A Greek Tragedy?

July 28, 2004

By Lorenzo Vidino

Over the past several months, Greece has been harshly criticized for its perceived inefficiencies in organizing the upcoming Olympic Games in Athens. But while authorities from several countries—including the United States—have expressed concerns about Athens’ readiness to host the Games, what has gone largely unnoticed is the severe security threat posed by Greece’s neighbors.    

Terrorism analysts agree that the biggest potential threat to Greece during the Athens Games could come from its northern border. For instance, both Albania and Macedonia play host to powerful gangs of smugglers already adept at infiltrating the Greek border undetected. In addition, scores of Islamic terrorists established a foothold in the region in the mid-1990s during the Balkans conflict.

Some reports have identified Albanians living in Greece (and particularly in the Chameria region, where the Albanian population is growing steadily) as the possible source of Olympic attacks. Intelligence indicates, in fact, that ethnic Albanian militants linked to the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) in northern Greece have set up an armed network ready to support activities aimed at the creation of a “Greater Albania” (UCK’s political dream).

Other sources point at Islamic terrorists entering Athens from Kosovo. The Macedonian weekly Skopje Svedok reported in February that Greek security services believe that five operatives had reached the Tetovo region (an area in Northeast Macedonia) in order to plan attacks in Greece. Kosovo is an area where some of the estimated 2,000 “Bosnian Arabs” who fought during the Balkans War during the mid-90s have moved and operate freely. Macedonia, with its strategic position and lax controls, is a perfect place for them to plan attacks in Greece. Tellingly, newspapers in Macedonia have warned repeatedly in recent months of plans by Islamic terrorists to carry out attacks during the Olympics.

These leads are consistent with intelligence collected by U.S. authorities over the years. Ever since the 1995 Dayton Accords that pacified Bosnia, the U.S. has monitored the activities of Islamic radicals in the Balkans who stayed in the area after participating in the jihad against Serbia. Interestingly, there is ample proof that training camps in the Balkans have already graduated terrorists that have spread havoc in Europe. For example, several of the key planners of the March 11 attacks in Madrid trained at the infamous Zenica camp, a few miles north of Sarajevo. Other camps are located in Kosovo or in the Tropoje area in Albania.

The threat posed to Greece by battle-hardened terrorists—who have an abundance of false documents and the skills necessary to infiltrate a country—is clear. The picture becomes even more disturbing when one considers reports that secular criminal gangs in Albania (where al Qaeda-linked terrorists belonging to the Egyptian Islamic Jihad planned to bomb the U.S. Embassy in 1998) have been working closely with Islamic terrorists, providing them with weapons and false documents. These gangs are also known to control illegal trafficking in Albania and smuggle thousands of human beings into Greece every year.

With all of these threats at their doorstep, one would assume that the Greeks would be on guard. But the reality is quite different. There is mounting evidence that not only are the Greeks not adequately patrolling their borders, but that whoever raises the issue in public is subject to enormous pressure from authorities desperate to hide the corruption and incompetence that has plagued Greek border patrol and customs for decades.

One significant example of these attempts to sweep under the carpet the inefficiencies of the border patrol and to downplay the threat posed by Islamic militants came in 2002 when Pavlos Altinis, the former governor of the border province of Florina, gave an interview to a Greek radio station. Mr. Altinis, a lawyer who joined the conservative Nea Demokratia (New Democracy) Party, said that Kosovo, Macedonia and Albania were infested with Islamic radicals that want nothing more than to attack the West. Authorities, said Altinis, should be concerned that radicals want to illegally cross the border into Greece, since once they have entered, they can travel to any other European country without having to show any documents. Moreover, since it supported Serbia during the Bosnian war, Altinis argued that Greece itself should be considered a target for the terrorists.

The reaction of the Greek establishment to Altinis’s comments was explosive. While other politicians publicly derided his statements, prosecutors threatened to charge him with trying “to create panic among the public.” This blind denial of facts is symptomatic of a Greek political establishment that always has thought more about retaining power than taking actions for the well being of the country. Corruption, political patronage and harsh ideological divisions have characterized the Greek elite for years, creating a situation where nothing gets done in due time.

But since the upcoming Olympics are an international event, Greece has come under overwhelming pressure from other countries (particularly from the U.S., the EU and Russia) to take care of security during the Games. After some countries, worried by the lack of guarantees provided by the Greeks, threatened not to send their athletes to Athens—or even to bring their own security—the Greeks began to address the problem. In December of 2003, then-Prime Minister Costas Simitis convened his cabinet to discuss for the first time the threat posed by the “Bosnian Arabs” to the Games. And over the last six months, Greek intelligence has met with many foreign counterparts in order to coordinate security efforts. Encouragingly, the new conservative government led by Costas Karamanlis has realized the shame and the economic damage that a terrorist attack during the Olympics could cause to Greece and has paid more attention to security matters.

Nevertheless, at this stage, with just a few weeks to the Olympics, Greek authorities can only hope that the electric blackouts that recently hit Athens will not turn into an intelligence blackout during the Games. In that case, the delay addressing the Islamic terrorist problem gathering on Greece’s borders could turn out to be a tragic mistake.  

Lorenzo Vidino is a senior terrorism analyst for the Investigative Project, a Washington-DC counterterrorism research institute.