Involvement of the Gulf Cooperation Council States in Kosovo: development assistance, soft power, and neofundamentalism

ABSTRACT

The development assistance activities of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have prompted debates and scrutiny of how the Gulf countries use assistance or aid for religious soft power goals, which has a potentially destabilizing effect on local religious communities. This article explores how the Gulf states provide development assistance and their potential motivations. Using Kosovo as a case to describe the techniques used in the field by the GCC charities and development agencies, the article finds that GCC agencies/charities’ activities in Kosovo are negligible in classical development sectors such as the transport, institutional, and social spheres; however, they are very active in promoting and financially supporting religious education, other religious activities, and the reconstruction of religious infrastructure. The article discusses the effects of the assistance on the local Muslim community and how the state reacted to the possible threats this assistance poses.

KEYWORDS:

• Gulf Cooperation Council states
• development assistance
• religious soft power
• Kosovo

Introduction

‘Saudi money and influence have transformed this once-tolerant Muslim society at the hem of Europe into a font of Islamic extremism and a pipeline for Jihadists,’ wrote Carlotta Gall in the New York Times (2016) in an article with the worrying title ‘How Kosovo Was Turned Into Fertile Ground for ISIS.’ Gall argues that since the war in 1999, Gulf states have used the pretence of humanitarian aid and development assistance to push their cultural and religious influence. Gall’s insight is not novel; a number of Kosovo-based authors (Blumi 2005; Krasniqi 2011) had earlier warned that the Gulf countries’ agencies and charities in Kosovo have a specific agenda: to spread the teachings of Islamic neo-fundamentalism. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, the phenomenon of Islamization of relief and development efforts is even more apparent. The Gulf-based agencies/charities have been accused of pumping money into Bosnian society via grants for religious schools, madrasas, wages for imams, campaigns against Western values or direct financial aid to families who will adhere to the Islamic neo-fundamentalist’s lifestyle (Ozturk 2021; Merdjanova 2013; Morrison 2008). A similar process has been observed by several development assistance researchers over the past ten years in different regions of the world (Ahmed 2009; Brown and Pierce 2013) as well as scientists from the field of international relations focusing on religious soft power such as Mandaville and Hamid (2018) or Henne (2022).

When the war of 1999 ended, Kosovo was in ruins, and its population was on the brink of famine. Over 900,000 people needed daily food provisions and protection against outbreaks of disease (Demjaha and Peci 2016). Kosovar society was thus very vulnerable and needed international humanitarian aid, no matter from whichever country or organization it came. The Gulf (and others) countries took this opportunity to spread their religious soft power via aid/assistance. The main goal of this article is, taking Kosovo as a case study, to describe and explain the ways in which the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) used humanitarian aid and development assistance for their own soft power goals. The states of GCC were chosen because their involvement in Kosovo stands on similar foundations to another predominantly Muslim country – Turkey, which also wields a significant influence in the region. Turkey’s position is, however, more complex and multilayered with overarching neo-Ottomanist policies of the ruling party (Ozturk 2021).

The article relies heavily on field research conducted in Kosovo in May/June 2019 and is divided into three sections. Firstly, an overview of the relations between development assistance/humanitarian aid, religion and soft power, the structure/system of GCC states’ development assistance, and their possible motivations for coming to Kosovo is provided. Secondly, it discusses the methods by which development aid has been used for soft power goals by Gulf agencies, funds and charities since the end of the 1999 war, focusing on how they approach society and what areas the aid tends to concentrate in. Lastly, the article briefly discusses what this assistance brought to the Kosovar community and how the state reacted to the threat of radicalization of society, particularly Muslim communities.

Development assistance as a method of soft power

It is not uncommon that natural disasters, wars and other events leave regions and countries of the Global South and beyond, such as Kosovo, in need of aid and assistance. Such development aid and assistance encompass financial and non-financial instruments that are aimed at supporting the recipient country’s efforts to accelerate reconstruction and, in the longer term, growth of living standards and reduction of poverty. Finance is one of the instruments used in these situations but not always the most useful one. Development assistance also includes analysis, advice, and capacity-building, while humanitarian aid focuses on items of immediate need, such as food and clothes (Goldin et al. 2002; Easterly and Russell Easterly 2006; Park 2015).

Donor states have various rationales for giving out aid and assistance. Lancaster (2008) identifies four main ones: diplomatic, developmental, altruistic and commercial. While the fifth, sometimes forgotten reason is the culture in a broad sense, including religion, which might include support of a country’s language, spreading a country’s popular culture, or expanding religious communities. This is where cultural development assistance connects with the concept of soft power, in the sense that assistance/aid can be a strategy for using soft power (Henne 2022). The founder of the soft power concept, Joseph Nye (2008, 94), defines soft power as ‘the ability to affect others to obtain the outcomes one wants through attraction rather than coercion.’

