reporting.