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U.S. Frustrated By Elusive Justice Served to USS Cole Plotters May 04, 2008 It's been called "the forgotten attack" but it's one of the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history. Eight years after the USS Cole was attacked by a motorboat packed with explosives, all of the six men convicted of the strike have escaped from prison, or been freed by Yemeni officials. Seventeen sailors were killed and 40 more wounded in the strike, blamed on Usama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. Jamal al-Badawi, who helped organize the Cole plot, has reportedly escaped from Yemeni prisons twice. He is supposedly...

BELGRADE, Serbia (AP) — Russian ally Serbia took the delivery of a sophisticated Chinese anti-aircraft system in a veiled operation this weekend, amid Western concerns that an arms buildup in the Balkans at the time of the war in Ukraine could threaten the fragile peace in the region. Media and military experts said Sunday that six Chinese Air Force Y-20 transport planes landed at Belgrade’s civilian airport early Saturday, reportedly carrying HQ-22 surface-to-air missile systems for the Serbian military. The Chinese cargo planes with military markings were pictured at Belgrade’s Nikola Tesla airport. Serbia’s defense ministry did not immediately respond...

A blind psychic who correctly predicted the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the 9/11 attacks once claimed that president Vladimir Putin is to become 'Lord of the World'. Known as the Nostradamus of the Balkans, Baba Vanga, who died 25 years ago in 1996 aged 84, predicted in a 1979 interview that Russia was to dominate the world. She also made a frightening prediction about World War Three and the potential use of nuclear weapons. During the interview with writer Valentin Sidorov, she said Putin's 'glory' will remain 'untouched'. Known as the Nostradamus of the Balkans, Baba Vanga,...

Romania and the United States have signed an agreement that would establish the first U.S. military bases in an Eastern European country from the former Soviet bloc. The United States already has the rights to a base in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan, and is in the process of vacating one in neighboring Uzbekistan. With the United States already possessing a military presence in much of the world, what does it want with even more foreign bases? Washington, 7 December 2005 (RFE/RL) -- Romanian President Traian Basescu seemed as pleased to be hosting the bases as the Americans are...

Officials from Albania, Bosnia & Herzegovina and Kosovo have refuted claims by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that mercenaries are being sent from the three countries to Ukraine, amid speculation about an imminent Russian invasion. Lavrov said in an interview with RT television, which was published on the ministry’s website on February 18, that Moscow is double checking reports that mercenaries are being sent from the three Western Balkan countries to Donbas. “There’s information that mercenaries are being recruited in Kosovo, Albania and Bosnia & Herzegovina to knock Russia out of balance and send them to places including Donbas,” he...

Motovun (Croatia) (AFP) – The sound of paws scurrying along the forest floor echoes through Croatia's northwestern woods, where the hunt for truffles is being threatened by climate change and deforestation -- stirring fears that the country's gastronomic goldmine may be at risk. The delicate microclimate in the picturesque Istria peninsula's forests has long been famed for producing some of the finest white truffles, which this year fetched up to 2,500 euros ($2,860) per kilo. But the increase in temperatures and lower precipitation levels linked to climate change along with a shrinking water table and habitat loss could throw off...

Western powers are preparing sanctions against separatist Bosnian Serbs in a confrontation that could tear Bosnia apart and trigger a new Balkans conflict. According to diplomatic sources, the US and UK are drawing up new measures to punish the nationalist Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, and Germany is leading a push for the European Union to follow suit. Bosnia is run as an international protectorate under the terms of the US-brokered Dayton Accords after the savage inter-ethnic wars triggered by the break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. The US and European governments fear that Bosnia’s break-up will deal...

A year ago, Serbia and Kosovo signed a normalization agreement in the Oval Office. Now, those terms are expiring and Biden could care less.One year ago on September 4, the world celebrated the signing of the Kosovo-Serbia Economic Normalization Agreement in the White House Oval Office. President Trump had brought President Aleksandar Vučić of Serbia and then-Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti of Kosovo together to take an enormous step towards resolving their historic conflict. It was Donald Trump’s vision for Kosovo and Serbia to normalize their economic relations and help usher-in a complete Balkan-wide revitalization. President Trump believed that the perceived...

Come near, ye nations, to hear; and hearken, ye people: let the earth hear, and all that is therein; the world, and all things that come forth of it. For the indignation of the Lord is upon all nations, and his fury upon all their armies: he hath utterly destroyed them, he hath delivered them to the slaughter.When Rebecca had a troubled pregnancy, she sought the LORD for answers and He told her, that “Two Nations are in thy Womb…”. She could have no idea how that would all play out in subsequent history. The One child, Esau would become...

N. Korean leader's grandson to study in Bosnia: Reports The Korea Herald/Asia News Network Thursday, Sep 29, 2011 A grandson of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has enrolled in an international college in Bosnia, local papers reported on Wednesday. The 16-year-old Kim Han-sol, son of the North Korean leader's oldest son Kim Jong-nam (right), is on a list of 72 sixth-year students of the United World Colleges' (UWC)'s local branch located in the southern town of Mostar, according to the Vecernji List. The UWC is a network of colleges throughout the world promoting international and intercultural understanding. It is attended...

