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October 30,
2003
ERP KIM Newsletter
30-10-03b
Special Edition
Al
Quaeda's European Route is the Balkans?
CONTENTS:
 Al
Quaeda's European Attack Route is the Balkans, New Evidence Claims
A provocative report from the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare claims that the Balkans is about to heat up again
as an Islamic terrorist base. This surpasses traditional nationalist
rifts, claims author Yossef Bodansky, and is intended to increase al Qaeda
infiltration. Thus the Balkan operations would be ultimately controlled by
the Evil One, OBL.
The
Coming New Surge in European Islamist Terrorims - The Momemtum has Begun
INTELLIGENCE SOURCES IN THE Balkans and Middle East indicate that the
Iranian and Osama bin Laden terrorist networks, assets and alliances built
up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and
elsewhere in the Balkans are preparing for a significant new slate of
operations. Initial operations in this "new slate" have already begun in
Kosovo, and are expected to expand in southern Serbia in late October and
into November 2003.
SPECTATOR
(UK) How We Trained Al Qaeda
Brendan O'Neill** says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to
operate abroad For all the millions of words written about al-Qa'eda since
the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked
- the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s
into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.
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Al
Quaeda's European attack route is the Balkans, new evidence claims
A provocative report from the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare claims that the Balkans is about to heat up again
as an Islamic terrorist base. This surpasses traditional nationalist
rifts, claims author Yossef Bodansky, and is intended to increase al Qaeda
infiltration. Thus the Balkan operations would be ultimately controlled by
the Evil One, OBL.
TOP
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=172
BALKANALYSIS
Posted on Thursday, October 30 @ 00:00:00 EST by CDeliso
A provocative report from the US Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and
Unconventional Warfare claims that the Balkans is about to heat up again
as an Islamic terrorist base. This surpasses traditional nationalist
rifts, claims author Yossef Bodansky, and is intended to increase al Qaeda
infiltration. Thus the Balkan operations would be ultimately controlled by
the Evil One, OBL.
However, it remains to be seen to what extent this is true. Bodansky does
not cite sources, and his assessment for Bosnia is more likely to be
accurate than his view on Macedonia, for example.
The report, dated 19 September 2003, states that ".starting in mid-August
2003, radical Islamist leaders elevated the role of the terrorism
infrastructure in the Balkans as a key facilitator of a proposed
escalation of conflict into the heart of Europe, Israel and the United
States."
Apparently, the elevation of one Shahid Emir Mussa Ayzi- a veteran of
Afghanistan with close al Qaeda and Taliban ties- to coordinate and run
special recruitment operations is the ominous development here.
In what can't be a compliment to anyone, Bodansky states the new goal as
making jihadis of the "Slavs" or as jihad leaders call them, "white
devils." He can't be talking about Serbs or Macedonians here. Indeed, just
a little later he describes the "main recruitment pool" as consisting of
Bosnian Muslims, as well as some "Russian converts"
(Chechens?) recruited in the Caucasus.
The report states that in August Ayzi took over this Balkan brigade, and
reported his success with the "Slavs" to Mullah Qudratullah, a "senior
Taliban official." Another key leader is said to be Muhammad al-Zawahiri,
the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri. Apparently,
".the senior Islamist commanders now consider what they call "the Albanian
land"- Albania, Serbia's Kosovo province and parts of Macedonia - to be
safe for use as a springboard for the insertion of a new wave of expert
terrorists, including the Slavs, into Western Europe and onward throughout
the West."
Bodansky claims that at the same time, ".there was a discernible increase
in the number of foreigners in the Islamist mosques throughout Albania."
"'.They [originally] come from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran.
They come from many countries,' noted an eyewitness in Tirana. 'They
arrive [in Tirana] from Afghanistan,' he added. These expert terrorists
are being prepared in Albania for their specific missions in the West."
Here is where things get interesting. The Albanian lobbyists in American
are now doubt enflamed by the next charge- that the Albanian National Army
(ANA or AKSH) is now training these dubious imports, with most of the
senior trainers being "mujahedin who retreated from Bosnia."
In return for Albanian support, Bodansky claims, "the Islamists assist the
local terrorists in preparing for launching spectacular terrorism into the
major cities of Serbia and Montenegro, with Belgrade and Nis believed to
be the top targets."
