Kosovo Dispatch | 25 September 2026
Drizan Shala has begun teaching at the Armed Forces Academy of the Republic of Albania. His subject is disinformation and hybrid warfare.
We are happy about it. He is one of ours.
Readers of Kosovo Dispatch know Shala from the Security Desk. In July, he co-wrote Waiting for the Policeman to Leave, looking at Serbia’s military procurement through the political doctrine Aleksandar Vučić had been setting out for years. In August came The General Belgrade Reclaimed, his account of what the Serbian state’s treatment of Ratko Mladić after his death revealed about the distance Belgrade had once tried to maintain from the wartime Bosnian Serb army.
They were newspaper pieces. The Academy has not endorsed them, nor should anyone pretend that an academic appointment amounts to an endorsement of everything a writer has published.
What matters is simpler. Albania’s Armed Forces Academy has asked someone who works on disinformation, hybrid threats and the security environment of the Western Balkans to teach its officers about them.
There is nothing ornamental about that subject anymore. NATO said at Warsaw in 2016 that hybrid warfare could rise to the level at which the North Atlantic Council might invoke Article 5. A military confrontation can be prepared long before the first soldier crosses a border. By then, the story explaining why he crossed it may already have been circulating for months.
That is also why this appointment means something to us.
Kosovo Dispatch was founded on a fairly stubborn idea: people from this region do not need to wait for someone in London, Washington or Brussels to explain the Balkans back to them before their analysis is taken seriously. They can do the reporting, read the documents, follow the networks, understand the language and write for the same international audience.
Nobody gets to claim that authority by declaring it. You earn it one piece at a time.
So when one of our Security Desk writers goes from analysing hybrid warfare in these pages to teaching the subject at the military academy of a NATO member, we are allowed a little pride.
Major General Ferdinand Dimo, who took command of the Academy in May, has spoken about preparing officers for the security challenges they are likely to face. Shala will now be part of that work.
And he is staying with us.
Good.
Congratulations, Drizan.
