Region

PRISTINA — With the world on high alert over foreign fighters joining jihadist ranks in Syria and Iraq, Balkan states are launching efforts to clamp down on recruiting in their region, considered fertile ground by Islamists.

Of the more than 20 million people in southeast Europe, more than five million are Muslims, and an economic slump in weak states battered by past wars has fired up some of the disenfranchised.

They live in countries formed from the breakup of the former Yugoslavia, whose economies were devastated by the wars of the 1990s, as well as Albania, one of the poorest states in Europe.

According to local media quoting a recent report of the CIA, hundreds of men from the Balkans have joined the Islamic State (IS) group — adding to the waves coming from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Tunisia.

In Kosovo, a mostly Muslim territory that unilaterally seceded from Serbia in 2008, deep political crisis and endemic corruption has fuelled hopelessness among young people, said Blerim Latifi, an expert on religious issues at the University of Pristina.

"A very important factor is the lack of economic opportunities for youths in Kosovo, which opens the way for brainwashing by opaque groups," he said.

The indoctrination and recruitment efforts are focused on the poorest among the population as well as on high school students, said Visar Duriqi, a journalist covering issues related to Islam who was recently threatened with decapitation by Kosovo Islamists.

"Radical imams, who often complete their studies in Arab states, are tasked with this. It is financed from abroad. The most preferred targets are high schoolers without perspectives who hope to improve their social status by accepting fanatism," he asserted.

Imported Islamic doctrines 

In nearby Bosnia, hundreds of Islamist fighters joined Bosnian Muslim forces during the 1992-1995 inter-ethnic war.

After the war, a number of Bosnian Muslims, a normally moderate religious community, adopted doctrines inspired by the strict Saudi brand of Islam called Wahhabism, which was nonexistent in the country before the war.

In parts of Serbia and Macedonia where Muslim populations live, the situation is similar.

"The ideological chasm that opened with the break-up of Yugoslavia has been filled by radical religious programmes and nationalists," Serbian orientalist Darko Tanaskovic said.

The moderate form of Islam that Balkan Muslims adhered to after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, which had been a mostly secular country, was radicalised in some parts by the brutality of war, he said.

"The conflicts in Bosnia and Kosovo allowed more radical elements, theologians, activists or 'fighters of Allah' to deploy in the region," Tanaskovic said.

"Under certain circumstances these movements could provoke serious problems," he warned. The Balkans for radical Islamists represented "a kind of soft underbelly from where they could act against Europe".

Crackdown on Islamists 

States in the region have stepped up to counter the growing threat of radical Islam, making arrests and toughening laws.

Earlier in September, police in Bosnia arrested 16 people on charges of joining European-based Islamists and helping them travel to fight in Syria and Iraq. In April, the country passed a law giving prison terms of up to 10 years for convicted Islamists and their recruiters.

In Kosovo, some 55 Islamists were arrested on suspicion of wooing people to join their jihad, including a dozen imams led by a top religious leader, Shefqet Krasniqi of the Grand Mosque in Pristina.

Kosovo, Macedonia and Serbia are considering amendments to their criminal codes to make it punishable for their citizens to fight abroad.

In Serbia it will impact not only to possible jihadists but also Serbian Christian Orthodox volunteers, dozens of whom have been fighting in Ukraine, mostly on the side of pro-Russian separatists.

BAGHDAD — At least 25 people were killed in car bomb and mortar attacks in mainly Shiite Muslim districts of Baghdad on Tuesday, Iraqi police and medical sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks but Islamic State, ultra-radical Sunni Muslim militants who seized swathes of northern Iraq in June, claimed several suicide bombings in the capital earlier this year.

Two car bombs exploded in busy streets in Al Horreyya district, killing 20 people and wounding 35, according to the police and medical sources. There was also a mortar attack in the Sab Al Bour neighbourhood of northern Baghdad that killed five people and wounded 15.

Baghdad has witnessed relatively fewer attacks compared to the violence in other areas hit by Islamic State's offensive, though bombs still hit the capital on a fairly regular basis.

There were also several small-scale attacks in predominantly Shiite areas across the country. In the southern oil hub of Basra, a parked car bomb exploded in a parking lot, setting ablaze five cars but causing no casualties, police said.

In the town of Kifil, near the Shiite holy city of Najaf, at least one person was killed and three wounded by a car bomb. And in Karbala, a car bomb blast on a busy street wounded at least seven people and torched a police car, police said.

