Jihad in the Balkans: A Persistent Terrorist Threat in Europe

Last month, for the second time in as many years the Israeli embassy in Belgrade found itself fending off an attack from a radical Islamic sympathizer. The armed attacker, who Serbian authorities later identified as an an Islamic State (ISIS) sympathizer, assaulted the Serbian police officer guarding the embassy,  allegedly shouting “Allahu Akbar.” This incident was eerily similar to the one that occurred outside that same embassy in June 2024,  when a radicalized Islamist convert shot a Serbian gendarmerie officer in the neck with a crossbow.

The question, of course, is why the prevalence in the Western Balkans? To answer this question – and prevent more of these attacks – we must examine our country’s history of the last thirty years.

The Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Balkan Connection to Global Jihadism

During the 1992–1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, hundreds of foreign mujahideen, including veterans of the Afghan war and individuals linked to international extremist organizations, arrived to fight alongside the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Some served in the El Mujahid unit, whose members were responsible for war crimes examined by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. After the war, some of these foreign fighters remained in Bosnia, and some were able to acquire Bosnian citizenship – all while Iranian military and intelligence structures,  including members of the Revolutionary Guard, established a significant presence in Bosnia. U.S. intelligence and diplomatic sources were increasingly concerned that individual al-Qaeda affiliates were obtaining Bosnian citizenship and travel to aid the activities of this network, and ramped up focus on this connection in the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks,  Militant Islamist networks in the Western Balkans were also cropping up in Serbia. As early as 2007, Serbian security forces uncovered an armed extremist group in the Sandžak region, near the border with Montenegro harboring weapons, explosives, and materials associated with militant Islamist ideology.