This is certainly a different picture than we get from the AKSH leaders
themselves. Idajet Beqiri, the fugitive political leader with the group,
was recently recorded as saying the AKSH has no contact with
mujahedin- but rather exists only to fight for the Greater Albania. He
vehemently assured that the group does not work with Islamists.
However, we know that in the past, even as recently as 2001 in Macedonia,
this was not the case. Mujahedin from al Qaeda did train the KLA in 1999
in northern Albania's remote mountains, and documentary, photographic and
verbal evidence exists to indicate a presence among NLA ranks in Macedonia
in 2001. Occasional "sightings"- like the dark-skinned, bearded man who
allegedly loads down an enormous shopping cart weekly in Skopje's Vero
while wearing a bullet-proof vest under his
shirt- are evidence of a continued presence. The enormous, Saudi-built medresah in the nearby village of Kondovo may be another site fostering
unrest. Israeli sources have also claimed that a certain number of
Albanians were being trained in Hamas camps in Lebanon- but that the
Macedonian government showed no interest in following this up.
Indeed, Bodansky claims that the Islamists are active in Albania, western
Macedonia, and Kosovo (the last is most likely of the three).
Balkanalysis.com has independent information attesting to recent upsurges
in Islamic recruiting activity in the Prizren area (near the border with
all three), as well as cross-border arrests in weapons and drugs smuggling
in recent weeks, that can be linked with terrorist or at least militant
funding.
Still, care should be taken to separate the Islamist movement from the
Albanian one. The latter is predominantly secular. We believe that the
AKSH split earlier this year over just such a divergence in objectives. If
tensions do increase in Kosovo, it will be due to Albanian impatience with
the UNMIK provisional government and a latent fear that the US is becoming
too Serb-friendly. Could lurking Islamists attempt to ride the coattails
of their discontent, in order to make mischief of their own?
A major aspect of both secular and religious terrorism is symbolism. The
Islamists want their acts to be seen as representative of something, as do
the Albanian separatists. Neither wants the other to take the credit for
their own work, and the latter are especially fearful that an Islamic
attack on the wrong target could be blamed on them. Indeed, it seems
unlikely that the AKSH wishes to perform a "spectacular" terrorist attack
in either Nis or Belgrade (Beqiri restricted their operations to strictly
"Albanian" lands). After all, there would be no way to bring Serbian tanks
back to Kosovo faster than a firebombing of Belgrade.
When it comes to Bosnia, however, Bodansky might have a more realistic
point to make. He reminds that Islamists have a grudge over Srebrenica
(while, remarkable for an American, admits that the Muslim death count was
bloated for propaganda purposes). According to the London-based extremist
group Al-Muhajiroun, the failure of UN peacekeepers to protect the Bosnian
Muslims made them legitimate targets in Iraq.
On 18 October, Serbian authorities also sounded the alarm. Darko
Trifunovic, a Serbian expert on terrorism, visited Washington then and
announced that:
".a group of ten mujahedin who were trained in Afghanistan have managed to
enter BiH. They are currently in al-Qaeda camps in the vicinity of Zenica
and Tuzla. A plan of this group to blow up a tunnel through which a row of
US vehicles was supposed to pass was prevented at the last moment."
Once, such warnings would have been cast aside as yet more Serb
propaganda. Now, however, they are being listened to. According to
Trifunovic, a group of 3000 young Kosovo Albanians (who had been trained
in northern Albania), were also sent into Kosovo and Macedonia along with
mujahedin from Middle Eastern and North African countries. Trifunovic
further states that some of them went on to stir up trouble in Sandzak,
while others were arrested in other parts of Serbia. Citing numerous
similar actions in Bosnia, Trifunovic also pointed out that two banks
there (Vakufska Banka and Islamska Banka) continue to work with impunity
despite being suspected of having terrorist ties.
Independent of this, Balkanalysis.com has been informed that a group of
1,000 Iranian students were allowed to attend Serbian universities, a
couple of years ago, on student visas. When a similar request was lodged
in Skopje, the Serbian authorities informed them that of the original
1,000 students, only "about 30" could be found after one year. Macedonia
wisely ignored the Iranian request.
