SKOPJE, Republic of North Macedonia: North Macedonia, a small landlocked country in southeast Europe, is under the spotlight after news emerged that 20-year-old suspected Daesh group sympathizer Kujtim Fejzulai, accused of killing four people in Vienna, had roots in the Balkan country.
While details about the suspect and his connection to North Macedonia are still unclear, here are facts about the ethnically diverse state, which like its Western European peers has battled to contain violent extremism on the fringes of its minority Muslim community.
North Macedonia was formerly part of Yugoslavia and is home mainly to Slavic Orthodox Christians, who make up more than two thirds of the two million population and dominate political and economic life.
But the country also hosts a large ethnic Albanian community, many of whom are Muslim and live in north and western border regions that flank Kosovo and Albania, two predominantly Albanian neighbors.
Unlike its neighbors, North Macedonia avoided the ethnic bloodshed that unraveled Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
But it was pushed to the brink of war when ethnic Albanian rebels launched an insurgency in 2001.
Up to 200 people were killed during seven months of fighting.
The violence was halted by the internationally-brokered Ohrid agreement, which provided greater rights for the Albanian minority.
Relations have remained broadly peaceful ever since, though integration is limited and Albanians still face social and economic discrimination.
Like many countries in Europe, North Macedonia was a source country for foreign fighters who joined the Daesh group and other extremist causes in the Middle East starting in 2012.
A total of 150 citizens including fighters and their wives left the Balkan country for Syria, around half of whom have returned, according to police figures.
While neighbors like Kosovo exported a higher number of fighters per capita, North Macedonia had the highest rate in the Western Balkans relative to the size of its Muslim population, according to a 2018 British Council report.
Most hailed from Albanian neighborhoods in the capital Skopje, other predominantly Albanian communities and from the large Albanian-origin diaspora in Western Europe.
While the outflow of extremists abroad stopped almost entirely in 2016, North Macedonia has since had to face the threat of homeland attacks among returnees and other Daesh sympathizers.
In recent years, police have thwarted several terror plots.
Most recently in September, police arrested three men in their twenties accused of stockpiling weapons for a “terrorist” cell linked to Daesh.
