Posted on 11/01/2001 3:53:17 AM PST by Stand Watch Listen
The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.
For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.
These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw light on these actions.
They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of "humanitarian" agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank and from bin Laden's so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in 1994.
Narco-Jihad Culture
The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today's post-war Balkans.
These drug rings in turn form part of an estimated $8 billion a year Taliban annual income from global drug trafficking, predominantly in heroin. According to Mr. Bodansky, the terrorism expert, bin Laden administers much of that trade through Russian mafia groups for a commission of 10% to 15% -- or around $1 billion annually.
The settling of Afghan-trained mujahideen in the Balkans began around 1992, when recruits were brought into Bosnia by the ruling Islamic party of Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, as well as Italy, Germany and Turkey. They were all given journalists' credentials to avoid explicit detection by the West. Others were married immediately to Bosnian Muslim women and incorporated into regular army ranks.
Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around 6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.
The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993, according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time. The reports add that bin Laden then visited a terrorist camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994. The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport records have been lost. Around that time, bin Laden directed al Qaeda "senior commanders" to incorporate the Balkans into an complete southeastern approach to Europe, an area stretching from the Caucasus to Italy. Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon reputed to be the second in command of the entire al Qaeda network, headed up this southeastern frontline.
By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo. Elaborate command-and-control centers were further established in Croatia, and Tetovo, Macedonia as well as around Sofia, Bulgaria, according to the U.S. Congress's task force on terrorism. In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Not even stalwart NATO ally Turkey escaped the network. Areas beyond government control were also visited by bin Laden in 1996 according to London-based Jane's Intelligence Review. The government has been battling two terrorist groups: Jund al Islam, whose assassinated Syrian leader was one of bin Laden's closets confidantes, and the Kurdish PKK, whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, merged his group's activities with those of Iran's Hezbollah in 1998.
Furthermore, as revealed in the February 2001 East Africa bombing trial testimony of Jamal al Fadl -- an al Qaeda operative in charge of weapons development in Sudan -- uranium used in "dirty bombs" that release lethal radioactive material, had been tested in 1994 by members of the Sudan-based Islamic National Front in the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern Cyprus. Cyprus, both its north and southern sides, has also become a center for offshore money laundering by Arab banks fronting al Qaeda funds into the Balkans. The CIA puts al Qaeda's specific Balkan-directed funds -- those tied to the "humanitarian" agencies and local banks and not explicitly counting the significant drug profits added to that -- at around $500 million to $700 million between 1992 and 1998.
So where was the U.S. in all this? It was not until 1995 that the Clinton administration was forced to start pursuing the Islamist network in the Balkans. Not quite a month after the Dayton accords had been signed in November 1995, an influx of Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent tacit approval of the administration, in violation of U.N. sanctions. While publicly pressing Bosnian President Alia Izebegovic to purge remaining Islamist elements, the administration was loath to confront Sarajevo and Tehran over their presence.
Instead, Islamist groups went quietly underground as the windfall of weapons landed in their hands. They later joined up with a new Islamist center in Sofia established as a kind of rear guard by the al Zawahiri. Following the Zagreb arrest and extradition of renowned Egyptian militant Faud Qassim, an al Zawahiri favorite, the Sofia-based militants planned the deployment in Bosnia of terrorists capable of planning and leading possible major terrorist strikes against U.S. and SFOR facilities, according to al Fadl's testimony to the House Task Force on Terrorism.
Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.
Controversial Relationship
By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.
Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.
With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans. Today, in general, the Balkans are left without the money, political resources, or institutional strength to fight a war on terrorism. And that, for the Balkan Islamists, is a Godsend.
Hooplite, this is rhetorical question, isn't it?
You really have guts to support Bin Laden after 911 ! if you provide your real name, you could be listed as Bin Laden chearleader.
