The Global Jihad Movement In Bosnia - Europe's Ticking Time Bomb

This really is a must read for everyone - for those of us villified for crying foul over President Clinton's support of the Muslims in the Balkans we are now seeing the inevitable and ominous signs of the evil of that decision.

Due to the length of the article, I won't excerpt it all below but I strongly encourage all of you to read the entire post over at MEMRI.

Europe is going to see a literal "Middle East" in its midst as the Muslims of Bosnia and surrounding areas continue their development into a jihad movement and terror force.  You see, it is impossible to keep Muslims within one border, ever.  The strategy has been brilliant - immerse most of western Europe in radical immigration and burgeoning population growth of Muslims so when the top comes off the kettle in the Balkans, those western European countries will be unwilling to shoulder the violence at home if they act to squash the jihad in Bosnia.

The Global Jihad Movement In Bosnia – A Time Bomb In The Heart of Europe


Introduction

This document will review radical Islamist groups that are active in Bosnia and have influence among the Bosnian diaspora in the Balkans and Europe at large.

Jihad During the Civil War in Yugoslavia

In the Communist era, Bosnian Islam existed in a state of ideological isolation. In the 1990s, after the fall of the USSR and with the outbreak of civil war in Yugoslavia, the religious-ideological vacuum was filled by jihadis who came to fight alongside the Bosnians, and by Muslim preachers who came to spread the doctrine of radical Islam. Today, a clear division exists in Bosnia between "old" Muslims – who attempt to preserve the traditional heritage of Bosnian Islam which is multifaceted and incorporates Turkish, Sufi and local customs – and "new" Muslims, who are influenced by Islamism and aspire to impose the Salafi and Wahhabi doctrines in the country.

In the eyes of many Muslims around the world, the Bosnian civil war was a struggle to preserve the physical existence of the Bosnians and their national and cultural heritage, and was also part of a global struggle to purify and unite the Islamic nation. Accordingly, Bosnia soon became a destination for jihadi volunteers who came to join their Bosnian brothers in the war against the Serbs and other "infidels." As a matter of fact, the Bosnian civil war came at a convenient juncture for the Islamic mujahideen. The war against the Russians in Afghanistan had ended in victory, and the mujahideen were looking for new theatres of operation. One of the first leaders of the jihad fighters in Bosnia, the Saudi Abu 'Abd Al-'Aziz Barbaros,[1] saw the war as confirmation of Muhammad's prophecy that "jihad will continue until the Day of Judgment."

Luckily for the mujahideen, the U.S. and several European countries deliberately allowed their influx into Bosnia.[2] Based on their experience in the struggle against the Soviets in Afghanistan, these countries regarded the mujahideen as legitimate allies who could help the Bosnians while also furthering American-European interests. Saudi Arabia likewise supported the mujahideen, whom it saw as a tool for countering the Iranian influence in Bosnia, which had been apparent since the beginning of the war.[3]

The fighters, who began to arrive in Bosnia via Croatia in 1992, were Arabs from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Yemen, as well as Muslims from Africa and Asia. Initially they did not join the Bosnian army but acted independently, using methods different from those of the military. They stormed through minefields, kidnapped Serbian soldiers and killed them while filming the execution, and sowed fear wherever they went. They teamed up with criminal elements that were participating in the fighting and helped transport weapons and fighters to the front.

The mujahideen established their bases in remote mountainous areas in order to avoid drawing attention to themselves. But after successfully taking over some areas, they began to make their presence felt in the cities as well. The Americans estimated their number at 1,200-1,400 fighters, but the Bosnian army estimated that there were around 3,000 mujahideen.

As mentioned, the mujahideen initially acted independently of the Bosnian military forces. But in the course of 1993, following a series of incidents and reports of "war crimes" against the Serbian and Croatian population, they were incorporated into the Bosnian army as a separate unit – the Al-Mujahid detachment – which was established especially for this purpose. Videos and photos circulated by the mujahideen themselves show that they coordinated their actions with a small number of high-ranking Bosnian commanders, who knew they were dealing with people against whom international arrest warrants had been issued in connection with terrorist activities. One of the commanders of the Al-Mujahid detachment, an Algerian named Abu Al-Ma'ali (aka 'Abd Al-Qader Mukhtari, a member of the Algerian jihad organization GIA, dubbed by the Americans "little Osama bin Laden"), stressed that he had received his orders directly from Bosnian leader Alija Izetbegović and from Bosnian chief of staff General Rasim Delić (the latter was convicted of war crimes in 2008 and sentenced to three years in prison).

The ideological and political leader of the mujahideen was Sheikh Anwar Sha'ban, founder of the Islamic Culture Center in Milan, a senior member of the Egyptian Al-Gama'a Al-Islamiyya and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. In 1991 he was granted political asylum in Italy, and with the outbreak of the Bosnian war he became a key player in the logistical apparatus of recruiting, financing and transporting mujahideen to Bosnia and of supplying weapons for the war. He was killed in 1995 at a Croatian checkpoint in Bosnia, along with three top commanders of the Al-Mujahid detachment.[5]

It should be mentioned that many of the volunteers that arrived in Bosnia were operating out of a sense of religious-ideological mission. They believed that the plight of the Bosnian Muslims was a result of their drifting away from their Islamic roots, and that they must therefore be brought back to the pure faith and practices of early Islam, i.e., to the Salafiyya. Though these notions were foreign to Bosnian Muslims, for the Arab Salafis they were a pivotal component of their global struggle. For them, the Bosnia crisis was another means of rallying the Muslims worldwide to awaken and join the global struggle, as happened with the earlier war in Afghanistan and the later one in Iraq.