For AlQaeda to get a foothold somewhere, they need a local base of support, This base does not exist in Albania and Kosova. The territory is instead hostile to them, pro-US and anti-fundamentalist.
The only way you'll find AlQaeda in Albania, is undercover. Several came to Albania in the 90s, but were arrested/expelled by joint Albanian/FBI action once the FBI found them out. Since then they have not tried again. Albanians are now naturally suspicious of MiddleEasterns, and ShISh keeps tabs on them constantly.
>>>I rely on my own information that I gather on my own.
Ok, let's see it then.
Al-KLAeda is still there, they are enmeshed into small cells within the region. No one talks about in the US or Euro media as that is a death knelt to anyone who does. Look who would fall from grace if that information was exposed? That fact is covert and will not ever be verified.
The scope of the Jihad network is illustrated by the countries where the 107 defendants in the 1999 trial were arrested ?Albania, Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt. It was Egypt's biggest terrorism trial since that of Jihad members in 1981 for the assassination of Sadat. In what became known here as "the trial of the Albanian returnees," the court convicted 87 people and sentenced 10 of them to death, including Dr. Zawahiri, who was tried in absentia.
After the failed 1993 assassination attempts, Yemen became less hospitable, and many Jihad members moved to Sudan, where Mr. bin Laden had established a base and provided them work, and then to Albania.
According to the trial documents, the Albania cell's members, most employed at Islamic charities in Tirana, were forced to transfer 26 percent of their salaries to Islamic Jihad.
Some defendants said they were also instructed to find money to set up a training camp "to serve the purposes of Jihad" in Albania. The instructions, they said, came from Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of the Jihad leader.
BOSNIAN AL-QA'IDAH MEMBERS PLAN ATTACKS ON NATO - TERRORISM EXPERT
SRNA - October 17, 2003
New York - A group of Islamists, 10 mujahidin trained in Afghanistan, have entered Bosnia-Hercegovina with the help of Sandzak connections and are currently in Al-Qa'idah camps near Zenica (central Bosnia) and Tuzla (northeastern Bosnia), a Serb terrorism expert, Darko Trifunovic, has told SRNA. He added that a plan to blow up a tunnel through which a column of American vehicles was meant to pass was prevented in the last moment.
Trifunovic is currently in Washington, where he is talking with American anti-terrorism experts and prominent members of the Congress about the spreading and aims of Islamic fundamentalism in the Balkans and especially in Bosnia-Hercegovina where - as Trifunovic said - they operate "with the blessing of top Muslim officials".
He said that a group of about 300 young Kosovo Albanians, who had been attacked by the concept of a Greater Muslim state, was trained in northern Albania and then transferred to Kosovo with their trainers, mujahidin fighters from Middle Eastern and North African countries. According to intelligence reports, a third of the group went to the border with Macedonia tasked with destabilizing that country. Another third went towards Serbia, where some have already been caught, while some headed for Sandzak (Raska (old Serbian name for the region)) and on the way there killed Serb children in Gorazdevac (Kosovo).
I can get you more on this topic if you want