In this context, soft power can be seen as a tool that can ‘either complement or substitute for material resources, and it is the only instrument of power that use ideology and culture to promote state’s interests’ (Henne 2022, 95–96). Using this conceptualization, many analysts brought examples from all around the world, such as China’s ability to use its extensive material resources to provide development assistance or economic investments that expand its influence in Africa (Kurlantzick 2007; Wu 2018) or in central Asia (Winter 2021), Turkey’s return to the Balkans and North Africa with its historical and cultural influence – ‘neo-Ottomanism’ (Ozturk 2021), the spread of South Korean state image through movies, TV series and K-pop (Bae and Lee 2019; Nye and Kim 2019) or spread of Qatar’s state image through sports and sponsorships (Dudley 2019).

Although Nye and others (Gallarotti 2011; Rothman 2011) transformed and widened this concept considerably over the last three decades, it has stayed state-centred with a neo-realist perspective that cannot contain the multi-dimensional complexity of today’s world. One aspect, although it holds status as an ancient element of power, Nye barely mentions in any of his works is religion, which, Ozturk (2021) points out, was omitted by neo-realist theories because of the hegemonic secularization paradigm. Only in the post-9/11 period was religion again recognized as one of the oldest human identities that both helps keep societies together and separate them (Ben-Porat 2013; Warner and Walker 2011).

‘If religious actors “get the ear” of key foreign policy-makers because of their shared religious beliefs, the former may become able to influence foreign policy outcomes through the exercise of religious soft power,’ Haynes (2008), 143). To name a few examples, Marsden (2013) studied how the US military helps to improve the image of conservative evangelicals around the world, Zinets (2018) mentions how the Russian Orthodox Church builds support for Moscow’s policies in Ukraine, Hall (2017) shows how India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) mobilizes Hindutva in its outreach to Indian diaspora around the world or Kirkpatrick et al. (2018) explain how Israel has deepened ties with conservative evangelicals in the United States, trying to portray Israel as the natural guardian of a common Judeo-Christian heritage.

Gulf Cooperation Council development assistance

In the case of Islam and assistance/aid/relief, the connection is natural. The tradition of voluntary charity (sadaqah) has existed since the birth of Islam. Sadaqah is considered a virtuous deed in Islam and proof of one’s faith. It is believed that the more a person gives sadaqah, the more his/her faith increases and, likewise, the greater Allah’s rewards both in this world and in the afterlife (Beránek and Ťupek 2008). Combined with obligatory alms-giving (zakat, in Saudi Arabia 2,5% of the annual earnings), giving relief/aid/assistance to needy people and nations is very much central to Islam. The projects (and working environment itself) of Muslim agencies/charities usually have a religious dimension (Islamic Relief Worldwide 2015; Bonner and Ener 2003). Danish anthropologist Juul Petersen (2012, 2016) conceptualized this as all-encompassing Islam. The agencies put a condition on their investment, such as building a mosque together with a school with the premise that regular Qur’an lessons be held in the school. Similarly, individual conservative Muslim donors (e.g., long distance adoptions) tend to mostly care about progress in religiosity, such as the ability to memorize verses (surah) of the Qur’an, but not in Maths or language (Petersen 2012).

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states are not known as leaders in international development or the humanitarian sector. Nevertheless, since the 1970s, they have been the source of large amounts of official development assistance (ODA), humanitarian aid and other forms of support to developing and conflict-affected countries with Muslim populations, both through state-led channels or through the donations of private agencies, religious charities and individual donors (Salisbury 2018). In the 1970s, the amount of foreign aid totalled about 4% of the GCC’s Gross National Income (GNI), which is, in comparison, proportionally as much as the US gave out for the reconstruction of Europe via the Marshall Plan in the late 1940s (Villanger 2007, 226). Later, however, the proportion dropped, and today several states of the GCC expend around 1% of GNI on aid/assistance (Salisbury 2018). The GCC states use mainly bilateral assistance/aid, and their system of charities/agencies and funds is overseen by the national development agency, which is controlled by the highest ranks of the regime; for instance, the Chairman of the Board of Qatar Development Fund is the current prime minister himself, Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani. The royal leadership and powerful ministries like Interior, Finance, and Foreign Affairs Experts can easily manage the assistance/aid for their soft power goals (Al Yahya et al. 2011). Overall, there tends to be a lack of transparency and accountability in financial flows. The aggregate data of bilateral assistance are published, but the statistics for each supported project are not publicly accessible (Qatari Fund for Development 2020; Saudi Fund for Development 2019; Kuwaiti Development Fund 2019; Abu Dhabi Fund for Development 2019). This may be partly attributed to the tradition of Arab discretion and modesty originating from desert life, but it is, in the meantime, quite deliberate. The GCC member states sometimes allow the receiver’s institutions to decide how and where the finances are to be used, which allows them to shirk responsibility when the projects are controversial or unsuccessful. Others believe that the lack of transparency is due to state elites wanting to cover up the use of development assistance/humanitarian aid as a tool to fulfil soft religious power goals, such as spreading neo-fundamentalistic doctrines of Islam or the alleged funding of terrorism (Salisbury 2018; Villanger 2008; Al Yahya et al. 2011; Leichtman 2017; Kharas 2015; Rouis et al. 2010). It is important to note, however, that neither Bahrain nor Oman are active in Kosovo. When mentioning the GCC countries later in the article, it should be noted that this applies only to UAE, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