In the Kurdish-controlled town of Khanaqin, 140km northeast of Baghdad, at least four Kurdish security members were killed and 12 wounded in a bomb attack on their patrol, police and medics said.

US-led forces started bombing Islamic State targets in Iraq in August and Washington expanded the campaign to Syria last week in an effort to defeat the well-armed insurgents who have swept through Sunni areas of both Iraq and Syria.

Washington hopes the air strikes, conducted with help from European allies in Iraq and Arab air forces in Syria, will allow government and Kurdish forces in Iraq, and moderate Sunnis in Syria, to recapture territory.

RIYADH — Sunni-dominated Saudi Arabia has warned that neighbouring Yemen risks sliding towards further violence which could damage regional security, after Shiite rebels overran the capital last week.

Prince Saud Al Faisal, the kingdom's foreign minister, called at the United Nations for immediate implementation of a UN-brokered peace deal which he said had been flouted by the insurgents, local media reported on Monday.

The rebels advanced from their stronghold in northwestern mountains to the capital Sanaa last month, then seized key state installations with little or no resistance on September 21.

Under the peace deal signed that same day, they are supposed to withdraw once President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi names a new prime minister.

"The Republic of Yemen is facing a situation which is developing in an extremely serious way and which requires us to come together to meet this unprecedented challenge," Prince Saud was quoted as saying in remarks at the UN General Assembly in New York.

He cautioned that if a solution is not found, Yemen "could slide towards more violence" liable to affect regional and international security.

"We call on all the parties to urgently apply the accord in its totality and we exhort the international community to help Yemen by all means possible," Prince Saud said.

Saudi Arabia and other countries of the Gulf back Yemen's President Hadi, a Sunni who has warned of "foreign plots" against his country.

It was a reference to Iran, which Yemeni authorities have repeatedly accused of backing the Houthi rebels, who also appear influenced by Lebanon's powerful Tehran-backed Shiite militia Hizbollah.

MECCA, Saudi Arabia — Their backs hunched, elderly Muslim pilgrims lean on walking sticks as others in wheelchairs nudge their way into Mecca's Grand Mosque where thousands of people are encircling the holy Kaaba.

"Allahu akbar" (God is greater), they chant in unison.

Most are Asian and African, among the hundreds of thousands of faithful who have descended on Saudi Arabia's holy city for the annual Hajj (the greater Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca) starting on Thursday.

The Grand Mosque, home of the cube-shaped Kaaba or "House of God" that Muslims believe was built by Abraham 4,000 years ago, was thronged Sunday for prayers and for the year-round minor pilgrimage or umrah.

With the call to prayer the crowds fall silent, many spreading their prayer rugs on roads leading to the mosque.

"I have never before witnessed such a feeling of happiness," says Aisha, 50, an Algerian pilgrim in a facemask walking hand-in-hand with her son Ahmed.

This year's Hajj comes as the authorities strive to protect pilgrims from two deadly viruses, Ebola and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome coronavirus or MERS.

While Ebola has hit Africa, most MERS cases worldwide have been in Saudi Arabia itself, home to Islam's holiest sites.

Pilgrims from Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the three nations hardest-hit by Ebola, which has killed more than 3,000 people in West Africa this year, have not been allowed in for the Hajj.

However Nigeria, where Ebola has killed eight people, was granted permission to send pilgrims to the world's largest gathering of Muslims.

"There was this scare earlier that pilgrims from Nigeria could not participate because of Ebola," Saeed Amisu tells AFP.

Like others from Nigeria, Amisu has had to complete two forms, one at home and another in Saudi Arabia, pledging that he had not visited any Ebola-hit town or contacted a patient.

Keeping disease at bay 

Nigerians also underwent medical tests and their temperatures were recorded both in Nigeria and at Jeddah Airport, the main entry point for foreign pilgrims.

For prevention, "we were told to wash our hands with soap before" doing anything, Amisu says.

With so many people concentrated in such a limited area for a short time, "the Hajj season constitutes a factor increasing the likelihood of outbreaks or epidemics of infectious diseases", acting Health Minister Adel Fakieh has said.

According to Ahmed from Algeria, "there are certain nationalities we try to stay away from. We also try to keep away from closed areas and to keep wearing the face masks despite the hot weather”.

No Ebola cases have yet been found in the kingdom, and health officials reported the latest MERS death on Thursday from Najran, near the Yemen border.

