According to most historians, the Albanians, a Caucasian people first recorded by the Romans, simply disappeared around the 10th century and became assimilatedwith their neighbours.
Broadly speaking, the representations that describe them tend to fall into two types, the exceptional assimilated immigrant or the violent fundamentalist, with very little room in between.
Obama also assimilated a key lesson from the Bush years: unconventional enemies are often best countered with unconventional responses, which in the case of terrorists means using special forces often and imaginatively.