The religious beliefs, customs, and doctrines

‘In nearly every Muslim-majority country that aspires to regional or global influence, Islam is an important and sometimes the only ideological currency that ‘mixes’ effectively with more narrowly defined realpolitik’ (Mandaville and Hamid 2018, 2). Thus, spreading religious customs, doctrines, or beliefs is one goal of religious soft power initiatives. These customs/doctrines/beliefs play a significant role in everyday life in the GCC countries (dress codes, the closure of shops during prayer times, gender separation, the collection of zakat, the role of sharia in jurisprudence, the public enforcement of morality), and are considered as the correct form of practising Islam by Islamic fundamentalists – Salafists and Wahhabis (Matthiesen 2015, 2). Salafism and Wahhabism originated in the later period of the Ottoman Empire when several Arabic religious communities felt discomfort with the direction of Sunni Ottoman Islam, with their central idea being restoring the fundaments of Islam as they were during the first three generations of Islam (salaf). Salafists and Wahhabists have fought against traditional practices, especially mystical Sufism, as well as modern Western liberal ideas. (Blumi 2005; Beránek and Ťupek 2008).

However, for text clarity, the author will use the term ‘pure’ Islam (one returning to salaf) and Islamic neo-fundamentalists when talking about the religious influence from the GCC countries (including Saudi Arabia, whose teachings are Wahhabist). However, in Kosovo, neo-fundamentalists are often mixed with the terms Salafis, Wahhabis, Islamists, and sometimes even Jihadists (Kursani 2018), as will be seen in the part with quotes from the respondents. To avoid confusion, the author will put a note if necessary.

Albanians, the majority of whom are Hanafi Sunni Muslims yet religiously plural with significant influence of Sufi traditions and customs, developed the notions of secularism, nation and nationalism during the late Ottoman period and the first half of the 20th century. One of the leading figures of the Albanian revival movement Pashko Vasa summarized that in a quote: ‘For the Albanians faith is Albanianism!’ (Elbasani and Puto 2017, 5). In this context, a globalized form of religion (neo-fundamentalism) stands against so-called ‘accommodationists’ who identify themselves with cultural ethnonational ways of being Muslim (all based on Endresen 2015; Elbasani 2015).

Methodology

Partly due to the unavailability of statistical data from the GCC agencies, this research depends on qualitative methods. Semi-structured interviews form the basis of the analysis, complemented by participant observation and analysis of documents published by Kosovo NGOs/think tanks and local media outlets. The field research was conducted during May/June 2019, for five weeks, and across the territory of Kosovo. The respondents were chosen by snowball sampling through personal acquaintances and direct conversations via phone. Upon arriving in Pristina, the first interviews were conducted with two academics. In total, 20 interviews were conducted. As seen in Figure 1, the respondents were dispersed all around Kosovo as regional proportionality was considered, where four out of the six biggest cities (Pristina, Prizren, Mitrovicë, Gjakovë) in Kosovo are included. Additionally, the participant observation was conducted around three mosques in Pristina ‘Mat 1’, Prizren ‘Bashkim Sukaj’ and Skënderaj ‘Shaban Jashari’. The typical observation started early morning to catch worshippers leaving after fajr, the day’s first prayer. It continued via the mid-day prayer, dhuhr, and after a brief break during the noon, an interview was conducted in the afternoon. Some other mosques funded by the GCC states were visited as well (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Map of Kosovo showing sites used for the field research.

Source: Author’s own figure

Transcripts of all recorded interviews were prepared and interpreted using the method of coding (Švaříček and Šeďová 2014). New categories emerged based on frequency, similarity, and context in the following steps. These categories and the relationships between them were analysed in more detail in the thematic areas. This interpretation was supplemented with citations of individual respondents. To ensure the anonymity of the respondents, they were clustered into groups based on their profession: academics (3), journalists (2), NGO employees (2), religious leaders (3), international organization employees (2), administrative employees (3), students of Hasan Prishtina University (3) and citizens active in civil society (2).

Involvement of the GCC states in Kosovo

When the Kosovar war broke out in March 1999, the Gulf states stood aside, not supporting either side but concentrating on humanitarian relief for refugees. ‘Saudi relief planes flew aid daily to Tirana with tents, blankets, carpets, food, and medicine,’ said an NGO employee. On 16 April 1999, the state-based Saudi TV ran a telethon to fundraise for a humanitarian relief campaign in Kosovo.¹ To oversee the spending of donations, King Fahd issued a decree creating the Saudi Joint Committee for the Relief of Kosovo and Chechnya (SJCRKC). The committee’s goal was to coordinate the relief, oversee the work of the involved Saudi organizations and charities, and provide a financial base for the transfer of money from Saudi Arabia (Millard and Collins 2006; Krasniqi 2019). Within five months of the telethon, SJCRKC collected 45,5 million USD in cash, supplies and services (Millard and Collins 2006, 135), to which King Fahd donated 5 million USD himself (Information Office 2002). Although Western organizations and agencies quickly overtook the SJCRKC’s importance in Kosovo’s cities and towns, it remained a key partner for local communities in rural areas. The war especially hit the rural areas hard, and, at the same time, reconstruction was very slow; thus, these areas became especially dependent on international aid and assistance (Blumi 2005). The Saudis were joined by Emiratis and Kuwaitis in providing relief and restoring health, educational and religious infrastructure.