According to Brendan O'Neill of Spiked! The US adventure in training
foreign mujahedin in Bosnia was "very important" to the rise of a
globalized jihad, in which terrorists ".think nothing of moving from state
to state in the search of outlets for their jihadist mission."
The US should surely know some of the routes through which arms are
smuggled into Bosnia from neighboring states. After all, it created them
in the 1990's arming of the Bosnians. Weapons were taken through Croatia
or airlifted from as far afield as Saudi Arabia, something about which the
US had "very close" knowledge and cooperation. Today, American diplomats
regret this complicity, but doggedly stick to its necessity for helping
the defenseless Muslims of Bosnia:
".Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has
said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of
the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin
was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering."
Of course, the interventionists then were paid to get a job done, not
think of long-term dangers. This was obfuscated by the continuing "moral
blind spot" that the West has regarding Bosnia, O'Neill contends. That
said, from their enthusiasm with using imported Islamic fighters in not
only Bosnia but Kosovo, one would suspect that the policy makers had
forgotten about the Afghan experience of the 1980's; lamentably, they
would only remember it after September 11th, 2001. Hopefully they won't
suffer more persistent and vivid reminders than that of this bad decision
in the years to come.
TOP
THE
COMING NEW SURGE in European Islamist Terrorism: The Momementum has Begun
INTELLIGENCE SOURCES IN THE Balkans and Middle East indicate that the
Iranian and Osama bin Laden terrorist networks, assets and alliances built
up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and
elsewhere in the Balkans are preparing for a significant new slate of
operations. Initial operations in this "new slate" have already begun in
Kosovo, and are expected to expand in southern Serbia in late October and
into November 2003.
TOP
Defense &
Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, September 2003, pp. 9,12-13
Terrorism
By Gregory R. Copley, Editor
INTELLIGENCE SOURCES IN THE Balkans and Middle East indicate that the
Iranian and Osama bin Laden terrorist networks, assets and alliances built
up in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and
elsewhere in the Balkans are preparing for a significant new slate of
operations. Initial operations in this "new slate" have already begun in
Kosovo, and are expected to expand in southern Serbia in late October and
into November 2003.
The intelligence, from a variety of primary sources within the Islamist
movements, points to:
1. Escalation of Islamist terrorist attacks on Serb civilians within the
predominantly Muslim region of Kosovo and Metohija, which is in the
Serbian province of Kosovo;
2. Commencement during October-November 2003 of seemingly-random bombings
of public places, including schools, in Muslim-dominated cities in the
southern Serbian/northern Montenegrin Raska Oblast (this oblast, or region
- not a formal sub-state as in the Russian use of the word "oblast" - is
referred to by Islamists by its Turkish name, Sandzak) as a prelude to
wider violence in this area, and eastern Montenegro, adjacent to the
Albanian border and reaching down to the Adriatic;
3. Coordination of incidents by the so-called "Albanian National Army" - a
current iteration of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK: Ushtria
Clirimtare e Kosoves, in Albanian; OVK in Serbo-Croat) - in Kosovo and the
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia with activities in Raska, led by the
Bosnian radical Islamist party, SDA (Party of Democratic Action) of Alija
Izetbegovic, and all supported by Albanian Government-approved/backed
training facilities inside Albania, close to the border with Serbian
Kosovo;
4. Escalation of incidents - including threats, political action,
terrorist action - within Bosnia-Herzegovina, designed to further polarize
the Serbian and Croat population away from the Muslim population;
5. Eventual escalation of "incidents" to create a "no-go" area for
Serbian, Montenegrin, Republica Srpska security forces and international
peacekeepers in a swathe of contiguous territory from the Adriatic through
Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Southern Serbia and Macedonia into
Bosnia-Herzegovina, effectively dissecting the Republica Srpska state
(which is within Bosnia-Herzegovina) at the Gorazde Corridor and isolating
Montenegro;
6. Using the extensive safe-haven areas and "no-go" zones created by the
actions, undertake a range of terrorist actions against targets in Greece
- which is contiguous with Albania and (FYR) Macedonia - during (and
possibly before) the August 2004 Olympic Games. Specific intelligence
points to the fact that the Islamist groups have already predetermined
target opportunities during the Games.
