Young people are underrepresented in mainstream media in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The media scene is divided largely along ethno-national lines and can often serve to raise tensions or incite negative...
Their sons went to fight for ISIS in Syria or Iraq, and some even had children in the conflict zone - then they were killed, leaving their impoverished relatives in Kosovo, Albania and Macedonia to...
Terrorism trials involving Balkan Islamists show that many of these individuals were either indoctrinated by – or had close links to – radicalised communities in Germany, Austria and...
The radical and revisionist messages of far-right Croatian politicians and historians find a sympathetic audience among many members of Croatia’s huge émigré community. Sven Milekic BIRN...
Social media posts from the Ukrainian battlefields have been invaluable in enabling prosecutors in Serbia and Montenegro to prove the illegal military action of their nationals in Ukraine. Marija...
It may be a long struggle against the odds, but some independent media and civic activists in the Balkans are determined to counter the tide of fake news and disinformation flooding the...
Not a single Bosnian has been registered as going to the Middle East to fight in the last year and a half, and the authorities’ anti-terrorism focus has been redirected from prosecutions to...
Balkan youth have been an easy target for extremists seeking to radicalise them and convince them to fight abroad, but now parents, activists and official Islamic organisations are striking...
Some jihadis from the Balkans who travelled to the Syrian conflict zone to support Islamic State told BIRN that they returned home because they became disenchanted with the brutality, poverty and...
After dozens of self-proclaimed imams were prosecuted for recruiting fighters for Middle East wars, state-backed religious organisations have joined the online fight for the hearts and minds of...
Excluded from the mainstream media, whose content is more heavily policed, the purveyors of extreme ideologies are spreading their messages of fear and hatred on social networks. Marija Ristic,...
While Balkan countries have curbed the flow of fighters to foreign wars, the online space is still a haven for Islamist extremists who remain out of reach there, recruiting and spreading messages of...