‘The Arabs were able to restart village life again; they reopened village schools. They did what the state (or United Nations Mission in Kosovo) could not manage back then,’ said an academic. As the new Kosovar administrative structures were fragile, the relief efforts were hardly, if at all, monitored. One academic’s testimony gives an impression of the situation: ‘I was walking on the pavement, and a car stopped next to me, and I was asked if I needed anything.’ There were no rules on helping people, as interviewees confirmed that one just had to bump into someone who worked for an [especially Gulf-based] charity, and they would be given food, blankets, shirts, or paracetamol.

By 2002/3, Kosovo had moved into a different stage of its postwar reality, as relief was no longer needed. The Gulf charities and agencies disappeared from the public space, and there was a negligible amount of official development assistance. OECD Development Assistance Committee statistics in the 2010s show that Switzerland, Germany and the US provided 30 to 50 times as much assistance per year as the UAE.² This was confirmed by one of the respondents. ‘Saudi Arabia and in general Arab investment was and still is close to zero,’ said one journalist, while an administrative worker added that ‘Investments and official donations are really low while non-official ones are very hard to track.’

Since 2014 there have been only a handful of notable projects with GCC funding. The United Arab Emirates agreed to give 22 million USD to build a new and modern paediatric hospital, which Kosovo lacks (Express 2019). However, respondents said this remains a plan, and there is no progress yet. The Saudi Fund for Development agreed to give 15 million USD in loans to Kosovo to complete the construction of a highway from Pristina to Mazgit (Zëri 2017). This project is currently under construction, and the interviewees appreciate Saudi role in providing the necessary funds. Regarding smaller development projects, Qatar Charity implemented 373 projects – mainly water sanitation projects, school supplies, and the reconstruction of homes (The Penninsula 2019). Qatar Charity is clearly the most visible of all the GCC charities in Kosovo and the most transparent; their website allows one to choose a project in Kosovo and donate, which goes directly to the specified project (Charity 2020). However, the total cost of the projects of Qatar Charity in 2018 was only 1,65 million USD (The Penninsula 2019). In comparison, the Swiss Development Agency’s relatively small civil society programme, which deals with the participatory shaping of public affairs, Engagement for Joint Action, costs an estimated 3,5 million USD (Swiss Development Agency 2020).

Techniques/methods used by the GCC charities/agencies

Most of the aid and assistance provided to Kosovo by the GCC states is non-official or unreported. The GCC organizations in Kosovo are estimated to have spent several hundred million USD, the majority of it on religious-based projects (Demjaha and Peci 2018). Four main categories of religious assistance (public enlightenment, education, religious infrastructure, and financial subsistence), in which the GCC agencies/funds/charities are engaged, were identified based on the field research. The periods of involvement are as follows; 1st phase directly after the war in 1999; 2nd phase from 2003 and 2004 to 2014, when Kosovo no longer needed direct war relief but the surveillance over the operation of international NGOs was limited; and the 3rd phase from 2014 till now, when the government of Kosovo enacted new regulations and laws directed at international NGOs. In the first phase, direct relief, reconstruction of educational and religious infrastructure, financial subsistence and public enlightenment were the main methods of involvement. The reception of the population was mainly positive. In the second phase, new mosques, madrassas, and new schools were built while enlightenment campaigns continued. The reception started to change, especially towards the construction of religious infrastructure and involvement in education. In the last phase, financial subsistence disappeared, involvement in education grew more controlled by the administration, and public enlightenment campaigns continued on a smaller scale, while investment in religious infrastructure is stable/growing. In this phase, most of the respondents (except religious ones) and just about anyone the author talked to in Kosovo perceived the GCC involvement negatively.

Public enlightenment

The mentioned Arab relief campaign in 1999 was largely appreciated by the interviewed respondents. However, even in 1999, the respondents claim that together with food and blankets, people were given material to read about what Islam could change for the better in their lives. One academic remembers how the pictures of lifestyle in the GCC countries looked quite unusual for Kosovar, saying, ‘[Information at the reading material] looked like a different world. Nobody was aware of what it meant to live as a proper Muslim.’

The GCC states actively translated classical Islamic literature into Albanian and distributed it to the public. In 1999 alone, 200,000 copies of the Qur’an were handed out to Kosovars (Krasniqi 2019, 39). This was confirmed by respondents as Kosovar authors, academics and journalists were encouraged and given grants to publish books, scientific articles, and positive news with Islam content. ‘Just a short preface or final paragraph praising Wahhabi teaching would be enough to receive funds to publish the book or research,’ claimed one NGO worker.

