Balkans combat human trafficking, source of ISIL funding

Police monitor a border crossing in Kosovo. Balkan countries are co-operating to fight human trafficking more effectively. [AFP]

Balkans combat human trafficking, source of ISIL funding

Balkan countries expect greater assistance and support from the EU and NATO to counter human trafficking.

Police monitor a border crossing in Kosovo. Balkan countries are co-operating to fight human trafficking more effectively. [AFP]

Human trafficking is one of the most lucrative illegal businesses of terrorist organisations like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and they practice it in the Balkans to finance their activities, experts said.

The illicit trade brings in more money than the drug trade or the weapons trade, according Ivan Babanovski, professor at the Security Faculty in Skopje.

"This way, Islamic extremists finance their activities in Iraq, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea and in other hotspots. In the Balkans, money from human trafficking is used to propagate radical Islam and to recruit and train fighters in addition to other funding that their local activists obtain," Babanovski told SETimes.

Babanovski said authorities should view the illegal immigrants that pass through the Balkans as potential victims of trafficking by terrorist organisations.

"To come to Europe, the traffickers must past the Turkey-Greece-Macedonia route which so far is the most developed one. They belong to ISIL or the 150 other terrorist organisations formed in Iraq and Syria. Under the veil of being migrants, they infiltrate as jihad fighters throughout the EU and get tasks to carry out terrorist or supporting activities," Babanovski said.

Balkan countries are becoming an important part of the Islamic militants' human trafficking efforts, said Vasko Nikoloski, professor at MIT University in Skopje.

"It is one of the main sources of...

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