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November 10, 2010 – 5:10 am
– ReutersBELGRADE/SARAJEVO: Security experts concerned that the next militant attack in Europe could be a Mumbai-style commando raid are looking at the Balkans as a likely place for them to find weapons quietly and efficiently.Western governments and intelligence sources have stepped up warnings recently of preparations for attacks in Europe and the United States, and said the attackers might emulate the 2008 assault on Mumbai’s financial district in which 166 were killed.Experts have said strict gun controls, heavy surveillance of miltant groups and police penetration of crime gangs are deterrents to buying weapons in most of Europe, but noted that a gap remains – in the Balkans.
“The smallest problem for terrorists is to get weapons and ammunition here,” Adem Huskic, a member of Bosnia’s central parliament commission for security and defence, told Reuters.Millions of pieces of small arms and ammunition remain unaccounted for since the collapse of the former communist Yugoslav army and a decade of wars in the 1990s.“Between 1991 and 1999, almost everyone in war zones had a weapon, issued with little or no control,” said a Belgrade-based businessman and a former weapons trader with the now-defunct state-run ZINVOJ military industrial conglomerate.
In addition, thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance and millions of landmines remain on former frontlines or are held by individuals in the Balkans after successive 20th-century wars.The region’s gun culture and its many organised crime gangs also help to make it a potential source of arms for militants.“I’m sure the Balkans could be a good source of assault rifles, as indeed they have been for all sorts of other weaponry over the years,” Peter Clarke, former head of the London Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorism Branch, told Reuters.In the 1990s, weapons were illegally sold by exporters in Slovenia and manufacturers in Croatia to criminals in Western Europe, to paramilitary forces in Northern Ireland and to Basque separatists, weapons experts and officials say.A 2008 report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said that, while the stereotype of the Balkans as a “gangsters’ paradise” no longer applied due to post-war development and greater stability, there remained a “widespread and enduring collusion between politics, business and organised crime”.Will Hartley, terrorism analyst at IHS Jane’s, said there was still a fairly well-established community of hardcore militant sympathisers in the region “and they would be the perfect point of entry for cells seeking weapons”.SOURCE OF WEAPONS FOR DECADESAs the theatre of many conflicts over the centuries, the Balkans have been a source of weapons for decades. Many households have a firearm as part of family inheritance.Between the mid-1950s and 1991, Yugoslavia was a significant global exporter of cheap infantry weapons, artillery and even combat aircraft, mainly to Third World nations fighting wars, insurgencies or low-level conflicts.“Weapons produced by Yugoslavia and sold abroad, as well as weapons that ‘vanished’ during Balkan wars, will be around, even in most remote regions of the globe, for at least another three decades until they rust and become unusable,” said Zoran Dragisic, lecturer at Belgrade’s Faculty for Security Studies.In Kosovo, recovering from a 1998-1999 war between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serb security forces, about 400,000 weapons are held by former fighters, or one piece for every fifth citizen, a 2006 UN Development Program study found.The origin of most illegal weaponry in Kosovo can be traced to Albanian military facilities, from where about a million pieces were looted in 1997 in unrest following the collapse of investment pyramid schemes.In Bosnia, now a loose union between the Bosnian Serb and Muslim-Croat halves, large numbers of guns and explosives remain in the hands of ex-fighters, criminals and extremist groups.“Only God knows how many arms there are in Bosnia,” Huskic said. “Some estimates say that about 20 percent of people have illegal weapons. This poses a serious security problem not only for Bosnia but for the whole region and Europe.”
NEVER TO A MUSLIMReligious and ethnic identity, a key element in Balkan wars, could play a role in limiting illegal sales. “I would never sell to a Muslim. Most from Serbia wouldn’t,” said one war veteran who sold weapons on the black market in the 1990s.
Bosnian terrorism expert Vlado Azinovic, a political science lecturer at Sarajevo University, said local militants were anyway not prominent in the global Islamist scene:“The people and groups who are operationally interesting in Bosnia mainly act in the local, internal context, which does not necessarily mean that there are no links with external factors.”Democratic post-Yugoslav authorities have sought to improve regional security, including controls of legal weapons sales by their respective state-run exporters, and have strict laws on arms sales, exports and licensing of privately-owned weapons.Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Balkan countries joined the US-led fight against terrorism. Serbia, Bosnia and other countries improved efforts against Islamist militants in Bosnia and in Serbia’s southwesterly Sandzak region.
But the region is also widely seen as a crossroads for the smuggling of drugs and humans as well as guns.Although many Balkan states have stepped up their efforts to fight organised crime, the EU says that potential Balkan membership candidates must still do more.Security experts say that weapons smuggling from the region can never be eradicated completely.“An average crook can always get an AK (assault rifle) and a bag of ammo and smuggle it abroad … and one machine gun can wreak havoc,” Dragisic said.
