The Coming Balkan Caliphate

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 Europe's worst violence of the late 20th century in the Yugoslav Wars of Secession. During these conflicts, stunningly short-sighted 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. In this work, the author argues that regional demographic and cultural trends, coinciding with an increasingly hostile attitude in the larger Muslim world over Western military actions, indicate that the lawless Balkans will become increasingly valuable as a strategic base for Islamic radicals over the next two decades. Utilising the post-al-Qaeda tactics of a decentralised jihad carried out through small, independent cells ("leaderless resistance"), while seeking to fundamentally and violently remould Muslim societies, such Balkan-based extremists pose a unique and tangible threat to Western security.

ISBN 0275995259   Pages 250 ISBN13 9780275995256 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher ABC-CLIO   Weight (grammes) 526 Imprint Praeger Publishers Inc   Published in Westport Format Hardback   Height (mm) 235 Publication date 30 Jun 2007   Width (mm) 155 Library of Congress 2007014360   Spine width (mm) 24 DEWEY 949.6504   Academic level General, Undergraduate, Postgraduate DEWEY edition DC22

Ch. 1		Bosnia : Clinton's gift to fundamentalist Islam		4
Ch. 2		Hotel Tirana and a strange enough jihad		28
Ch. 3		A plain of black beards?		50
Ch. 4		The Macedonian enigma		73
Ch. 5		The Ottoman legacy and Turkey's deep shadow		92
Ch. 6		Fixin' to Lose		114
Ch. 7		Global economics, "certain foreign relations," and the war on terror		136
Ch. 8		The next generation : jihad, the Balkans, and the threat to the West		153