The new intelligence contradicts the public positions of both the
Government of Serbia and the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina
that terrorist threats in their two states were now not evident. The
Serbian Ministry of Interior did, however, acknowledge increased
activities by Wahabbists (such as the bin Ladenists) and intelligence on
planned Islamist bombings in southern Serbia in the coming months.
Significantly, however, Bosnia-Herzegovina High Representative Paddy
Ashdown published, in The Washington Times of October 6, 2003, a letter to
the editor in which he said:
"After September 11 [2001], the Sarajevo authorities took important steps
to ensure that Bosnia-Herzegovina could not in any way be used as a
platform for terrorist attacks of any sort, in Europe or elsewhere. This
country is not a terrorist base, nor will it become one."
Mr Ashdown's statement, in which he actually attempted to predict the
future, is not borne out by the evidence of radical Islamist activities
inside Bosnia.
There were several significant motivations behind the new wave of
coordinated actions, according to our sources and analysis by Defense &
Foreign Affairs.
(i) Iran and al-Qaida Breakout: The Iranian Government, as well as the
Osama bin Laden organization (now being referred to as al-Qaida), have
been working since at least the breakup of the former Socialist Federal
Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991-92 to build a strong base of Islamism and
terrorist capability in the heart of Europe, and relying on the entree to
the area given by Alija Izetbegovic's SDA party in Bosnia. Neither Iran
nor bin Laden undertook this extensive work for nothing and, despite the
very large Iranian Embassy presence in Sarajevo, Iran's Shi'a clerics have
been happy to provide training, logistics and intelligence while allowing
the Wahhabist/Salafist bin Laden organizers to work more openly with the
Sunni Bosnian Muslims. The Bosnian structures were used to support and
actively participate in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against
the United States.
Now that both Iran and al-Qaida are under pressure from the US, their
networks in Bosnia - now far stronger than in 2001, and with virtually all
international and Serbian capabilities to stop them suppressed for fear of
political outcries in the event of again attacking the "Muslim victims" -
are preparing to launch their new break-out attacks against the US and the
West, both in order to polarize the Muslim world from the West at the
Olympics [see below] and to build a stridently Islamist state (or network
of states: Bosnia, "Sandzak" [Raska], Kosovo, Albania, parts of Macedonia,
etc.) within Western Europe [see below].
(ii) Olympics: The August 2004 Athens Olympics, with large crowds present
and an estimated four-billion television viewers worldwide, has been
identified as the most obvious symbolic point to force, using terrorist
"spectaculars," the schism between the West and the Muslim ummah, with the
objective of polarizing the Muslim world around a "new caliphate" of
radicalism, forcing the West to further react against the Muslim world,
thereby reinforcing the tendency to drive Muslims toward the radical
leaders. This interpretation is not based on speculation, but on known
plans for the Olympics within terrorist groups related to al-Qaida and
Iran. The Athens Olympics provides the perfect selection of terrorist
targets, especially given the thus-far poor performance of Greek security
services in preparing for the Games, as well as because of the proximity
of Athens to major terrorist operating areas and support lines (through
the Eastern Mediterranean, Albania, etc.).
(iii) Islamist-Controlled Territory in Europe: The prospect of creating an
Islamist territory, comprising Bosnia, Kosovo, and adjacent areas,
reaching from the Adriatic into the heart of Europe, is the most
significant strategic gain foreseen by the Islamists since Muslim fortunes
in Europe waned when the siege of Vienna was raised by the King of Poland
in 1683. Numerous Islamist sources have indicated that they believe that
this "return to Europe" is now within their grasp, offering enormous
political symbolism of the success and power of the radical Islamists to
the Muslim world, particularly if such an achievement is made as a result
of great loss by the West.
Iran, Iranian surrogate forces and al-Qaida are under increasing pressure
to begin the escalation of operations in the Balkans, not just because of
the imminence of the Olympic Games, but also to help deflect US-led
pressure against, and preoccupation with, Iran and counter-terror
operations in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Revived US pressures on Syria - a
major strategic ally and conduit for Iran - is seen as escalating the
urgency of the "break-out" operations in the Balkans. The Balkans,
however, also remain a strategic goal in their own right, quite apart from
their value in relieving pressure on Iran and the damaged prestige of the
terrorists and Islamists as a result of the current "war on terror."