The GCC organizations tried to influence public space as well. The respondents confirmed Blumi’s (2005, 12) story that in the early 2000s, the GCC organizations funded locals to give speeches to persuade others to change their religious/family behaviour. For example, every evening at the SJRCKC headquarters in the Dardania quarter of Pristina, local women adhering to ‘pure’ Islam delivered seminars for women on the need to return to the behaviour and lifestyle of the salaf period. In the same period, respondents pointed out that banners, signs and commercials flooded the streets with powerful quotes and Qur’anic verses. The GCC organizations have organized (and still do) seminars and workshops for local populations about topics such as the role of women in Islam, pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, and other topics previously unknown or practised differently in Kosovo society. The charities/organizations have lobbied for religious-based topics in parliament and were active in public campaigns such as demonstrations against a law which forbids the wearing of a headcover in schools. ‘In that campaign, there was a lot of hate speech from the Gulf-funded organizations and individuals towards liberal Kosovo women,’ said one NGO worker. The GCC organizations have also played down criminal acts of gender violence and abuse from Kosovar women. ‘Several years ago, there was a case of a University of Pristina student who wanted to get divorced, so her husband shot her in the centre of Pristina. The religious authorities paid by the Gulf said that she deserved that,’ as one NGO worker puts it. Not only did they legitimize the murder, added the interviewee, but they also lobbied for the husband not to be convicted, as, under sharia law, he had acted to keep the family’s pride intact.

Education

Religious education has been one of the priorities of the GCC organizations and agencies in Kosovo. Until 2004, it was known that around 100 schools were reconstructed or built from scratch with funding from the Gulf (Blumi 2005), and later, the rate fell. In the 2010s, no new schools (except madrassas) were constructed by the GCC. Most of the respondents agree that without their help, one entire generation of Kosovars from certain regions of rural Kosovo would have been without primary education. Much more problematic, as field research showed, is that the skills and knowledge acquired in these schools were not classical general schooling but religious-based education. Pupils were given lessons in culture, customs and lifestyle of ‘pure’ Islam, and importance was given to the memorization of the Qur’an. In Skënderaj, locals remembered one such school in a nearby village and complained that it was useless. They allegedly taught the kids nothing they could use in 21st-century Kosovo. The only result they said is that a few kids started to take religion very seriously and broke off relationships with their parents and community (via author’s observation 2019). A common practice in such primary schools is the cultivation and then selection of apt pupils for further higher religious education at GCC-paid madrasas in Kosovo, as explained by one administrative worker.

The GCC organizations did not fund schools only in rural areas. In cities, they organized private Arabic language schools and after-class Quranic schools for boys and girls, stated one academic. Recruiters often visited schools and offered free Arabic lessons. The kids who started to learn Arabic were subsequently offered lessons in the Qur’an, recalled several interviewees. Funded by GCC money, the most talented and hard-working went on to study at madrasas and higher education at universities in the Gulf. One active citizen recalled,

They came to my school and chose several kids in our class. I was chosen because my name is Arabic, and most of the other kids have Albanian names. I later dropped out as I am not into Islam that much, but my friend studied in Abu Dhabi and is now an imam in Istanbul.

The ‘neo-fundamentalist’ teachings and values influencing and changing the education system were already noted by Blumi in 2001. The field research and the author’s observation (2019) confirm this. For example, forced segregation practices were introduced at some schools, which was a very new thing in Kosovo. Girls and boys have always been allowed to go to school together, even in rural areas that are historically conservative, as the author got to know during the observation.

Scholarships to students willing to become preachers and imams are the longest tradition of involvement of Gulf states. The first Kosovar Albanians travelled to universities in the Arabic-speaking world in the late 1980s (Blumi 2001). The respondents confirmed that it continued and became widespread as several hundred Kosovars went to Saudi Arabia, the UAE or Qatar for training. They later followed many different paths; some never returned, some are currently voicing ideas of neo-fundamentalism, but others came back warning against the GCC influence. One academic said, ‘I am in contact with a former student who went to study in the Gulf. Despite being very religious, he never got used to the Middle East reality. He said he hopes Kosovo will never become like that.’

Financial subsistence

The provision of direct subsistence to families and individuals under certain conditions, which generally includes living or pursuing a life according to ‘neo-fundamentalist’ teachings, is beyond the ethical standards of the humanitarian and development assistance field, especially since the most vulnerable groups of society were targeted. The prime targets were families in rural areas who had lost male members, had no roof over their heads or were without income. However, just about anyone could have been randomly asked on the street in bigger cities, especially in the early 2000s, according to one international organization employee. Three interviewees (a student, an academic, and an international organization employee) have directly experienced this, either themselves or through a family member. Several others heard about it from their friends/acquaintances, while others said that the alleged attachment of conditions to the provision of funds is rumours. Two respondents (an academic and a student) dismissed this claim as ‘Serbian’ propaganda.

The most common conditions for financial aid were that the family’s children should attend Quranic schools, the women should wear a headcover, and the men should be praying/visiting a local mosque regularly. The recipients also had to renounce traditions and rituals that conflicted with ‘pure’ Islam if they adhered to any. They were instructed to cut ties with local Sufi sheikhs and others involved with religious brotherhoods. Men were often required to grow a beard, even though Kosovar Albanians shave regularly and have a historical tradition of having one’s own barber and regularly shaving, even in rural areas. Sometimes, compulsory black clothes were provided to families/individuals. Wearing a burka and growing a beard are displays connected with foreign influence. Quite a substantial percentage of the interviewees and other authors linked these practices with receiving financial subsistence from GCC organizations. They say that before 1999 it was so rare and basically non-existent in society, such that the sudden rise in the popularity of these displays (even though the prevalence is still low compared to Bosnia and Herzegovina) must be somehow connected. According to one academic, ‘they use people as if they are a promotion or a commercial to show how other Kosovo citizens should behave.’

