NATO Says Disrupts Terrorist Structure in Bosnia

FILE--Unidentified Muslims march in Sarajevo in this March 2000 file photo during a protest organized by local Islamic youth organizations to demand the world community put a stop to Russia's offensive in Chechnya. The banner reads "Allah is the only one, and Muhammad is his envoy on earth." As the United States widens its war against Osama bin Laden, signs that a radical fringe is trying to stir up Bosnia, one of the largest Muslim areas in Europe, are being taken seriously. (AP Photo/Hidajet Delic)

Former Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic speaks at a press conference in Sarajevo, Friday, Oct. 12, 2001. Izetbegovic urged U.S. President George W. Bush and other world leaders on Friday to address the motives for terrorism even as the United States leads a campaign against it.(AP Photo/Sava Radovanovic)

A Bosnia blowback? That's nothing compared what we can expect from KLA blowback.

You said it sister!

That first picture should put an end to the idea we are fighting "ragheads".

And why are the muslims in the Balkans always refered to as "Ethnic"? They look about as Slavic as they come.

In the Balkans, for non-Bulgar Slavs, ethnicity is the same as religion: Orthodox Christian = Serb; Roman Catholic = Croat; Muslim = Bosniac.

The terrorists in Kosovo are called "ethnic Albanians" because they are (supposedly according to their Western backers) not from Albania, but are not Slavic.

A Bosnia blowback? That's nothing compared what we can expect from KLA blowback.

KOSOVO: Prisoners of Fear (The US Military in Kosovo)

That first picture should put an end to the idea we are fighting "ragheads".

You really should read my links. Here are some again.

The Balkan Branches of the Terror Network "in search of blond Moslems" & Bin Laden’s Invisible Network

we suspected they were involved in support for terrorist activities,'' he said, referring to the arrest last month of a Jordanian, an Egyptian and two Bosnians.

Whoaaa, wait a second here, I thought Bosnian muslims practiced a "mild, tolerant" form of Islam, and had no connection whatsoever with bin Laden?

Yeah. Two people determine the characteristics of an entire nation.

Guess anybody associated with Arkan is screwed for the rest of history - too bad.

Arkan never targeted Americans like these Bosnian Muslims.

Irrelevant - just like the fact that the majority of Bosnian Muslims aren't nor never were radical Islamists.

If you want to live by the sword, you're going to die by the sword.

The majority of Bosnian Muslims DID NOT ELECT Izebegovic's fundamentalist loving Muslims into power either. And it is relevant. The Serbs were not in bed with groups that carried out 9/11 like the Bosnian Muslims were (or the minority of Muslims that run their emirite).

And Bosnia's Muslims weren't in bed with them either, until the Bosnian Serbs killed them in their hundreds of thousands and we turned our collective backs on them - point being, it was an arrangement arrived at by the Bosnian government while in extremis and is no longer the case today, whatever you wish to believe.

"Bosnian Emriate" - cute illustration of your erroneous thinking, Pericles.

The erroneous thinking is Bosnia's former President Alija Izebegovic's who dreamed of leading a Balkan's emirate and like Hitler, (who his people helped) wrote a book about it.

If you want to live by the sword, you're going to die by the sword.

Just remember you said that, oh great supporter of "humanitarian" bombing.

And Bosnia's Muslims weren't in bed with them either, until the Bosnian Serbs killed them in their hundreds of thousands and we turned our collective backs on them...

And the Bosnian Serbs weren't killing anybody until "Mr. Islamic Manifesto" illegally seceded from the country and began persecuting them. Sorry my silver tongued friend, but this whole moral indignancy doesn't wash. Is it the Serbs fault Izetbegovic reneged on the Lisbon treaty he signed? As soon as he got the wink & nod from Uncle Sam, he jumped back into the war again. The "peace loving victims" intentionally continued the war when they thought they were in a position of strength, but cry "no fair" when they're losing.

What was it you said - those who live by the sword, die by the sword.

Yeah. Two people determine the characteristics of an entire nation.

Of course not, when speaking of Muslims. But when speaking about Serbs, you are completely ok with smashing the entire country because of the alleged crimes of Milosevic, Arkan, etc.

How typically hypocritical.

Which you nor anybody else on this site has ever read from what I've seen.

Stick to what you know or can verify yourself - we've got, what, one individual out of the last 5 arrested in Bosnia who's Al Quaeda associated, and four who are Algerian opportunists, then 4 more from a couple weeks back, 2 of whom were released as they were security guards, and 2 of whom remain in custody but are not home grown Bosnians.

Quite the Bosnian connection you've put together here.

Maybe you can start to differentiate between the Mujahadeen, who were creatures of Tehran and Shiite, vs. Bin Laden operatives who are Wahabbis. Show a little sophistication.

Yeah, Arkan was Izetbegovic's fault. Get real, Bob.

Lisbon was just a carving of Bosnia into a Croat and Serb Sudetenlands. The 'people in the middle' were destined for the middle of the Neretva River as they were unfit to live in either the R.S. or Herceg-Bosna, and it wasn't the Muslims who started planning the expulsion of the Serbs 6 months prior to the start of outright hostilities in April of '92 (Yeah, that's right, Bosnian Serbs were planning their little country-wide Kristallnacht 5 months before Lisbon was renounced by Izetbegovic.) and when did the Bosnians ever pursue the war from a position of strength? They got their asses handed to them on a continual basis by the BSA, as they had almost no heavy weaponry or armor, and the only thing they had an advantage in was infantry, because all the sensible Serbs were deserting and dodging the draft.