During the first half of August 2003, 300 Albanian-trained guerrillas -
including appr. 10 mujahedin (non-Balkan Muslims) - were infiltrated
across the Albanian border into Kosovo, where many have subsequently been
seen in the company (and homes) of members of the so-called Kosovo
Protection Corps which was created out of Kosovo Albanian elements
originally part of the KLA. In fact, the Kosovo Protection Corps seems
almost synonymous with the Albanian National Army (ANA), the new
designation for the KLA. The guerrillas were trained in three camps inside
the Albanian border at the towns of Bajram Curi, Tropoja and Kuks, where
the camps have been in operation since 1997.
The US Government, during the Clinton Administration, supported these
camps, and some sources have said that US and German nationals were still
involved in training guerrillas in the camps. Their existence is known to
the Albanian Government, which reportedly also provides both protection
and support for the facilities. They brought with them from Albania a
variety of light weapons, including mortars and landmines.
Some elements of the 300 in the August 2003 group - believed to be the
mujahedin element - went into action almost immediately, in the
Serbian-occupied Kosovo town of Gorazdevac, near the city of Pec (in the
West, close to Montenegro), on four occasions and on one occasion killing
some children. Significantly, the Albanian doctor who examined two of the
children injured in one of the attacks, Dragana Srbljaka and Djordje
Ugrinovic, was accused by Serbian Government authorities and by other
local medical authorities of having "purposefully making a wrong diagnosis
of fractures, instead of gunshot wounds." He put plaster over the gunshot
wounds and discharged the children, rather than hospitalizing them.
After these attacks, some of the mujahedin involved moved immediately
Westward, going through Islamist safe-havens in Raska to Bosnia. Many of
the remainder went to areas on the Kosovo border with central Serbia
and/or across into central Serbia. They also engaged in mining in areas
used by Serbia-Montenegro Army vehicles using claymore-style roadside
charges.
It was understood from the Defense & Foreign Affairs sources that US and
NATO intelligence officers operating with UNMIK peacekeeping forces in
Kosovo were aware - or appeared to be aware - of the incursion of the 300
new Islamist fighters and were also aware, at least to some extent, of the
mingling of the guerrilla fighters with the Kosovo Protection Corps
officials.
Significantly, the transit of weapons and fighters to and from Bosnia to
the Kosovo and Albanian areas has been underway for more than a decade. In
testimony to the State Security service of (then) Yugoslavia in September
1991, Bosnian Islamist Memic Senad (born 1953) acknowledged that Sarajevo
Muslims, under Izetbegovic's SDA, pushed arms and ammunition into Raska (Sandzak),
and that this was done with the knowledge of Izetbegovic. The arms had
earlier been smuggled into Bosnia via Croatia, with the help of Croatian
police, before going on to Raska. These shipments consisted of, among
other things, Romanian-made assault rifles and M56 machineguns. The
weapons themselves were acquired in Slovenia, and one shipment noted by
Senad included 1,240 AK-47 assault rifles.
SDA official Hasan Cengic was in charge of buying the weapons, according
to Senad. Hasan Cengic, an Islamist theologian, has been linked with
Iranian-sponsored terrorism since 1983. He is a veteran of the 13th Waffen
SS division of the German Army from World War II, and later a general in
the Bosnian (Islamist) Army as well as former Deputy Bosnian Defense
Minister. He organized much of the influx of foreign mujahedin fighters
into Bosnia during the 1990s and was a member of the governing board of
TWRA (Third World Relief Agency), founded in Vienna in 1987 and linked
with a range of al-Qaida-related and other terrorist groups. The
particular shipment cited in Senad's testimony was escorted from Bosnia
and into Raska by a Libyan consular vehicle, with diplomatic plates. An
Islamist organization, Active Islamic Youth, actually handled the
delivery. Amer Musurati, a Libyan diplomat based at the Libyan mission in
Belgrade, Serbia, paid for the weapons, despite a long history of
cooperation between Qadhafi's Libya and the old Yugoslavia of Pres. Tito.
At the same time, the Libyan consulate in Sarajevo backed the People's
Democratic Movement of Rasim Kadic. Kadic was also involved in the
distribution of weapons into areas of Bosnia, Raska and Kosovo. Zelic
Cefedin and Kadic were known to have been in Czechoslovakia where they
tried to buy weapons from Australian citizen Hans Herdla.