Anti-government protesters in their thousands took to the streets of Belgrade on Saturday night for the tenth weekly demonstration of its kind. The protesters are a mix of citizens movements, opposition parties, from both left and right, academics, students and ordinary people. They are united in the belief that Serbia with president Aleksandar Vucic at the helm is sliding towards autocratic rule and that the country is gripped by political violence and a climate of fear. After more than two months of weekly protests people are still coming out in huge numbers and many political analysts believe the protests are...

The trial of Visnja Acimovic, who is accused of involvement in the shooting of 37 Bosniak men at Mracni Dol near the Susica detention camp in the Bosnian municipality of Vlasenica in June 1992, opened at Belgrade Higher Court on Monday. Acimovic told the court that she was not guilty. She said that from the end of May 1992 until the beginning of July that year, she and her family were staying in Backa Topola in Serbia.

On this date (by the Julian calendar then in use) in 1389, Stefan Lazar Hrebeljanovic — that’s Tsar Lazar to you — led the armies of Moravian Serbia against the expanding Ottoman Empire at the Battle of Kosovo. The Serbs were defeated — thereby plunging, in the national mythology, into a half-millennium of Turkish domination. Lazar was supposedly* captured and beheaded. For a generation, Lazar had firmed up his authority as the most significant Serbian autocrat outside the Ottoman orbit. The gravity of that orbit, however, grew more powerful with each passing year; soon, it would devour Byzantium

The Air Force Times' Sean Naylor scored an interview with Major General Mike Flynn, director of intelligence for General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan. There isn't a lot new here to longtime readers of The Long War Journal and Threat Matrix. Flynn gives an overview of the Taliban groups, notes that al Qaeda operatives serve as combat enablers for the Taliban, estimates Taliban forces in Afghanistan at between 19,000 to 27,000 fighters, and said Pakistan remains a major haven for the Taliban and al Qaeda. Of particular interest are Flynn's comments on Iran and the role...

Although temperatures in the Balkans are rising, neither budding flowers nor mass protests should be mistaken for the beginning of a Balkan Spring modeled on the revolutions that rocked the Arab world in 2011. The protesters’ main problem is that they’re unable to apply any political pressure on the government by rallying around a candidate that might threaten Vucic’s stranglehold on national politics. The entirety of the anti-Vucic ideological spectrum is represented—from student Marxists to Bosko Obradovic, the ultranationalist leader of Dveri, a far-right opposition party of religious conservatives—sometimes causing scuffles among the protesters. This highlights the fragmented and impotent...

BELGRADE – Weekly protest walks, taking place since 8 December 2018, have become the most serious challenge to the rule of Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic so far. The protests, which are supported but not formally organised by the opposition parties, have spread to more than 20 cities and towns across the country... One of the protests took place in Kosovska Mitrovica, the largest city of the Serb-majority Northern Kosovo, which is governed by Vucic’s political allies. The protests, organised under the title “One of the five million” (a reference to the initial reaction of President Vucic, in which he said...

Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev says the entire Balkans will have prosperity and lasting peace when Macedonia joins NATO. Zaev spoke in Sofia, Bulgaria Monday — two days before Macedonia signs the accession protocol at NATO headquarters in Brussels. "Macedonia has been waiting for 27 years to become a member of NATO. Zaev said. "Today, Macedonia has the hope of having open doors." Greece had blocked Macedonia's efforts to join NATO and the EU because of a long-running dispute over the use of the name 'Macedonia' — shared both by a historic region of northern Greece and the former Yugoslav...

The road to the Red Cross Concentration Camp is caked in frozen mud etched with tire tracks and cracking puddles. A dog jogs ahead to dig holes in the camp’s yard. The barbed-wire fence lies in a decrepit heap next to the ticket office branded with a faded swastika and, in thick capital letters, “WACHE SS”.Also, there’s also a high school next door.“Many tourists ask, ‘Oh, is this also part of the camp?’ No, it’s just a school,” explains our guide, Aleksandra Zdravkovic. She works at the tourism office of Nis, a quiet city of 190,000 in southern Serbia, and...

The Trump administration is working to score what it hopes to be another foreign policy win, this time by encouraging leaders from Serbia and Kosovo to sign a peace agreement in a ceremony that could take place at the White House. Trump recently sent letters to both Thaci and Serb President Aleksandar Vucic, asking they accelerate negotiations in an effort to resolve their impasse. As first reported in the Washington Post, Thaci and Vucic published their versions of the Trump letter online. “Failure to capi­tal­ize on this unique opportunity would be a tragic setback, as another chance for a comprehensive...

By April 1992, with its Soviet ally freshly dissolved, Yugoslavia as the world had known it was gone in a bloody and violent breakup, leaving some 100,000 dead, 2.4 million refugees, 2 million internally displaced, and seven independent nations in its place. While those ethnic tensions still simmer in much of the former Yugoslavia, so too is a growing sentimental recollection of life in a country much of the younger generations can only learn about in history books and museums like Milakovic’s Yugodom. A Gallup poll from last year showed that many people in the former Yugoslavia look back fondly...