– ReutersBELGRADE/SARAJEVO: Security experts concerned that the next militant attack in Europe could be a Mumbai-style commando raid are looking at the Balkans as a likely place for them to find weapons quietly and efficiently.Western governments and intelligence sources have stepped up warnings recently of preparations for attacks in Europe and the United States, and said the attackers might emulate the 2008 assault on Mumbai’s financial district in which 166 were killed.Experts have said strict gun controls, heavy surveillance of miltant groups and police penetration of crime gangs are deterrents to buying weapons in most of Europe, but noted that a gap remains – in the Balkans.
“The smallest problem for terrorists is to get weapons and ammunition here,” Adem Huskic, a member of Bosnia’s central parliament commission for security and defence, told Reuters.Millions of pieces of small arms and ammunition remain unaccounted for since the collapse of the former communist Yugoslav army and a decade of wars in the 1990s.“Between 1991 and 1999, almost everyone in war zones had a weapon, issued with little or no control,” said a Belgrade-based businessman and a former weapons trader with the now-defunct state-run ZINVOJ military industrial conglomerate.
In addition, thousands of pieces of unexploded ordnance and millions of landmines remain on former frontlines or are held by individuals in the Balkans after successive 20th-century wars.The region’s gun culture and its many organised crime gangs also help to make it a potential source of arms for militants.“I’m sure the Balkans could be a good source of assault rifles, as indeed they have been for all sorts of other weaponry over the years,” Peter Clarke, former head of the London Metropolitan Police’s Anti-Terrorism Branch, told Reuters.In the 1990s, weapons were illegally sold by exporters in Slovenia and manufacturers in Croatia to criminals in Western Europe, to paramilitary forces in Northern Ireland and to Basque separatists, weapons experts and officials say.A 2008 report by the UN Office of Drugs and Crime said that, while the stereotype of the Balkans as a “gangsters’ paradise” no longer applied due to post-war development and greater stability, there remained a “widespread and enduring collusion between politics, business and organised crime”.Will Hartley, terrorism analyst at IHS Jane’s, said there was still a fairly well-established community of hardcore militant sympathisers in the region “and they would be the perfect point of entry for cells seeking weapons”.SOURCE OF WEAPONS FOR DECADESAs the theatre of many conflicts over the centuries, the Balkans have been a source of weapons for decades. Many households have a firearm as part of family inheritance.Between the mid-1950s and 1991, Yugoslavia was a significant global exporter of cheap infantry weapons, artillery and even combat aircraft, mainly to Third World nations fighting wars, insurgencies or low-level conflicts.“Weapons produced by Yugoslavia and sold abroad, as well as weapons that ‘vanished’ during Balkan wars, will be around, even in most remote regions of the globe, for at least another three decades until they rust and become unusable,” said Zoran Dragisic, lecturer at Belgrade’s Faculty for Security Studies.In Kosovo, recovering from a 1998-1999 war between ethnic Albanian guerrillas and Serb security forces, about 400,000 weapons are held by former fighters, or one piece for every fifth citizen, a 2006 UN Development Program study found.The origin of most illegal weaponry in Kosovo can be traced to Albanian military facilities, from where about a million pieces were looted in 1997 in unrest following the collapse of investment pyramid schemes.In Bosnia, now a loose union between the Bosnian Serb and Muslim-Croat halves, large numbers of guns and explosives remain in the hands of ex-fighters, criminals and extremist groups.“Only God knows how many arms there are in Bosnia,” Huskic said. “Some estimates say that about 20 percent of people have illegal weapons. This poses a serious security problem not only for Bosnia but for the whole region and Europe.”
NEVER TO A MUSLIMReligious and ethnic identity, a key element in Balkan wars, could play a role in limiting illegal sales. “I would never sell to a Muslim. Most from Serbia wouldn’t,” said one war veteran who sold weapons on the black market in the 1990s.
Bosnian terrorism expert Vlado Azinovic, a political science lecturer at Sarajevo University, said local militants were anyway not prominent in the global Islamist scene:“The people and groups who are operationally interesting in Bosnia mainly act in the local, internal context, which does not necessarily mean that there are no links with external factors.”Democratic post-Yugoslav authorities have sought to improve regional security, including controls of legal weapons sales by their respective state-run exporters, and have strict laws on arms sales, exports and licensing of privately-owned weapons.Following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Balkan countries joined the US-led fight against terrorism. Serbia, Bosnia and other countries improved efforts against Islamist militants in Bosnia and in Serbia’s southwesterly Sandzak region.
But the region is also widely seen as a crossroads for the smuggling of drugs and humans as well as guns.Although many Balkan states have stepped up their efforts to fight organised crime, the EU says that potential Balkan membership candidates must still do more.Security experts say that weapons smuggling from the region can never be eradicated completely.“An average crook can always get an AK (assault rifle) and a bag of ammo and smuggle it abroad … and one machine gun can wreak havoc,” Dragisic said.
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