Islamist infiltration of the Albanian-speaking areas in the Balkans began even before the U.S.-led Kosovo intervention of 1999. (The offensive by radical Islam continues in Kosovo has previously been chronicled here, here, here, and here, with attacks focused on moderate Muslim clerics.) The upsurge of armed struggle for Kosovo independence in 1998 was accompanied by the unexpected emergence of Saudi-financed radicalism in the Albanian-majority zone of western Macedonia.  The syndrome is too widespread to be coincidental. Wherever local Muslim-majority communities resist post-Communist abuses – including Kosovo and Macedonia – Islamist radicals show up (beards, short pants, and all), allegedly in emulation of the Prophet Muhammad. The religious extremists assault moderate Muslims and Christians, dividing the forces of national freedom.

The worst example has been that of Chechnya, where Saudi agents diverted a legitimate movement for autonomy within the Russian Federation in a jihadist direction, associating the cause of the Caucasian Muslims with al Qaeda.  Chechens have not consistently demanded complete separation. The same pattern is visible among another people who mainly ask for equal rights rather than secession: The Turkic-speaking Uighurs on Chinese territory.  Numerous Kosovar and Macedonian Albanians are convinced that Wahhabi agitators are encouraged by Serbia, which seeks to lop off the north of Kosovo and annex it, or create a pseudo-republic.  That should sound a familiar note: Such a land-grab would be comparable to those carried out by the fading Soviet rulers in “Transnistria,” a mini-state carved out of Moldova, as well as by the late Slobodan Milosevic in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and by Vladimir Putin in Georgia (the so called nation-states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia).