Bill Clinton statue, Priština

Concern for Kosovo’s Future

When Balkans Partners first started working with the Bill Clinton statue, Prištinabelievers in Kosovo, there was overwhelming gratitude for the part the U.S. and other NATO nations played to bring freedom from Serbian oppression. There is now a fifteen-foot statue of Bill Clinton (who was president at the time) in the capital city of Prishtina. Kosovo was then one of the most laid-back and religiously tolerant of Muslim societies. At the end of the civil war in Kosovo, while North America and Europe sent aid (to rebuild homes, to provide temporary shelter and food, etc., Saudi people took the lead in a different sort of aid. Most of the money they invested went to build more Mosques. And for the Mosques they built, they provided the leaders to teach Wahhabism, the Islamic ideology behind the 9/11 disaster. So in the years since then, Kosovo’s youth have been increasingly radicalized through the teaching in these mosques, and it is a source of much concern. This trend has been documented elsewhere. Click here to view further detail on those changes as reported in the N.Y. Times.