The Muslims also helped the Croats ethnically cleanse the Serbs. They admit it:
http://news.beograd.com/english/articles_and_opinion/misc/david.html
Six years ago, at the height of the conflict in Bosnia, Ms. Decter asked me to translate testimonies given by a group of Bosnian Muslim prisoners that were brought to Boston (Allston) the previous day. They gave a harrowing account about being kept for months in a dark underground military tunnel in Hercegovina. The detainees described the torture and killings they witnessed, and talked about their transfer to the island of Badia and their consequent release to the USA. When they asked me to translate, the American Jewish Congress was not aware that the prisoners were not held in Serbian but in a Croatian detention camp. When did the Serbs put them in prison? the AJC representative repeatedly asked me. They were in a Croatian camp, I kept repeating. They were tortured by the Croats not Serbs. This came to them as a complete surprise.To make the situation more ironic, the former Muslim prisoners described in detail how at the beginning of the conflict, they, together with the Croatians from the area, ethnically cleansed and killed all the Serbs from the town of Chaplina and the surrounding villages. They showed no remorse for their actions, but told me the story embittered by the betrayal of their former Croatian allies. The American Jewish Congress office in Boston never released the tapes, that are probably still in their possession. Since the tapes did not show the Serbs as being solely responsible for the civil war in Bosnia, Sheila Decter must have decided that it is better not to ruin her imaginary account of the conflict in Bosnia.
Maybe the majority of Muslims don’t want anything to do with Sharia, but there are plenty of radical Islamists among the homegrown Muslims. Alija is a Fundamentalist and so is his party.
http://www.senate.gov/~rpc/releases/1997/iran.htm
3. The Radical Islamic Character of the Sarajevo Regime (page 8): Underlying the Clinton Administration's misguided green light policy is a complete misreading of its main beneficiary, the Bosnian Muslim government of Alija Izetbegovic. Rather than being the tolerant, multiethnic democratic government it pretends to be, there is clear evidence that the ruling circle of Izetbegovic's party, the Party of Democratic Action (SDA), has long been guided by the principles of radical Islam. This Islamist orientation is illustrated by profiles of three important officials, including President Izetbegovic himself; the progressive Islamization of the Bosnian army, including creation of native Bosnian mujahedin units; credible claims that major atrocities against civilians in Sarajevo were staged for propaganda purposes by operatives of the Izetbegovic government; and suppression of enemies, both non-Muslim and Muslim.
Yes, this is true, UP TO A POINT. Some interdiction has occured in Iran, and yes, Iran is no friend of the Taliban. BUT, the "majority" does not now travel through CIS, but rather still makes it across Iran into Turkey, then on through Kosovo and on to Europe. Lesson: Don't ride any Iranian busses!
Best regards, wonders
I see your point. Literally, maybe not, but in influence, definitely.
...the fighting in the Balkans was never about religion as much as it was a simple power struggle cloaked under a religious vestment.
Is that so uncommon?
Serbia has Muslims living peacefully inside its' borders, but they never posed a political threat to Milosevic, ergo, they were allowed to stay - not so the non-Serbs living in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo who threatened Milosevic's power.
I don't know about Croatia or Bosnia, but the separatists in Kosovo were at it long before Milo had any power to threaten.
Can you name anything of note directly attributable to Al Quaeda in the Balkans? What attacks have they made against American interests there?
The main thrust of the thesis here is that Al Quaeda is supported by or at least tacitly approved by the Bosnian government and is working hand in hand with the KLA, and that's simply not the case. One could make a more convincing argument that the US government was supporting the IRA based on the same methods and evidences being tried here - and making real world decisions based on misinformation makes for bad policy.
There were and still are radical Islamists in Bosnia, but let me reiterate the point - they weren't ordering the destruction of Orthodox or Catholic churches, or the institution of a system of forced expulsion and concentration camps wherein Croats and Serbs could be seperated from their valuables and lives, with the added 'benefit' that those taking part would gain incentive to never live with their former neighbors again. Take this example from 1994 and compare it to events in Banja Luka - quite a contrast.
Good pull on the RPC brief - maybe someone will read it and figure out that Al Quaeda wasn't driving events nor the potential big benificiary in Bosnia. Sadly, it doesn't address the fact that the reason the Iranians were sending arms was that nobody in the West had the balls to call the UN sanctions regime what it was - an institutionalization of the BSA's advantage in weapons, and do anything about it until 1995 when the nature of the war and the combatants could no longer be denied.