Krasniqi (2019), a security expert, claims that the family of a child attending a Quranic school/club would receive 50 euros per month if he/she remembered certain verses of the Qur’an. Other individuals were given 150 euros per month if they ‘demonstrate their religious devotion to the doctrine of Islamic Salafism (neo-fundamentalism).’ (Krasniqi 2019, 40) Additional money could be acquired by wearing full-body clothing and having a beard. Money was allegedly given in cash by SJRCKC employees (Krasniqi 2019). Krasniqi’s claims were hard to confirm in the field as only one respondent (an academic) was willing to talk about specific numbers and said a family could earn as much as 300 euros per month while an individual could receive as much as 200 euros per month for fulfiling certain conditions, mentioned above. No statistics on this exist to our knowledge, and none of the respondents could say how many people were involved. However, some said that this was not exceptional in rural areas, and in a certain period (1999 –2005/6), it was one of the very few opportunities people had to have a livelihood.

Considering that in 2006 the average wage was still below 200 euros per month (Tradingeconomics 2020), 150 or 200 euros per month for living a ‘purist’ lifestyle and practising neo-fundamentalist values and customs would indeed be an attractive offer for lower-income classes of Kosovar society, especially since the unemployment rate was sky-high. As the average wage started to rise in 2008 and more job opportunities appeared, this proposal was no longer as tempting as it had been. This practice eventually disappeared, according to the interviewees, given that since 2014 the control over foreign NGOs has tightened.

Religious infrastructure

Prior to interview data, some statistical information is provided here to help contextualize and illuminate the findings further. The Gulf agencies and organizations are estimated to have invested around 800 million USD (1999–2015) in Kosovo, mainly in rural areas (Demjaha and Peci 2016). Aside from already mentioned projects and methods, financial resources were invested in reconstructing the entire religious system, which was reduced to rubble in 1999. The Saudis and later UAE, Qatar and Kuwait brought imams, paid the wages of religious personnel, funded projects of the Islamic Community of Kosovo (ICK) and most importantly, funded the building of new mosques. The exact number of mosques built with the help of Gulf finances is unknown. Before the war, the ICK administrated around 500 mosques, out of which 155 were completely destroyed. Currently, it supervises around 700. Even if one assumes that the 155 mosques were rebuilt, an extra 200 new mosques must have been built (Mardjanova 2013). Out of these 355 (new and rebuilt) mosques, a significant number (around 100) must be subtracted as the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency rebuilt some, and the ICK itself funded some, which leaves roughly 250 mosques that are built with (at least partial) GCC, more than one-third of the currently operating mosques.

Whereas the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency aims to preserve Ottoman heritage and architecture is not different to the local mosques, the architecture of mosques built by the GCC is significantly different from the style used in the Balkans and usually copies the current architectural style of the Gulf, typically with tall minarets, green coloured windows with a more modern outlook. The majority of interviewees felt the GCC lacked respect for their cultural heritage and were dissatisfied with the look of the constructed mosques, considering them alien elements in the public space. Even the regular visitors to these new mosques, with whom the author talked, admitted they are dissatisfied with the appearance. Aside from the foreign look, which may be considered a superficial problem, constructions often did not follow any spatial planning principles. The GCC agencies exerted pressure in their talks with local municipalities, bordering on blackmailing techniques. Meanwhile, ICK’s permission for the construction of mosques was often not needed until the 2010s. ICK also struggled with coordinating as there were no lists of which Muslim communities needed a new place of worship. This changed as the administrative/government pressured ICK to act more in accordance with local needs, and nowadays, the construction of a new mosque must go through the approval process in ICK and in the local municipal council, as told by one NGO employee and one religious leader.

‘They just arrived at our village and asked, ‘do you want a mosque?’’ explained one religious leader. ‘Without any previous communication with the local council, they arrived and wanted to start building within a few days. They were interested only in finding suitable land. The same architectural plan was used again and again because all the village mosques were supposed to look the same.’ One journalist confirmed this, stating that ‘they came to the village of his relatives arrived without previous communication and were in a hurry to start the construction. However, they quickly left when they saw the ongoing reconstruction of a monastery for Sufi brotherhoods (a place of worship for Sufi Brotherhoods - tekke), and the local population strongly favoured a local Sufi sheikh. They were more successful in a neighbouring village where the local population was less connected to the local Sufi brotherhood.’

