The first book to make a comprehensive survey of the development of Islamic fundamentalist ideologies and organizations in the Balkans, The Coming Balkan Caliphate has been praised by ranking US military officials, current and previous UN peacekeepers in the Balkans, intelligence officials of the US and several European countries, academics, journalists and other observers of current events in the Balkans- most privately, as would be expected.
Divided into chapters treating most of the Balkan countries individually, the book discloses how foreign Islamic groups and governments sought to establish a presence in the post-Communist Balkans, appealing to economically and socially vulnerable local Muslim communities and sending mujahedin and funds to help Muslim military causes in the 1990s.
The shortsighted and politically motivated policies of the United States and its allies directly allowed these 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.
Since then, the proliferation of foreign-funded fundamentalist groups has challenged the power and legitimacy of traditional Balkan Muslim communities 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.
“For any serious analysis of the threat posed by radical Islam, Deliso’s regional perspective is essential.”
-Leslie Lebl, former State Department official, in The American Thinker
“Deliso offers much evidence regarding the presence of Al Qaeda in the Balkans.”
–Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
“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.”
–Reference & Research Book News
“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.