This year’s Hajj also comes with Muslim nations drawn together by their opposition to Islamic State (IS) group jihadists.

Saudi Arabia and four other Arab states have joined Washington in targeting the militants in Syria with air strikes.

IS has seized large parts of Iraq and Syria, declaring a Muslim “caliphate” and imposing its harsh interpretation of Islamic law.

It has executed captured Iraqi soldiers, forced non-Muslims to convert and beheaded Western hostages on-camera.

Speaking after an annual military parade, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Mohammed Bin Nayef gave a reassurance that the Hajj would be secure.

He vowed the authorities would “decisively deal with this organisation (IS) and others”.

Prince Mohammed is known as the kingdom’s iron fist in the fight against Al Qaeda, having cracked down after deadly attacks in the country about a decade ago.

He urged pilgrims to shun “political and ideological” slogans during the Hajj, the official SPA news agency reported.

CAIRO — Rival Libyan lawmakers held talks brokered by a United Nations envoy on Monday, in the first attempt to bridge the gap between warring groups that left the North African nation torn between two governments and parliaments.

At a press conference held in western city of Ghadamis, Bernardino Leon said the goal of the talks is to reach a "complete ceasefire". He described Monday's round of talks as "historic" and said that the two parties were sitting together "in brotherly atmosphere" and engaging to "overcome their differences through a political dialogue”.

The talks included lawmakers from the two parliaments.

Libya witnessed a spasm of violence this summer when militias mainly from the western city of Misrata and groups allied to Islamists swept through the capital.

Leon said that the two sides agreed to discuss airports which have been closed and work towards opening all of them.

Weeks of fighting by militias in the capital led to destruction of its airport, prompting aviation authorities to increase dependence on smaller airports to receive international flights.

The airport in the eastern city of Benghazi, Libya's second largest city, has been closed for months as Islamist-led militias and forces loyal to a renege general battle each other nearby.

UNITED NATIONS — Syria's foreign minister says his government is satisfied with the US-led bombing campaign against the Islamic State (IS) group, which has aligned Damascus with Western and Arab opponents in fighting the same enemy.

Walid Al Mouallem says in an interview with The Associated Press that Syria heard from the United States 24 hours before it launched its initial salvo last week.

He said Monday the US does not inform Syria of every strike before it happens, "but it's OK".

"We are fighting ISIS, they are fighting ISIS," he said, referring to the group by one of its acronyms.

Mouallem spoke as US-led coalition air strikes targeted towns in northern and eastern Syria controlled by IS, including one strike that Syrian activists said hit a grain silo and reportedly killed civilians.

TEHRAN — Difficult talks between Iran and world powers on Tehran's nuclear programme will resume in Europe before mid-October, a senior Iranian official was quoted as saying Monday.

Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said the negotiations — aimed at brokering a historic deal by a November 24 deadline — would resume in Vienna or Geneva within two weeks.

"We have been able to have a much better understanding in a constructive atmosphere but there are differences on major issues," Araqchi told Japan's Kyodo News.

He said recent talks in New York did not make "substantive progress" and that Iran was not interested in extending the deadline.

"If it would be a deal, let's do it now, an extension would be useless and difficult," Araqchi said in the report, which was picked up by Iran's official IRNA news agency.

Negotiators from the so-called P5+1 group — Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States plus Germany — are seeking to reach a deal to scale back Tehran's nuclear activities by the deadline.

Western powers fear Tehran is using its nuclear programme as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran says it has only peaceful intentions.

Iran wants UN and Western sanctions lifted, and is pushing for the right to enrich uranium, a process which can produce material for a bomb.

MANAMA — A Bahraini court on Monday revoked the citizenship of nine people convicted of trying to smuggle weapons into the country and it sentenced them to life in prison, the Gulf Arab kingdom's official news agency said.

King Hamad, in a move that alarmed human rights groups, last year toughened penalties in anti-terrorism laws ahead of planned anti-government protests by approving proposals that included stripping people convicted of "dangerous terror crimes" of their citizenship.

Sunni Muslim-ruled Bahrain, strategically important to the West because it hosts the US Fifth Fleet as a bulwark against Iran across the Gulf, has been dogged by unrest since 2011 mainly by members of the majority Shiite community demanding more democracy. Demonstrations have increasingly given way to violence in recent months in which militants have set off home-made bombs that killed or wounded several policemen.

