Com­ment: This is to be seen against the back­ground of the revival of the Han­jar (13th Waf­fen SS) Divi­sion in Bosnia, the growth of the Nazi Bosni­ak Union in that same state, and the res­ur­rec­tion of fas­cist fight­ing for­ma­tions in Koso­vo.

“Saud­is Fund Balkan Mus­lims Spread­ing Hate of the West” by Bojan Pancevs­ki; timeson­line; 3/28/2010.

“Sau­di Ara­bia is pour­ing hun­dreds of mil­lions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balka­ns, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fight­ers for jihad in Afghanistan.

Accord­ing to offi­cials in Mace­do­nia, Islam­ic fun­da­men­tal­ism threat­ens to desta­bilise the Balka­ns. Strict Wah­habi and Salafi fac­tions fund­ed by Sau­di organ­i­sa­tions are clash­ing with tra­di­tion­al­ly mod­er­ate local Mus­lim com­mu­ni­ties.

Fun­da­men­tal­ists have financed the con­struc­tion of scores of mosques and com­mu­ni­ty cen­tres as well as hand­ing some fol­low­ers up to £225 a month. They are expect­ed not only to grow beards but also to per­suade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a cus­tom vir­tu­al­ly unknown in the lib­er­al Islam­ic tra­di­tion of the Balka­ns.

Gov­ern­ment sources in tra­di­tion­al­ly sec­u­lar Mace­do­nia (offi­cial title the For­mer Yugoslav Repub­lic of Mace­do­nia), said they were mon­i­tor­ing up to 50 Al-Qae­da vol­un­teers recruit­ed to fight in Afghanistan.

Clas­si­fied doc­u­ments seen by The Sun­day Times reveal that Mace­don­ian offi­cials are also inves­ti­gat­ing a num­ber of Islam­ic char­i­ties, some in Sau­di Ara­bia, which are active through­out the Balka­ns and are sus­pect­ed of spread­ing extrem­ism and laun­der­ing mon­ey for ter­ror­ist organ­i­sa­tions.

One of the groups under scruti­ny is the Inter­na­tion­al Islam­ic Relief Organ­i­sa­tion from Sau­di Ara­bia, which is on a Unit­ed Nations black­list of organ­i­sa­tions back­ing ter­ror­ism. It did not respond to inquiries, but has pre­vi­ous­ly denied involve­ment in ter­ror­ist activ­i­ties, call­ing such claims “total­ly unfound­ed”.

Accord­ing to its web­site, it works in 32 coun­tries to pro­vide relief to the vic­tims of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters and to car­ry out human­i­tar­i­an, health and edu­ca­tion­al projects.

“Hun­dreds of mil­lions have been poured into Mace­do­nia alone in the past decade and most of it comes from Sau­di Ara­bia,” said a gov­ern­ment source. “The Saud­is’ main export seems to be ide­ol­o­gy, not oil.” . . .