Serbia has a strategic interest in monitoring and exploiting religious extremist movements in Kosovo in an effort to damage the country’s international reputation, according to a report by the Institute for Security and Resilience (REVENT) and several security experts.
Last week, the Basic Court in Pristina found that Hysri Selimi joined the terrorist organization ISIS under instructions from Serbia’s Security Intelligence Agency (BIA) while simultaneously providing the agency with information about radical Islamic movements in Kosovo.
The finding does not surprise Lulzim Peci, Executive Director of the Kosovar Institute for Policy Research and Development (KIPRED).
According to Peci, Serbia along with Russia has, since the 1990s, sought to portray Albanians, and later Kosovo, as a breeding ground for Islamic extremism in the international arena.
“This information serves Serbia primarily to smear Kosovo and portray it as an unsafe country with tendencies toward Islamic radicalism. Although a number of people from Kosovo traveled to Syria, this is not Kosovo’s defining problem, nor should it define the country. Kosovo’s institutions have actively fought Islamic radicalism. Serbia’s objective has remained the same from the beginning—to use such cases to portray Kosovo as an unstable state linked to Islamic extremism,” Peci said.
Peci added that another objective of Serbia is to create divisions among Albanians by undermining the country’s tradition of religious harmony.
“Albanians belong to four religious communities, and Albanian national identity was built on a secular foundation that united them all. Radical Islamist movements have targeted precisely these pillars. We have seen attacks on figures such as Skanderbeg, Mother Teresa, and especially Catholic figures who made extraordinary contributions to shaping Albanian national identity,” he said.
According to REVENT’s report, titled “From Serbian Disinformation to the Facts” and authored by Skender Perteshi, Serbian officials have repeatedly used diplomatic channels and the media to falsely associate Kosovo with terrorism.
The report cites the June 2024 terrorist attack on the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade, during which a Serbian security officer was seriously wounded.
“Another classic example of public disinformation and an attempt to damage Kosovo’s image was the terrorist attack on the Israeli Embassy in Belgrade. Although the attack was universally condemned, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dačić attempted to link the terrorist act to Kosovo by falsely claiming that the attacker, Senad Ramović Beqan, had been assisted in fleeing and hiding in Kosovo. This claim was entirely false and intended to damage Kosovo’s international reputation by portraying it as a country that supports terrorism. In reality, the facts were entirely different,” the report states.
The REVENT report also highlights that the terrorist attacks carried out in Kosovo in recent years have been perpetrated by organizations allegedly supported by Serbia.
According to the analysis, members of the Civil Defense and North Brigade organizations carried out more than 17 terrorist attacks between 2021 and 2024.
These attacks targeted Kosovo’s institutions, international missions, civilians, and the country’s critical infrastructure.
