International Borders are meaningless. Its not just Muslims who are leaving their comfort zones in the west. But the phenomenon is not restricted to Muslims. In the past few weeks the issue of Orthodox Serbs going to fight in Ukraine has risen to the top of the political agenda. According to Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia’s prime minister, they are all mercenaries and what they were doing is “very harmful” for Serbia. No one knows how many Serbs have gone to fight in Ukraine. Figures quoted in the media, attributed to intelligence sources, put the numbers at between 30 and 100. Mr Vucic says they are fighting on both sides; the vast majority are likely to be on the side of pro-Russian rebels. On August 18th Aleksandr Zakharchenko, the prime minister of the self-proclaimed Donetsk Republic, announced that 14 Serbs had just turned up to fight. Kosovo Front, a Russian website, gives information to Serbs on how to help the rebels and how to join the Jovan Sevic Unit, named after an 18th-century Serb who fought in what is now eastern Ukraine at a time when there were Serbian settlements there. For many of the Serbs lured to fighting in Russia there is a quasi-religious, Slavic brotherhood element, which mirrors the lure of religious war for Muslims to go to Syria and Iraq. Both fly eerily similar black and white flags, except that one is emblazoned with words from the Koran, whereas the Orthodox Serb one has a skull and crossbones, crosses and a declaration of Christian faith. Many of the Serbs also sport big bushy beards like their jihadi counterparts. Meraj Sirajuddin
Posted on: Wed, 03 Sep 2014 16:41:47 +0000
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