Product Description

The Balkans—the gateway between East and West—are also Europe's soft underbelly, a rough neighborhood where organized crime and terrorism present a constant threat. This eye-opening book details how 15 years of misguided Western interventions, political scheming, and local mafia appeasement, compounded by a massive infusion of Arab cash, fundamentalist Islamic preaching and mosque-building have allowed radical Islamic groups to fill in the cracks between internal ethnic and religious schisms and take root in key areas of the Balkans.

With all eyes currently focused on the widening conflict in the Middle East and the terrorist threat coming from the region, the West is in danger of overlooking a potent new battleground in the greater war on terror—the Balkans. This historically volatile region saw some of the worst violence of the late 20th century in the Yugoslav Wars of Secession. During these conflicts, stunningly shortsighted and politically motivated policies of the United States and its allies directly allowed Islamic mujahedin and terrorist-related entities to establish a foothold in the region—just as with the progenitors of the Taliban a decade earlier in Afghanistan.

Although the 9/11 attacks caused a partial reassessment of Western policy, it may already be too late for a region still largely ignored. The proliferation of foreign fundamentalist groups has had a cancerous effect on traditional Balkan Islamic communities, challenging their legitimacy in unprecedented and often violent ways. Well-funded groups like the Saudi-backed Wahabbis continue to exploit internal schisms within local communities, while the international administrations in Bosnia and Kosovo have actually strengthened the grip of local mafia groups—business partners of terrorists. Worst of all, the Western peacekeepers' chronic don't rock the boat mentality has allowed extremist groups to operate unchallenged. Nevertheless, regional demographic and cultural trends, coinciding with an increasingly hostile attitude in the larger Muslim world over Western military actions and perceived symbolic provocations, indicate that the lawless Balkans will become increasingly valuable as a strategic base for Islamic radicals over the next two decades. Utilizing the post-al-Qaeda tactics of a decentralized jihad carried out through small, independent cells (leaderless resistance) while seeking to fundamentally and violently remold Muslim societies, such Balkan-based extremists pose a unique and tangible threat to Western security.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #793978 in Books
• Published on: 2007-06-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 240 pages

Review

"An American journalist and travel writing based in the Balkans, Deliso does not contend that Muslims in the Balkans are about to cast off their centuries of liberal thought and behavior. Rather he argues that small groups of local but globally connected fundamentalists could gravitate toward existing terrorist organizations, and introduce a new dimension to political issues and social policy that will impact the Christian as well as Muslim populations of the peninsula."

"[T]ells the most terrifying story never told in the War on Terror....And yet anyone reading this book--indeed anyone who has been following the region and its increasingly far reach since our interventions there--will have a hard time taking the War on Terror seriously, and will be left with a sense that with their investigations of this cell or that, our intelligence agents and police are busily plugging holes in a boat that is already submerged....[T]he book makes for a damning read and a troubled sleep."

"The Coming Balkan Caliphate traces the spread of radical Islam throughout the Balkans, a process greatly stimulated by the Bosnian war… for any serious analysis of the threat posed by radical Islam, Deliso's regional perspective is essential."

Review

"Anyone imagining that Moslem extremists must be seen as a threat only east of Suez should read Chris Deliso's alarming accounts of their activities in parts of the Balkans made vulnerable by wars and poverty."

David Binder, New York Times Central and Eastern European correspondent, 1961-2004.

About the Author
CHRISTOPHER DELISO, an American journalist and travel writer based in the Balkans, has been investigating radical Islamic trends in the region for the past six years, in the process discovering emerging threats and groups that had been obscurely or completely unknown to the outside world. Deliso, who holds a master's degree in Byzantine Studies from Oxford University, is director of Balkanalysis.com, a leading independent Balkan news web site. He also serves as field analyst for the Economics Intelligence Unit, London, on Macedonian politics. His freelance articles on Balkan politics, economics, and security issues have been published widely in the mainstream and alternative media in America and abroad.

Customer Reviews

What Happens when America is "With the Terrorists"?
Caliphate tells the most terrifying story never told in the War on Terror, detailing the bizarre arrangement by which we've allied ourselves with "nominally Muslim" Albanian mafiosos to feed us information about the Islamists they do heroin and weapons business with, while Albanians, some at the highest levels of Kosovo's U.S.-supported officialdom, moonlight as terrorists themselves.

We also learn of a murky incident in which six Albanian-American fundamentalists arrived in the village of Skenderaj in the weeks before 9/11, saying that the U.S. would be attacked soon--and yet it sparked no interest or follow-up from UN or U.S. authorities in Kosovo.

From Caliphate, a reader begins to understand that in Kosovo everyone alternates roles between gangster and hostage: Albanian leaders/gangsters threaten the Islamists should they target the internationals; al Qaeda threatens Albanians with cutting off their heroin supply if they touch the Islamists; and the internationals are threatened with the understanding that the well-armed Albanians have a virtual gun pointed at our NATO troops should we embark on any unwelcome law enforcement.

As the Islamist cancer is allowed to quietly spread in the Balkans, a reader will be left with a sense that with their investigations of this cell or that, our agents and police are busily plugging holes in a boat that is already submerged.

Demonstrating an understanding of the complexity of the Albanian community, whose nationalism got them more than they'd bargained for, Deliso points to the Big Duh of the Bosnian and Kosovo civil wars: they were "just the prelude" to a longer battle, one that would be conducted against the region's Muslims themselves.

Without armed conflict or revolution "a silent transition" is taking place in the Balkans, a.k.a. "the new Middle East." The book makes for a damning read and a troubled sleep.

The Balkans Are Back
In a clear and well thought-out style, Christopher Deliso warns readers in The Coming Balkan Caliphate about the growing threat of radical Islam in the Balkans today, how it has come to be, and what we can expect in the future if we do nothing.

With years of experience in the Balkans and a journalist's eye for detail, Deliso takes readers through Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Turkey, Serbia, Montenegro and Sandzak and explains who the radicals are, how they got there, what they are currently doing and what they intend to do. Tying it all together with history, failed and failing interventions and the growth of organized crime, Deliso warns us that "...it is, of course, the case that foreign Islamic groups, terrorists included, look first to partially or fully Muslim-dominated areas of the Balkans for their radical operations and social colonization projects." He makes a clear distinction between the moderate Islam that has been practiced for centuries in the Balkans and the encroaching danger of the imported Saudi-style Wahhabi-sect reminding us that "Fundamentalist Islam, unlike Western society, is not predicated on the ideals of progress and an ever-brighter future."

Expertly researched and written, this is a clear warning to ignoring the threat of radical and extreme Islam in the Balkans today. While the world focuses on Iraq and Afghanistan, as we should, we ignore the Balkans and the threat emanating from it at our own peril.

The Truth as it has happened and is happening
I was in Kosovo working as a security chief for OSCE in the Eastern Region of Kosovo. As an eyewitness and being a position to see the inner workings of how the UN, KFOR and NATO covertly aided the Albanian extremist groups that murdered Serbs from 1999 to 2004 while I was there and of course even after. The book is an accurate description of the truth of what is going on. I can say without a doubt the negative comments made by the authors, are completely inaccurate and biased. The international community on a high level is trying to cover and lie about the real agenda in Kosovo as they support Mafia influence and extremist activity without a doubt. The Islamic Fundamentalist find the Balkans a suitable area for training, rest, and planning phases for further action in Europe and the U.S. without the hammer from the International community. This is the truth as I was an eyewitness.