Balkanalysis.com

06/26/2006: Dragas Pocket Worries Terrorism Experts

06/26/2006: Dragas Pocket Worries Terrorism Experts

(Balkanalysis.com Security & Intelligence Brief 1) According to sources in the Macedonian intelligence community, the south-westernmost tip of Kosovo is emerging as a strategic area for international terrorist transit and logistical support for Albanian paramilitary elements of the former Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).

The area, centering around the town of Dragas, straddles the mountainous border of Albania to the west and Macedonia to the east. Mostly comprised of remote villages and mountains, the nature of the terrain and the proximity to unregulated borders has made the area a paradise for smugglers and terrorists.

In Northern Albania to the west, a centuries-old vendetta culture still holds sway. The Tirana government has little control over the area, which was used as a training ground for KLA soldiers and, it is widely believed, Islamist elements in the run-up to NATO’s invasion of Kosovo in March 1999.

In fact, two months earlier, on January 8, 1999, the then-OSCE head in Kosovo, Dan Evert told AFP: “there’s no denying that the north of Albania is a training base for the KLA, which is preparing for battle… even if it wanted to, [the Albanian government] does not have the police or military force to patrol the border.”

The Dragas area is notable for its population of Gorani, or Slavic Muslims. Albanian ethnic cleansing after NATO’s arrival in 1999 drove out thousands of Gorani (alleged ‘Serb collaborators’), many of whom went to Macedonia. Currently, around 11,000 Gorani remain and the issue of municipal demographics in the future Kosovo state is a sensitive one for the Gorani, who fear being outnumbered by Albanians in their only stronghold.

Dragas is located just south of Prizren. This large Albanian-dominated town hosts the headquarters of al Qaeda-related groups in Kosovo and was the scene of some of the biggest carnage carried out against the Serbs and their churches during the riots of March 17-19 2004. Attacks against buses carrying minorities along the Dragas-Prizren road were evidenced early this year. The UN authorities, represented by German soldiers who have been accused of criminal negligence for allowing the March Pogrom to unfold in front of them, do not have the ability or inclination to control the area.

According to the intelligence sources, the Dragas Pocket is going to increase in strategic value to Islamic extremists and former KLA forces in the coming months, as Kosovo’s final status decision looms.

The former are looking for new transport routes; the Bosnian government has been pressured by the US to deport former foreign mujahedin, while EU states continue to expel radical Islamists. The Bosnia-Kosovo-Albania corridor overlaps in the Dragas Pocket, providing an ideal hiding place and transit route.

The latter, the Albanian paramilitaries, are preparing a new wave of attacks on Serbs to put pressure on the pace of negotiations. Some of the causes and methods of the Islamists and nationalist militants overlap, and for the success of both eliminating the largely peaceful, Serbian-speaking Gorani is key- as is keeping the area unregulated by the authorities.