This week, the Italian daily newspaper Il Tempo published information, allegedly originating from Italian intelligence services, suggesting that 20 “jihadist” cells are active in the Western Balkans. Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is among these countries, and the information, without any verification or critical review, spread at the speed of light in the regional and domestic media.
This and similar information can have multi-layered implications. In addition to spreading harmful and wrong stereotypes about the region, above all about BiH, Kosovo, and Sandzak, this kind of information can dangerously distort the priorities of Western politics, as well as relations in an already unstable region. That is why it is important to review this information from at least four critical angles.
The first would be to question the authenticity and seriousness of this information. It is usual for such sensitive intelligence information about security threats to be confidentially shared among partner intelligence agencies. If it is revealed in the media, which rarely happens, then it is not done in a newspaper with an insignificant circulation and a specific reputation like Il Tempo. That much is not right in the published text is also shown by the fact that it uses terms to describe terrorist structures and their way of working, which have absolutely not been used in the professional and intelligence communities in the last two decades.
The second critical angle would be to compare this text with the content of the reports that were published at the height of the war in Syria. Similar claims about thousands of so-called “jihadists” in the Balkans, which were published during the last decade, have largely been disproved over time. First of all, because the security agencies in BiH and other countries of the Western Balkans effectively suppressed the phenomenon of foreign fighters, often more efficiently than other European countries, which, in the end, was recognized by international partners, including publicly available reports of the United States (U.S.) Department of State.
Furthermore, the third critical angle would be to put this report in the context of the current political situation in Italy, whose government is led by the rightist Giorgia Meloni, but also in the context of the Italian public, traditionally sensitive to the events and the proximity of the Western Balkans. It cannot be ruled out that this kind of information found its way to Il Tempo with the aim of strengthening the beliefs of those who will believe as soon as they read “keywords” such as “jihadists”, “terrorism”, “Balkans”…
Reaching that target audience – paves the way for using it to strengthen an already existing anti-immigrant and Islamophobic political platform along the European right-wing spectrum. In this case, this kind of information can also have political consequences. In the range from justifying increased security measures to inciting ethnic tensions and nationalist feelings, but also securitization of the “other”, i.e. turning them into a security threat.
The fourth critical angle would be to place this report in the context of increasingly powerful discussions about the policy of European Union (EU) enlargement, EU reforms, and the elections for the European Parliament, which will be held next summer throughout the EU. Information about the alleged presence of “jihadist cells” in the Western Balkans could help the extreme right in the EU to stop some of the proposed reforms of the EU and its enlargement but also enable their strengthening in the highest legislative body of the EU. Reports like these could serve as a catalyst for these parties to step up their anti-immigration and national security agendas.
This would further legitimize and strengthen the content of their previous messages against the EU’s open borders policy, the enlargement strategy, and their presentation as a direct threat to EU security. This could then complicate the EU integration process for the countries of the Western Balkans. EU member states could become more cautious in opening and/or progressing accession negotiations, demanding stricter compliance with security measures, thereby confronting the region with a strengthening of the EU “fortress” potentially closing in on the region.
It is extremely important to take a critical look at these and similar reports, of which, in the run-up to the European Parliament elections, there will surely be more and more. The last thing the Western Balkans, and above all BiH, Kosovo, and Sandzak, as well as liberal and progressive forces in the EU, need is for, thanks to such recycled reports, to have a doubly negative impact on the integration process of the region and the EU – by encouraging the far-right agenda in the European Parliament elections, and by making the prospects for the region’s integration into the EU more difficult.
From all of the above, it seems that the report in Il Tempo is actually more a case of “setting up” or “releasing” a story without a real foundation that resonates because it is published in circumstances that make this story explosive, Detektor reports.