Regardless of when a mosque had been constructed, the question arose as to who would be the imam responsible for taking care of it and preaching in the mosque. In the early 2000s, the GCC organizations often held the most influence and prevailed over the disputes between the GCC organization, the local community, and the ICK. The number of Kosovar Albanians who studied in the Gulf and were willing to return and preach ‘pure’ Islam was not high, so GCC citizens and other puritan preachers were employed and directly paid by the Gulf organizations. An NGO employee said that Gulf organizations could have paid as much as 2,500–3,500 USD per month to attract preachers for the new mosques. According to Krasniqi (2019), following the 1999 war, the SJRCKC sent over three hundred missionaries across the country to help imams to spread the puritan Islam message. The number of foreign imams reduced over time as Kosovar Albanians returned from their studies. Today there are practically no foreign imams; nearly all imams have Albanian-speaking national origins. The ICK is now responsible for allocating imams and, following best practices, consults with the local Muslim community before doing so,’ said one religious leader.

Assistance with strings attached?: motivations and impact of the GCC aid

As mentioned earlier, for every Muslim-majority country that aspires to attain a position of regional or global influence, Islam often proves an important and sometimes the only ideological currency that can effectively gain influence inside any other country with at least a small Muslim minority. This is well true in Kosovo, where the GCC countries can only attract with ‘pure’ Islam. Since 1999 Kosovar Albanians were exposed through various mentioned methods to the beliefs/customs/teachings of the neo-fundamentalism, and in areas where state power was weak and services unattainable, the local population was willing to change their accommodationist attitude in order to receive development assistance and aid from the GCC states in the first and sometimes second phase of the GCC involvement. As the interviewees explained to the author, by participating in cultural programmes, events and visiting the village mosques built with GCC money, some people started to sympathize with neo-fundamentalist ideas, whereas others were attracted to it due to promises of financial gain. Low-income families saw an opportunity to give their kids an education and a better future. Their sons gained religious education in the new madrasas as boys and then received scholarships to study at universities in the Gulf before returning to preach neo-fundamentalist beliefs in the new mosques. ‘This was not unusual; however, still, [only] several thousand cases [of this existed] maximum,’ said an academic.

Although neo-fundamentalists are not numerous, there was bitter criticism from respondents towards the growing influence of Islamic neo-fundamentalism in the Muslim community and its infiltration into the structures of ICK. The followers of Islamic neo-fundamentalist preachers verbally and even physically attacked their critics (mostly accommodationists imams). Some even assaulted well-known and respected imams like Mullah Osman Musliu (Krasniqi 2019), a close friend and spiritual aid of national hero Adem Jashari.

In Drenas, one local traditionalist [accommodationist] imam was about to close the mosque [for the night], but several young men under the Salafi influence insisted they must stay. The imam lost his temper and shouted at them, ‘leave immediately, find a job and do something meaningful, not only wander in the mosque.’

This anecdote was told by a journalist, who then added, ‘For traditionalists [accommodationists], the mosque is a place to pray, while it is definitely not a place to stay the whole day.’ The anecdote reflects the attitude of the majority of the public towards Islamic neo-fundamentalists, whom they portrayed as people who think that life is only about praying. Most interviewees generally distrust neo-fundamentalists, supported by other studies in Kosovo and Albania by Clayer and Bougarel (2017) or Endresen (2015).

The majority of interviewees agreed they see nothing agreeable in particular about the countries of GCC and that, in general, society is Western-oriented politically and, in several ways, culturally. Especially the US historically has a very positive image inside Kosovar society, and its cultural influence is very strong and visible in everyday life. This inevitably clashes with the ‘pure’ Islam values promoted by Saudi Arabia and Qatar as an alternative to Western values commonly preferred by the locals.

‘They [Saudis and Qataris] are trying to create a fifth column in our society.’ highlighted one of the interviewed academics, and several others voiced similar opinions. The author cannot confirm this as more concrete evidence is needed to corroborate such a bold claim; however, what can be said with relative ease is that the GCC agencies and charities worked with the aim of enlarging the Muslim community and particularly enlarging the community of neo-fundamentalists, with which the GCC would have a much more pronounced affinity, and thus, opportunities to expand their influence in a Muslim society that historically have little ties with their the branches of Islam the GCC countries tend to promote. The perception of the interviewees, corroborating the related literature to a certain extent, was that the GCC countries aimed for a strong community of Kosovo neo-fundamentalists who adhere to the Islamic leadership from the GCC countries and not local religious authorities. At the same time, they aimed to combat the influence of their traditional opponents; proponents of Shia Islam – Kosovar Bektashi order and popular Islamic religious practices – Kosovo accommodationists.