BNA news agency said the fourth grand criminal court found the nine men — who are all Bahraini-born Shiites — guilty of smuggling weapons, including explosives, into the Gulf kingdom in a case that dates back to December 2013.

Three of the nine were also sentenced to three years in jail on charges of assaulting public security personnel in addition to their life imprisonment, BNA said.

The agency said the men had received military training by Iranian Revolutionary Guards in various locations in Shiite-ruled Iran as well as funds from Tehran. Iran denies any involvement in Bahrain's internal affairs.

SANAA — Back to school for young Yemenis in Sanaa Monday was a stark reminder of why many missed classes in the first place — rebels were using it as an arms dump.

Shiite rebels had swept into the north of the city from their northern mountain stronghold, pressing the authorities for reforms and a greater say in the impoverished country's affairs.

After days of brief but bloody fighting, mainly in the north of the city where the Shamlan school is located, the Houthi rebels, known as Ansarullah, occupied it after overrunning Sanaa on September 21.

Children who turned up on Monday after the school was supposed to have reopened found the gates firmly shut and ended up having classes in the street outside.

Appropriately, when it was time for drawing, many sketched pictures of tanks and machineguns.

"We have a war at school," explained one pupil about the picture he had made.

Rebels remained tight-lipped when some parents of the hundreds of students at Shamlan School asked when they would vacate the building.

Ansarullah has lined up armoured vehicles in the playground and filled the classrooms with ammunition.

The rebels, who captured key state installations and military bases, and now hold sway over most of Sanaa, seized large amounts of weapons during their offensive.

Headmistress Fawzia Al Ashem appeared torn between a ministerial decision to reopen the school on Monday and the insurgents' refusal to move out.

"It was decided to reopen the school without thinking what's inside it," she told AFP.

Rebels rule the roost

Schools in the area had closed temporarily because of heavy fighting between the rebels and Sunni Islamists of Al Islah (reform) Party.

And although rebels continue to rule the roost in Sanaa's streets amid an almost total absence of mainstream security forces, the education ministry went ahead and told schools to reopen on Monday.

"The Houthis are justifying their occupation of the place by saying that they have the right to stay," one parent said.

"They claim they're trying to find somewhere else to stock their weapons, but I don't believe them," he added, asking not to be identified for security reasons.

The UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) said twice during the fighting that it was concerned about schooling in the capital, urging all parties to respect the right to an education and to vacate occupied schools.

Hours after taking over the capital eight days ago, the Houthis signed an agreement to end the fighting, mediated by UN envoy Jamal Benomar.

And after initially hesitating, on Saturday the rebels signed the accord's security protocol, stipulating the withdrawal of their forces from Sanaa once a new prime minister is named.

But President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has so far failed to name the new premier.

Yemen's authorities have in the past accused Iran of backing the rebels, who also appear influenced by Lebanon's powerful Tehran-backed Shiite Hizbollah.

The rebels now roaming freely in Sanaa had battled the government for years, complaining of marginalisation.

Many lessons remain to be learned in the Arab world's poorest country, but for the children of Shamlan school in Sanaa they will just have to wait.

KUWAIT — Kuwait's Capital Markets Authority told firms on Monday to abide by recent United Nations efforts to target financial backers of Islamist militants in Iraq and Syria.

The UN Security Council last month named six people who would be subject to asset freezes because of their links to the Islamists, including two Kuwaitis and threatened sanctions against anyone who financed, recruited or armed the insurgents.

The Kuwaiti authority said in a statement that the move obliged institutions to freeze all funds belonging to those accused of terror financing.

The freeze included all those "acting on behalf of [a suspected] person, group or entity... directly or indirectly", the statement said.

It said firms had to report any suspected customers of such entities to the authorities. Failure to do so would lead to a prison sentence of up to a year and fines of up to 500,000 dinars ($1.75 million).

Western officials believe that wealthy Gulf Arabs, in countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, have been a main source of funding for Sunni Islamist groups fighting in Iraq and Syria, including the Islamic State and Al Nusra.

Kuwait has been one of the biggest humanitarian donors to Syrian refugees through the United Nations, but it has also struggled to control unofficial fundraising for opposition groups in Syria by private individuals.

It recently tightened laws aimed at preventing its citizens from getting involved in foreign conflicts and instructed mosque preachers to abide by government policies during their sermons.

Kuwait's justice and Islamic affairs minister resigned in May after a senior US official said he had called for jihad in Syria and had promoted the funding of terrorism.