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07/29/2006: Tetovo Mystery Slasher on Islamist Payroll

07/29/2006: Tetovo Mystery Slasher on Islamist Payroll

(Balkanalysis.com Security & Intelligence Brief 9) The knife-wielding attacker who terrorized young Macedonian women in the Albanian-majority city of Tetovo during June is not the deranged lunatic as some of the media has portrayed him to be, says a high security services source in Skopje.

According to this source, the attacker (allegedly, a young Albanian male from Tetovo) is a known Wahhabi sympathizer. Islamist groups in Tetovo and Skopje with financial and ideological links to Saudi Arabia reportedly paid the man to prowl the streets by night and terrorize young women wearing Western attire not deemed to be sufficiently modest for their strict interpretation of Islam.

Skopje newspaper Vreme, summing up the story on July 3, noted that three attacks had occurred, after which six different men had been arrested — and released — without the real attacker ever having been found. The paper compared the palpable panic being felt in Tetovo with a similar occurrence in Veles in 2003, when a knife-wielding assailant struck fear in the hearts of local residents. However, that individual was finally caught.

The infamous concept of a self-appointed “Sharia police” known in places like Iran, Pakistan and now Iraq has never before been seen in Macedonia. While the attacker has been portrayed as mentally unstable and prone to violence, our source says, “that is just the image. He is not crazy. The brothers [i.e., the Islamists] are paying him to do these attacks- and some of the police may be protecting him, too.”

While Macedonia’s Albanian population is primarily Muslim, they have shown relatively little interest in Wahhabism or other variants of religious fundamentalism. Nevertheless, the Wahhabi movement has gathered adherents over the past few years and the number of women clad in the burkha, once a rare sight outside of the villages, has increased dramatically. Heavily bearded men with wives clad head to toe in black still stick out conspicuously; however, they (and their sponsors) have future plans. It is likely that the intimidation is starting in Tetovo because its Christian Macedonian population is small and getting smaller, and located in a relatively compact area in the city. Eliminating the Christian population is a strategic goal of the Islamists, who will next “work on’ the vast majority of Albanians similarly not deemed “Islamic enough.’

While such things as these attacks had heretofore not been seen in Macedonia, similar attacks elsewhere in the Balkans have been witnessed. One group of alleged “Sharia police’ making roving patrols to crack down on public displays of affection, for example, was widely reported this year in Sarajevo, Bosnia. In the past, Islamic fundamentalist groups in Kosovo and Novi Pazar, Serbia have issued bomb threats against local television stations accused of broadcasting overly racy and non-Islamic programs. But all of those places have much more powerful Islamic communities, and much greater number of Wahhabis, than does Macedonia.

While the general liberal predisposition of Muslims in the region means that a mass “conversion” to Wahhabism is unlikely, these well-funded and fanatic fringe groups, their numbers bolstered by thugs and local drug dealers, will continue to have the capability to cause considerable disruption, violence and ideological challenges on a local level.