FOCUSING ON MENACING MIDDLE EAST GEOPOLITICAL ENVIRONMENTS, ENDANGERING SECURITY AND STABILITY OF WESTERN BALKAN
MUHAMMAD ASLAM KHANABSTRACT. Simmering conflicts and instability always pose a challenge as well as threat to the neighbors who are relatively prosperous. In the article, I have argued, in relevance to the title, that brimming instability affords a very ripe platform for the transnational actors in Middle East (ME) to flourish and become challenge for the Western Balkan Region (WBR) by targeting it through organized crimes in the process of pushing forward their agenda of introducing instability to any stable or an emerging stable region. ME today stands as an intensely ripped off region by the conflicts and the impending conflicts where diplomacy appears to be flabbergasted about unyielding stance of the conflict parties and those besides, who have heavy stakes in the crucial arena. The approach to ME scenario is double tracked. One, that characterizes its geo-strategic domain where-in conflict(s) resolution is discussed and attempted if not consummated. The other is tactical that translates the immediate threats and challenges to neighboring regions and for Europe; WBR is crucial that constitutes its soft underbelly. It is the latter approach that has been dealt with here. European Union’s (EU) role in Balkan is very encouraging but it has no option to go lax, assuming that WBR inherited a complex paradigm to untangle when the same powers or parts of the same powers of 19th and early 20th centuries are now shunning violence and conflicts as an execrable phenomenon and are extending olive branch instead. Historic wounds afflicting the societies take equally longer to heal but with the zeal and purposefulness EU has launched itself, a miracle is about to crystallize. pp. 99–111
Keywords: ME, WBR, organized crime, terrorism, drug, human trafficking, threat, EU