DOJ Report (although inconclusive as to our issue).
And...
Ten years later many Western criminal intelligence agencies still regard the Balkan route as the most active trafficking conduit. Despite this sustained widespread belief, several factors strongly suggest that illicit opiates from Afghanistan (and Pakistan) are increasingly being routed through what is referred to as the 'northern' route.(source)
Feh, still inconclusive, however. Had enough for tonight. = )
This is a joke, right?
About time, huh.
The whatever, is to keep NATO leaders butts out of the courts, if Milosevic is not found guilty, NATO will have a lot to answer for......... therefore they will find him guilty, no matter what.
We know that, as misinformation was all we got from officials and media during the attack on Serbia.
"...his organization hasn't been responsible for anything of note in the Balkans..." -- Hoplite
"The bin Ladin network supports terrorists in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, Tajikistan, Somalia, Yemen, and now Kosovo."
-- Released by the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, August 21, 1998 (United States State Department - clinton administration)
What ever the Bin Laden network did in Bosnia and Kosovo was severe enough to be included in the list of seven. I guess you consider that to be nothing of note! I suggest you take your problem up with the U.S. State Department.
U.S. State Department document
p.s. Good try at spin, but the fact that I am not privy to State Department sources does not make their clasification invalid.
Turkey Police Arrest Five on Al Qaeda Link
Turkey's Islamist press fumes at US for 'crusade' against Islam
Time is on my side, yes it is. Time, time, time is on my side, yes it is.
US Attacks Put Spotlight on Bosnia Muslim Community ``Osama is our brother''
Report: Bin Laden linked to Albania
The Balkan Branches of the Terror Network "in search of blond Moslems"
Swiss Extradite Suspected Extremist "recruited volunteers to fight in Bosnia"
"For example, one such group about which details have come to light is the Third World Relief Agency (TWRA), a Sudan-based, phoney humanitarian organization which has been a major link in the arms pipeline to Bosnia. ["How Bosnia's Muslims Dodged Arms Embargo: Relief Agency Brokered Aid From Nations, Radical Groups," Washington Post, 9/22/96; see also "Saudis Funded Weapons For Bosnia, Official Says: $300 Million Program Had U.S. 'Stealth Cooperation'," Washington Post, 2/2/96] TWRA is believed to be connected with such fixtures of the Islamic terror network as Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman (the convicted mastermind behind the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and Osama Binladen, a wealthy Saudi emigre believed to bankroll numerous militant groups. [WP, 9/22/96] (Sheik Rahman, a native of Egypt, is currently in prison in the United States; letter bombs addressed to targets in Washington and London, apparently from Alexandria, Egypt, are believed connected with his case. Binladen was a resident in Khartoum, Sudan, until last year; he is now believed to be in Afghanistan, "where he has issued statements calling for attacks on U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf." [WP, 9/22/96])"
Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base
The wealth of evidence pointed out by others makes one wonder if you have turned from being an apologist for clinton to an apologist for Usama Bin Laden.
Serbs were tortured and raped and killed by the thousands, and put in hundreds of concentration camps, which they list. However, as they are not the PC correct people, crimes against them are ignored.
The Ristovics were mother and father, teachers, and two little boys. Two little boys murdered to scare the Serbs out of Sarajevo. Sick, cruel, but not a war crime because they were Serbs. But now they are dead and the Muslims are probably a-praisin' Allah.
Murder of the Ristovic Family
Since we are talking about murders, I would like to ask you about the Ristovic family case. When in the summer of 1992 the Ristovic family was murdered, the first news stated that Murat Sabanovic was the murderer...
