Islamic Extremism 'Imported' to Kosovo, Report Says

The report published by the Kosovo Center for Security Studies (KCSS) on Tuesday explores the "causes and consequences of the involvement of Kosovo citizens as foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq" as well as the reasons for the radicalisation of a fraction of Kosovo's traditionally moderate or even secular population.

It says that "radical and fundamentalist approaches to Islam" are mainly imported from abroad and started to spread when Muslim charities from Saudi Arabia started operating in Kosovo.

"The dissemination of Saudi Arabia's Hanbali doctrine in Kosovo began during the mid-1990s but more intensively from the second half of 1999, immediately after NATO ceased its operations against Serbian targets," says the report.

The Saudi charity organisations provided financial aid and rebuilt houses after the war, built new schools and mosques and printed religious books.

"The social disorientation and weak economic and political conditions after the conflict provided fruitful ground" in Kosovo for the spread of radical ideologies, the report suggests.

It also says that the neglect of rural communities by international governments and organizations made it easy for Middle Eastern charity organizations to "massively penetrate these areas".

Islamic groups became more credible to rural people than the governing elites because they were more familiar with their concerns and needs, suggests the report.

Although the number of people from Kosovo fighting in the Middle East is small, around 200 out of the 1.8 million citizens, it is significant because religion previously played no role in Kosovo politics and is usually practiced privately.

The Kosovo government pledged in mid-2014 that it was joining its Western allies in...