Lasty, screw Milosevic and Arkan, had the Serbs actually followed someone like Panic, or be represented by someone with the sensibilities of Natasha Kandic they wouldn't have been in the world of hurt they found themselves in - as a nation they made their choices, and they're living with the consequences. I'm supportive of people who hold the same values that I do, wheresoever they may live, and members of Serbia's government, from 1987 to 2000 don't fit that description. That the constituents of the bastards in charge didn't have the sense or the will to overthrow them sooner reflects poorly on them, and got them bombed in 1999. I still have hope for Kostunica and Djindic, and we'll see where they take Serbia and the Federation.

For a bit of balance, from Time Europe

Friends in Need

Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo reject extremism and support the U.S.-led antiterror campaign

BY ANDREW PURVIS

The afternoon after terrorists attacked the U.S. last month, more than 10,000 Kosovo Albanians turned out on the bustling main streets of their capital Pristina to hold a candlelight vigil for the American dead. Kindergarten children, recalling their own wartime trauma, posted a packet of drawings to their counterparts in U.S. schools. One depicts a glowering figure treading on a flag that is partAmerican, part Albanian. In shaky letters, another reads, "We love America."

Sympathy for the victims of the mass murder in New York, Washington and
Pennsylvania has, of course, been widespread. But Kosovars are
predominantly Muslim, and though much of the Islamic world is at least
divided in its response to the attacks — mingling condemnation of the tactics
with criticism of U.S. policy — the reaction in Pristina has been undiluted.
Elsewhere in the Balkans, Muslims have been vociferous in their support for
the U.S.-led war on terrorism, never mind that fundamentalists and even
mujahedin have been struggling for years to gain a foothold in the region. The
reasoning is simple: in a region that prizes nationalism above religious identity
the U.S. intervened forcefully, albeit belatedly, on the side of the Muslim
population. Now that the fight against terrorism has shifted to the top of foreign
policy agendas, that Balkan experience is emerging as a prime example of how
to get things right.
After the terror attacks, Interior Minister Muhamed Besic of the Muslim-Croat
half of Bosnia announced that "trustworthy intelligence sources" had revealed
that 70 extremists from Afghanistan might be headed to the region in search of
refuge. "You may think you are going to find heaven in Bosnia," he told his
would-be guests, "[But] what in fact awaits you is hell." Muslims in
southeastern Europe have for some time recognized where their interests lie.
This is due partly to a secular tradition dating back to Ottoman times, and
partly to a concerted U.S.-led policy of engagement with moderate Muslims,
which began with the nato bombing of Serb positions outside Sarajevo in
1995.
Things looked very different a decade ago. For three years during the Bosnian
war, Iran was the only country providing material support to Bosnian Muslims
in their fight against the Serbs. The U.S. and others agreed to look the other
way. Top aides to Bosnian Muslim President Alija Izetbegovic "were in the
pocket of Iranian intelligence services," recalls Ivo Daalder, coordinator of
Balkan policy at the U.S. National Security Council in 1995-96 and now a
senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. Hundreds of
mujahedin were invited to fight, and terrorist training camps, including one
discovered by nato troops in 1995, were set up in the mountains of eastern
Bosnia. In neighboring Albania, Saudi and Kuwaiti money bankrolled the
construction of mosques and, according to some reports, Osama bin Laden
recruited volunteers. Fears that Western ambivalence was producing a
"cauldron of extremism" became a preoccupation at the highest levels of the
U.S. government, says Daalder.
The turning point came with the Dayton peace accords, signed in 1995, in
which the U.S. insisted that Izetbegovic expel "foreign combatant forces"
within 30 days. "We told the Bosnian government to choose between us and
them," says Daalder, "and they chose us because we had more money and we
had the troops."
Three years later, as the Kosovo conflict intensified, mujahedin offered their
services to the Kosovo Liberation Army in Albania. But the k.l.a. rebuffed
their advances, according to Veton Surroi, publisher of the Pristina daily Koha
Ditore and a key figure in Kosovo’s liberation struggle. "There was a refusal
from the beginning to have anything to do with the Islamics," he says. More
recently in Macedonia, ethnic Albanian rebels also spurned offers from
mujahedin volunteers for fear of alienating the West.
Even so, at least some extremists are still believed to be operating in the
region, taking advantage of notoriously porous borders and weak governments
to avoid detection. Since Sept. 11, authorities in Albania and Bosnia, relying
on Western intelligence, have arrested a handful of foreign nationals suspected
of terrorist leanings. Last week in the Bosnian town of Zenica, a mujahedin
stronghold during the war, police arrested a man holding both Yemeni and
Algerian identity papers whose telephone logs showed that he had spoken
with a senior aide of Osama bin Laden about procuring foreign passports.
With strikes against Afghanistan under way, the international community would
do well to recall the lessons of the Balkans: targeted military action must be
accompanied by engagement with moderate political forces. As a senior
Bosnian official put it: "This is not a war between civilizations. It is a war
between civilization and terrorists — and we are on the side of civilization."