What assists in diffusing the whole pattern of Islamist activities is the
seeming lack of coordination and formal organization. The links, however,
become evident in the pattern of cooperation, common targets and
accommodations between groups of apparently different ideologies - such as
the Libyans, the Syrian and Iranian-backed HizbAllah Shi'as, the Wahabbi
and Salafi extremist Sunnis, and so on - which is also evident in
terrorist operations around the world. Indeed, cooperation between
Christian (Catholic) Irish Republican Army (IRA) officials with Libyan and
Islamist backers and colleagues, is a case in point. As well, the issues
of a common enemy and, often, a common financing means (usually narcotics
trafficking), brings disparate groups together.
Much of the new round of Islamist activity is centering on the southern
Serbian (Raska) city of Novi Pazar (literally "New Bazaar"). This city of
some 30,000 people is approximately 80 percent Muslim. It has one of the
most radical Islamist bookstores in the world, and the store is doing
brisk business. Here, the principal business of the city is crime: illegal
smuggling of consumer goods, heroin and weapons. And with its street
bazaars and coffee houses, it appears as a Middle Eastern city within a
countryside populated by Orthodox Christian Serbian farmers. [During
Turkish occupation, it was necessary for inhabitants to adopt Islam in
order to gain work in the cities; thus the farmers remained Orthodox, the
city-dwellers became Muslim.]
Novi Pazar is the focus of the Islamist attempt to build a landbridge from
Albania and Kosovo to Bosnia. Further to the East, in southern Serbia's
Raska Oblast, are three other concentrations of Muslims: Sjenica and
Pester area (lightly populated but mostly Muslim), Prijepolje (some 50
percent Muslim) and - very close to the Bosnia border where Republica
Srpska controls the slender Gorazde corridor - Priboj (also some 50
percent Muslim). The land between is Serbian farmland, but the Islamist
goal is to link the cities as "evidence" that the entire region is, or
should be, Muslim territory. The same strategy worked successfully in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbian farmers were driven off their lands
during the civil war.
Just south of the Serbian area of Raska Oblast is the Montenegrin part of
Raska region, where, for example, Bijeljo Polje is some 60 to 80 percent
Muslim, and Pijevlja, close to the Bosnian border, is about 40 percent
Muslim. These Montenegrin towns, like those of the Western Serbian Raska
region, are the key to the illicit arms and narcotrafficking across the
Gorazde Corridor to Bosnia.
Further southeast in Montenegro, Albanian Muslims now make up some 95
percent of the Adriatic town of Ulcinj, only a few kilometers from Albania
itself.
But it is Novi Pazar which is the focus of the Islamist activity and
ideology. It is, in essence, the equivalent of Pristina in Kosovo, or
Sarajevo, in Bosnia, as far as the Islamists are concerned. A new Islamist
university has opened in Novi Pazar, ostensibly a normal college, but led
by an Islamist mufti of little formal education. And, as in Pakistan, the
divide between "14th Century Islamists" and "21st Century Islamists" is
apparent. This modern institution - whose officials proclaim it a normal
educational institution - reveals its character in its symbol: the Wahabbi/Salafi
dawa symbol, an open Q'uran surmounted with a rising sun. The university,
in a renovated former textile factory, is a known center of radical
Islamist thinking. A book fair held there in early October 2003
distributed very radical Islamist literature, specifically advocating
conflict with the West.
The dawa sign indicates that the university is predominantly Saudi-funded,
although some Western funding is known to have been pumped into the
institution, reportedly largely to undermine Serb interests in the region.
It is also significant that the graffiti which dominates Novi Pazar
supports Alija Izetbegovic's SDA party, despite the fact that the SDA is a
Bosnian party and Novi Pazar is in Serbia. But many of the residents call
themselves "Bosniaks," as do the Islamists of Bosnia. The process by which
the Izetbegovic followers are attempting to "legitimize" their claims to
southern Serbia is apparent. [Other parties, such as Stranka za Sandzak,
are evident in Novi Pazar, but they do not match the SDA's control of the
streets.]
And if the escalation of violence erupts on the scale anticipated, the
Serbian Government would be forced to attempt to suppress it. This is the
deliberate intention of the Islamists, to force intervention so that the
Serbs could be, again, blamed for suppressing the "Muslim victims."