I remember that well. It was said that Murat Sabanovic murdered the Ristovic family with a group of men from Sandzak. That was even officially stated by the then Minister of Defense, Jerko Doko. Such information was then given to the then Chief of Staff, Sefer Halilovic, and he sent the Military Police to arrest me. Dzevad Topic Topa came to arrest me and I told him that I did not kill the Ristovics and that I would not surrender my weapons. The Ristovics were murdered by the Police. That was a political murder. The goal was to demonstrate to the Serbs that there was no life for them in Sarajevo. Then Topa called Sefer from my office to ask for further orders. Since in the meantime Sefer obtained the true information, he ordered them to get back to their base. That was lucky because I certainly would not have surrendered alive. After that, the Police started spreading rumors that the murderer, Murat Sabanovic, was on the run. I think that Bakir Alispahic was involved in all that. I went to the Police and asked: are you looking for me? They said: "No..." I asked: "Why, then, are you saying that I am on the run?" They said:"Let it be." The formulation that I was on the run in practice meant that any police officer could have shot at me on the street. Therefore, I would be gone, a dead mouth does not speak, and the real murderers of the Ristovics would get away. Fortunately, the truth was soon found out. Five men who killed the Ristovics were arrested, and one of them was a body guard of Bakir Alispahic. Three of them were declared insane, and two were allowed to escape. Therefore, the murderers again got away.
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/may00/hed94.shtml
Serb Victims Exhumed In Bosnian War Crimes Trial
KONJIC, May 7, 2000 -- (Reuters) Bosnia's judicial authorities on Saturday exhumed the remains of four members of a Bosnian Serb family as part of the war crimes trial of three Moslem policemen charged with killing them.
The policemen are on trial before the cantonal court in the southern town of Mostar, charged with killing the Golubovic family in July 1992, early in the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
They were charged with the murder of the family in January 1999, but the prosecutor of Bosnia's Moslem-Croat federation got permission from the Hague-based war crimes tribunal to change the charges to those of war crimes killings.
The Golubovic parents, respected high school teachers in Konjic, about 40 km (25 miles) south of Sarajevo, and their two sons of five and seven were taken from their house at night and killed. The three policemen are also from Konjic.
Djordjo Unkovic, 75, the children's grandfather, said he had not learnt where the four were buried until last year, when he placed a monument at the site. "I only want to know the truth" about their murder, he said.
On Saturday the remains of four bodies were removed from the grave for formal identification.
Dusko Tomic, who is representing the Golubovic family at the trial, said the crime was committed for the purpose of ethnically cleansing Konjic. "Politics is responsible for the crime," he told Reuters.
After the murders, not a single Bosnian Serb or Croat wished to remain in Konjic, he said. "They understood the murders as a message that all of them must leave Konjic if they wanted to stay alive," Tomic said.
The three policemen were detained in 1994 after an investigation into the murder of the Golubovic family, but were declared mentally incompetent and released soon afterwards.
Reuf Zaimovic, the president of the multi-ethnic court council that is running the first war crimes trial in Mostar, said he hoped that the trial, which has been monitored by UN war crimes tribunal representatives, would end in June.
"We only want justice to be done and criminals to be punished," said Risto Golubovic, a brother of the murdered Djuro Golubovic.
Formerly multi-ethnic, Bosnia was divided by the 1995 Dayton peace treaty that ended the three-year war there into two entities, a Moslem-Croat federation and a Serb republic, loosely linked by a central government.
The trial continues.
So your point is that Bin Laden's network is in the Balkans, but that he's not pulling any strings there and are not part of attacks on Americans? Would you say that of all Bin Laden terrorist cells, including that which has just attacked the U.S.?
No more so than believing any Bin Laden cell is a reliable source of information.
I second that - I checked with a buddy who works for EUROPOL. As for the Iranians, they have made a big effort but they are not doing very well. I vaguely remeber that the US was helping them with equipment (NVGs etc) to help govern their borders more efficiently.
VRN
The level of evidence is extremely low, that is why they keep on changing the rules and the standards. Remember, it was in response to the propaganda of the Serbs carrying out 'systematic rape' that rape was for the first time legally regarded as a war crime. It was ok to rape women before (especially if they were white or near anything important), but it changed to get those nazi Serbs.