Nevertheless, there are different opinions about if the GCC involvement activities actively helped Kosovo citizens to join ISIL, Al-Qaeda or other organizations, as Gall (2016) suggested. Some indirect examples might support this case, such as the existence of the Pristina-based organization Nektari-He. This GCC-funded but locally administrated organization regularly and publicly voiced hatred towards other religious communities in Kosovo. Their main activities were online lectures and seminars with neo-fundamentalist imam Zekerija Qazimi often hosted these seminars alongside co-hosts, including the leader of ISIL Albanian-speaking brigade Ridvan Haqifi. Of Nektari-He’s several branches, one of the most active was located in Han i Elezit, a Southwestern border town, which according to a UNDP report (2017), had the highest rate of citizens fighting in the Levant per capita in Kosovo.³ However, the field research has not managed to find the direct links, and none of the respondents was able to provide any proof. ‘Not everyone who studied in Medina or Abu Dhabi is a Wahhabi (neo-fundamentalist), and neither is every GCC organization responsible for recruiting for Jihad,’ said one academic. Most of the interviewees said they do not necessarily connect the most known present-day Kosovar radical neo-fundamentalist preachers with certain GCC states, organizations, or charities. This matches with local NGO reports, which doubt that the GCC-funded mosques and preachers were directly involved in the recruitment of ISIL fighters. According to the Kosovar Centre of Security Studies (Kursani 2015), mosques are not hotbeds of ISIL in Kosovo, despite such claims.⁴ The GCC funded-organizations might have helped with the creation of a breeding ground for radicalization, but the most influential propagators of radical ‘pure’ Islam operate independently.

Nevertheless, the Kosovar state (and civil society) have somewhat recently started to perceive the unregulated GCC soft power as a security threat and, as a result, have been more proactive in surveilling what the GCC states do in Kosovo. It created anti-radicalization strategies (2012, 2015) and Anti-Terrorist Office while also setting up a Department for NGOs under the Ministry of Public Administration to oversee developments in the NGO sector (monitor their activities and financial transfers; at any moment, they can lose their licence to operate in Kosovo if they are seen to support radicalization). The government also financially supports liberal madrasas and religious institutions teaching accommodationist Islam. Since 2014 around thirty organizations/funds/charities were closed for lack of transparency, accountability, working against the Kosovo Constitution, and promoting extremism and religious hate. Even the operations of Qatar Charity, a legitimate organization, were shortly suspended in 2018 for allegedly promoting extremism (Arab News 2018; Arabiya 2018). The interviewees were unanimous that the GCC-based and funded organizations/charities are slowly disappearing from the streets and public spaces.

Conclusion

Even though current GCC states’ political leadership aims to officially sideline Islam from development assistance in order to gain international recognition and trust for their efforts (Derbal 2022), their main goal has not changed, which is to support to enlarge the world Muslim community (da‘wa). This study shows that the GCC agencies/charities’ activities in Kosovo are negligible in classical ODA sectors such as transport, institutional and social sphere; however, they are very active in public awareness (enlightenment) about religion, (religious) education, reconstruction of religious infrastructure, and provision of financial subsistence.

The GCC organizations supported Islamic public enlightenment campaigns, funded mosque (re)constructions (as many as 250 since 1999), gave scholarships for locals to study at GCC universities, funded programmes to pay the wages of neo-fundamentalist preachers and most controversially, the GCC agencies were giving out financial subsistence to (rural) vulnerable families on the condition that they comply with ‘pure’ Islam customs. These activities connected to practising ‘pure’ Islam aimed at improving the image of GCC countries and creating a strong neo-fundamentalist community.

The respondents and local NGO experts claim that the GCC involvement might have been one of the reasons for the radicalization of rural and socially-deprived persons, and it directly led to clashes between accommodationists and neo-fundamentalists. However, the research has not shown any direct connection between the GCC involvement and the successful recruitment of Kosovar Albanians to ISIL. While on the other side, without the GCC assistance, the rural education system would have never recovered after the war because they were the only stakeholders to engage in peripheral areas for years.

Ethical statement

This is non-interventional study. The ethical approval is not required neither in the country of researcher origin nor in the country of research (Kosovo). All responses from the participants in the field research are anonymized and there is no risk of this paper being harmful to their career or lives.

Acknowledgement

The author would further like to thank Libor Jelen for his valuable comments during the process of writing and editing the article and to Arsim Ejupi and Bashkim Rrahmani for their help during the field research in Kosovo.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Charles University under SVV (grant number 2605661).

Notes

1. The exact amount collected is unknown. Osmandzikovic (2020) estimates an initial 17 million USD collected, whereas Al Yahya and Fustier (2011) estimate 22 million USD.

2. Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait does not submit financial flows to OECD Development Assistance Committee, so it can be calculated. However, it can be said that while in 2000s the Saudi aid/assistance was the highest, in 2010s UAE and Qatar are on the similar level with Saudi Arabia. Kuwait is giving less and Oman/Bahrain almost nothing.

3. The Han I Elezit branch still has an open Facebook group that gives a good overview of how this organization worked and what kind of language it used. Even though the group is inactive since 2014, when Nektari-He was banned, one can still see Quranic quotes, group photos of gatherings (men of various age groups in ‘pure’ Islam clothes), and lectures of Saudi and Qatari imams with subtitles and videos of neo-fundamentalist radical preachers (the most recent one ‘explained’ that the Muslim sect Alevites ‘is loved by Israel and West’). There are no calls for Jihad or ISIL recruitment texts, which could have been blocked, deleted, or perhaps never appeared in this public Facebook group (Nektari-He Han i Elezit 2010–2020).

4. Interviews with former fighters in Syria show that although preaching in mosques may have been a minor reason for some to join Jihadism, a much bigger influence were underground ‘flat seminars’ organized by people not connected with either the ICK or with the GCC organizations.