[Italic: my emphasis] Effectively, the "no-go" status of Raska (Sandzak)
would create not only a corridor for weapons, combatant, narcotics and
other trafficking, but it would also cut off Serbia from Montenegro, and
deny Serbia its access to the sea. And although some Montenegrin
politicians, supported by some 2.5 percent of the population of Serbia and
Montenegro, have advocated secession from the Union with Serbia, this de
facto separation of the two states by Islamist militant action would -
along with Islamist action in Montenegro's eastern towns, such as Ulcinj -
spell the end of Montenegro as a self-governing state.
The patterns of recent ANA activities in Kosovo and FYR Macedonia already
shows an upsurge of violence, just as the Kosovo-Serbia talks began in
Vienna in October 2003. The injection of Albanian-trained guerrillas,
linked with ANA and the Kosovo Protection Corps, is also significant.
These indicators, plus other intelligence obtained by Defense & Foreign
Affairs, highlight the broader trend which relates directly to the need by
al-Qaida and Iran's clerics to regain their initiative and to keep the US
strategically at arm's-length.
The Olympics, coupled with the forced deterioration of the security
situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina - and the strong likelihood that the
Dayton Accords in Bosnia will be rendered ineffective within, perhaps, a
year - all point to a significant strategic threat emerging to the West in
the Balkans.
Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts believe that the collapse of the
clerical leadership in Iran is the only thing which could remove the core
backing for the al-Qaida groups operating in the Balkans, although
narcotrafficking, supported by criminal elements in Turkey, Albania and
elsewhere and other criminal activities would still sustain some of the
radical activities, as would ongoing funding from some Saudi sources. But
the removal of Iranian support would (and associated Syrian fronts)
significantly reduce the instability in the Balkans.
TOP
SPECTATOR
(UK) How
We Trained Al-Qa'aeda
Brendan
O'Neill** says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to operate abroad
For all the millions of words written about al-Qa'eda since the 9/11
attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked - the
role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s into
the roving Islamic terrorists of today.
TOP
Spectator
(UK), September 15th 2003
Brendan O'Neill** says the Bosnian war taught Islamic terrorists to
operate abroad For all the millions of words written about al-Qa'eda since
the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked
- the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin of the 1980s
into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.
Many writers and reporters have traced al-Qa'eda and other terror groups'
origins back to the Afghan war of 1979-1992, that last gasp of the Cold
War when US-backed mujahedin forces fought against the invading Soviet
army. It is well documented that America played a major role in creating
and sustaining the mujahedin, which included Osama bin Laden's Office of
Services set up to recruit volunteers from overseas. Between 1985 and
1992, US officials estimate that 12,500 foreign fighters were trained in
bomb-making, sabotage and guerrilla warfare tactics in Afghan camps that
the CIA helped to set up.
Yet America's role in backing the mujahedin a second time in the early and
mid-1990s is seldom mentioned - largely because very few people know about
it, and those who do find it prudent to pretend that it never happened.
Following the Russian withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1989 and the collapse
of their puppet regime in 1992, the Afghan mujahedin became less important
to the United States; many Arabs, in the words of the journalist James
Buchan, were left stranded in Afghanistan 'with a taste for fighting but
no cause'. It was not long before some were provided with a new cause.
From 1992 to 1995, the Pentagon assisted with the movement of thousands of
mujahedin and other Islamic elements from Central Asia into Europe, to
fight alongside Bosnian Muslims against the Serbs.
The Bosnia venture appears to have been very important to the rise of
mujahedin forces, to the emergence of today's cross-border Islamic
terrorists who think nothing of moving from state to state in the search
of outlets for their jihadist mission. In moving to Bosnia, Islamic
fighters were transported from the ghettos of Afghanistan and the Middle
East into Europe; from an outdated battleground of the Cold War to the
major world conflict of the day; from being yesterday's men to fighting
alongside the West's favoured side in the clash of the Balkans. If Western
intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, Western intervention in
Bosnia appears to have globalised it.
As part of the Dutch government's inquiry into the Srebrenica massacre of
July 1995, Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University compiled a report
entitled 'Intelligence and the War in Bosnia', published in April 2002. In
it he details the secret alliance between the Pentagon and radical Islamic
groups from the Middle East, and their efforts to assist Bosnia's Muslims.