The plan is really to keep Milosevic in Jail for the rest of his natural life as the judicial processes practiced in the Hauge are extremely elastic with indictment and charges added and removed at will, and each having to be investigated over a long period. The HRW report that accidentally conincided with the new and proposed hauge indictments boasted of using 'new statictical methods' to collate evidence in a comprehensive way that has never been done before: i.e. massage the figures to suit the conclusion.
I wonder what would have happened if the forces in Bosnia had not interdicted the planned attacks on SFOR bases and troops...
I wonder if CdP will bring up the Germand and Bulgarian designed Potkovka (Horseshoe) plan of the JA to ethnically cleanse the Albanians out of Kosovo. She might do if she becomes desperate.
VRN
Hasan Cengic's Conspiratorial Logic
WE ARE LIVING THE "ISLAMIC DECLARATION"
Fifth Corps is Responsible for War Between Bosniaks
VRN
VRN
VRN
As low as the evidence against Bin Laden and his involvement? Many things are very clear. Such as the position of Milosevic when the war crimes were comitted, his responsibility, his power over the army, his financing and supporting the various paramilitary units, the same units responsible for numerous crimes against civilians.
Let's put it this way, if it is apparent that Bin Laden was behind the WTC terrorist attacks, then it's even more obvious what Milosevic was behind. His links to Karadzic, Mladic, Martic are very well known. And the money he sent them to finance their "activities".
The Brits are quite happy to let off old Nazis that live in their country etc. etc.
VRN
Law of the Jugle then. Boy, have we come a long way.
VRN
VRN
Actually, I was talking about the links, financing and support that Milosevic himself had admitted. I am not sure you read the interview where he was explaining where all that federal money went. It apparently went into good hands, so that Serbia's national interests were being protected, according to him. And Mladic, Karadzic, Martic were those protectors. Law of the jungle? Just plain evidence Voronin, simple facts.
VRN
Especially thanks to posting the article regarding the brutal Mujhadeen attacks on the moderate Muslims led by Fikret Abdic.
Humanitarian Warriors such as Hoplite supported the Mujhadeen V Corps campaign of pillage and destruction against the legally elected President of Bosnia Fikret Abdic. Hoplite continues to refuse to address the simple question Why didn't the Humanitarian Warriors support the moderate Fikret Adbic instead of the fundamentalist Iztbegovic ?
.............why ?
VRN
VRN
And you can't say that the Hague court isn't doing their job. After all they have brought people of various nationalities before the court. You see it as a banana court, a media circus, I may not see it that way. Which doesn't mean that your criticism and objections aren't justified, but without this kind of court, there would be many people free with lot's of blood on their hands. Some still are. And don't say that they would be helf responsible at home, cause in many cases they clearly wouldn't be. The Croat generals that were eventually brought to Hague (with a lot of opposition in Croatia) would probably never be before a court, had there not been Hague and demands by the west towards Croatia to extradite them. Just as in Serbia. At least that's how I see it.
Impartial and fair justice has to be seen to be done (not just told), which is not the case with the Hauge - if it were, then the nationalist of all those communities would have a much lower level of support. The fact that the Hauge does nothing to counter this and mirrors the colonial administration approach that is taken by persons such as Wolfgang Petritsch which means that it will never be accepted as impartial (and that's without even mentioning who payed/s, supplies, researches the whole Hauge thing). If the major powers refuse to accept a World Court, then why should any of the parties believe the treatises that the Hauge is impartial? Looks like a question of who yields the biggest stick, no?
VRN
Had there been real justice, and intent to bring all sort of war criminals before a court, those of the last decade and those dating back to WW2, and post WW2, then you should have had both people like Arafat, Gadafi, Sharon, high UN officials that were in Bosnia, certain NATO people, some American politicians, some Slovenian (Mitja Ribicic, for post WW2 outerjudicial executions) and a bunch of people from all over the world with blood on their hands. All that is very true. And I am afraid that justice will never get all of them, even though they would deserve it.
awesome, line of thinking re: Nasir Oric-Iztbegovic chain of command.......
Then you would also agree that Kfor commanders bear a measure of responsibility for the four fold increase in murder rate since they took control ?
And where the hell is Naser Oric? He should be cleaning his laundry together with Slobo.
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