Page 43 - Cyber Terrorism and Extremism as Threat to Critical Infrastructure Protection

DENIS ČALETA, SARA PERKOVIĆ: EXTREMISM AND RADICALIZATION IN THE EUROPEAN ENVIRONMENT – SECURITY CHALLENGES
OF RETURN FOREIGN FIGHTERS

At the time of the Balkan Wars, even though Kosovo was still part of Yugoslavia, its people
were already facing ideological and religious sharing by different NGOs who were, certainly,
sharing money and building Mosques, but also actually promoting radicalism. “Kosovo faces
many challenges in its efforts to eliminate the causes and factors impacting on the spread of
extremist religious ideology, violent extremism and Islamic radicalism. The post war situa-
tion, economic and social problems, unemployment, poverty, lack of perspective, crime and
corruption are counted as a conductive factors utilized by political Islam elements in the
spread of religious extremism and radicalism in Kosovo” (Arifi, 2018, p 110). However, shar-
ing religious extremism ideology in Kosovo at that period was not so strong as we could see
in he case of Islamic state. Islamic State propaganda was very quick to attract people from
Kosovo because it began to share local problems and refer to local people. The Islamic State
demonstrated the same manner of functioning in BiH – two countries which share a similar
history and religious point of view.

The Government of Kosovo approached the problem of people being radicalized and joining
Islamic State very seriously. In 2015 they approved a five-year Strategy on the Prevention
of Violent Extremism and Radicalization leading to Terrorism. The Strategy shows that the
Government of Kosovo understands how necessary it is to have complete and specific steps
to successfully fight against terrorism. They also developed an action plan for implementing
the Strategy, approved by the Government in 2016. The Strategy was written by a government
working group which included representatives of the Prime Minister’s office, the Ministry
of Education, the Ministry of Justice, the Kosovo police, the Kosovo Intelligence Agency
(KIA), the Secretary of Council Safety of Kosovo and other Government agencies, together
with representatives of religious communities and NGOs. A role was even played by inter-
national partners such as OSCE and UNDP, in securing support from their experts in writing
the Strategy.

The Government of Kosovo outlined four approaches in the Strategy:
• Early identification (cause, factors and targeted groups)
• Prevention (violent extremism and radicalism)
• Intervention (with the goal of preventing threats that came out from violent radicalism)
2
• Deradicalization and reintegration of radicalized individuals .
This is not the only strategy which tries to deal with foreign fighters and terrorism in general.
There are a number of national strategies mentioned in the Government plan as the most im-
portant in helping bring about a solution to radicalism:
• National Strategy of the Republic of Kosovo on Crime Prevention and Action Plan 2013-2017
• National Strategy Against Terrorism 2012-2017 of Republic of Kosovo
• National Strategy and Action Plan for Community Safety 2011-2016
• National Strategy of the Republic of Kosovo for the Prevention and combating the infor-
mal economy, money laundering, terrorist financing and financial crimes 2014-2018 and
Action Plan
• Kosovo Strategy for Youth 2013-2017 and Action Plan 2013-2015
• National Strategy on Integrated Border Management
• National Strategy against Drugs.

2 Office of the Prime Minister; Strategy on the Prevention of Violent Extremism and Radicalisation leading to
Terrorism 2015-2020, p 5

43