By 1993, there was a vast amount of weapons- smuggling through Croatia to
the Muslims, organised by 'clandestine agencies' of the USA, Turkey and
Iran, in association with a range of Islamic groups that included Afghan
mujahedin and the pro-Iranian Hezbollah. Arms bought by Iran and Turkey
with the financial backing of Saudi Arabia were airlifted from the Middle
East to Bosnia - airlifts with which, Wiebes points out, the USA was 'very
closely involved'.
The Pentagon's secret alliance with Islamic elements allowed mujahedin
fighters to be 'flown in', though they were initially reserved as shock
troops for particularly hazardous operations against Serb forces.
According to a report in the Los Angeles Times in October 2001, from 1992
as many as 4,000 volunteers from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe,
'known as the mujahedin', arrived in Bosnia to fight with the Muslims.
Richard Holbrooke, America's former chief Balkans peace negotiator, has
said that the Bosnian Muslims 'wouldn't have survived' without the help of
the mujahedin, though he later admitted that the arrival of the mujahedin
was a 'pact with the devil' from which Bosnia is still recovering.
By the end of the 1990s State Department officials were increasingly
worried about the consequences of this pact. Under the terms of the 1995
Dayton peace accord, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband
and leave the Balkans. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns
about the 'hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists' who became Bosnian
citizens after fighting against the Serbs, and who pose a potential terror
threat to Europe and the United States. US officials claimed that one of
bin Laden's top lieutenants had sent operatives to Bosnia, and that during
the 1990s Bosnia had served as a 'staging area and safe haven' for al-Qa'eda
and others. The Clinton administration had discovered that it is one thing
to permit the movement of Islamic groups across territories; it is quite
another to rein them back in again.
Indeed, for all the Clinton officials' concern about Islamic extremists in
the Balkans, they continued to allow the growth and movement of mujahedin
forces in Europe through the 1990s. In the late 1990s, in the run-up to
Clinton's and Blair's Kosovo war of 1999, the USA backed the Kosovo
Liberation Army against Serbia. According to a report in the Jerusalem
Post in 1998, KLA members, like the Bosnian Muslims before them, had been
'provided with financial and military support from Islamic countries', and
had been 'bolstered by hundreds of Iranian fighters or mujahedin ...[some
of whom] were trained in Osama bin Laden's terrorist camps in
Afghanistan'. It seems that, for all its handwringing, the USA just
couldn't break the pact with the devil.
Why is this aspect of the mujahedin's development so often overlooked?
Some sensible stuff has been written about al-Qa'eda and its connections
in recent months, but the Bosnia connection has been left largely
unexplored. In Jason Burke's excellent Al-Qa'eda: Casting a Shadow of
Terror, Bosnia is mentioned only in passing. Kimberley McCloud and Adam
Dolnik of the Monterey Institute of International Studies have written
some incisive commentary calling for rational thinking when assessing al-Qa'eda's
origins and threat - but again, investigation of the Bosnia link is
notable by its absence.
It would appear that when it comes to Bosnia, many in the West have a
moral blind spot. For some commentators, particularly liberal ones,
Western intervention in Bosnia was a Good Thing - except that, apparently,
there was too little of it, offered too late in the conflict. Many
journalists and writers demanded intervention in Bosnia and Western
support for the Muslims. In many ways, this was their war, where they
played an active role in encouraging further intervention to enforce
'peace' among the former Yugoslavia's warring factions. Consequently, they
often overlook the downside to this intervention and its divisive impact
on the Balkans. Western intervention in Bosnia, it would appear, has
become an unquestionably positive thing, something that is beyond
interrogation and debate.
Yet a cool analysis of today's disparate Islamic terror groups, created in
Afghanistan and emboldened by the Bosnian experience, would do much to
shed some light on precisely the dangers of such intervention.
**Brendan O'Neill is assistant editor of spiked-online.
====================================================
Related
text:
JIHAD the Holy War - Lashva valley:
http://public.srce.hr/zatocenici/jihad.htm
Video
fragments showing Alija Izetbegovic's links with Moujaheddin units:
http://public.srce.hr/zatocenici/video_en.htm
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