Jihadists change terror stereotype; Iran and al-Qaeda have been recruiting and training brigades of blond, blue-eyed jihadists with Bosnian military experience to wage war against the West

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 10, 2002 | by Scott L. Wheeler

The accords called for foreign Muslim fighters to leave Bosnia but, according to an April 1996 TFTUW report, "the majority of mujahideen scheduled to have left Bosnia ... still serve in the ranks of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The mujahideen are divided among three clusters of operational units and a fourth cluster of units directly engaged in terrorism and other covert special operations." The report says that the special military units are "built around a hard core of foreign mujahideen while the rest of the troops are Bosnian Islamist."

According to Bodansky, there are many blond, blue-eyed Slavs among these Bosnian Islamists, and there were "thousands trained by the mujahideen and a lot of them eventually joined the international brigades" Bodansky tells INSIGHT that it is important to remember, "We are not just dealing with Arabs." So far, he says, the Bosnian Islamists have been in support positions such as couriers, but "it's only a matter of time" before they show up in other areas of the terrorist web: "They have been training in suicide missions."

Ongoing training is provided by mujahideen fighters who were obligated to leave Bosnia under the Dayton Accords and who, according to Bodansky, are activating the Bosnian Islamists by reminding them that without jihadist support, "There would not have been a Muslim Bosnia.... We helped you, you come and fight for us."

According to terrorism experts with whom INSIGHT spoke, the mujahideen fighters who went to Bosnia to help the Muslims already have been linked to attempted terrorist attacks in the United States. The Washington Post reported March 11, 2000, that the Bosnian village of Bocinja Donja, which has "60 to 100 former mujahideen Islamic guerrillas from the Middle East," came under scrutiny when "U.S. law-enforcement authorities discovered that a handful of the men who have visited or lived in this area were associated with a suspected terrorist plot to bomb targets in the United States on New Year's Day" of that year.

Bodansky says that U.S. policy under the Clinton administration lacked forcefulness in dealing with the mujahideen problem in Bosnia by not forcing them out of the country as called for by the Dayton Accords. That allowed the Islamist military brigades to maintain bases in Bosnia and continue to recruit and train Muslim forces for terrorist attacks. Bodansky's most recent book, The High Cost of Peace, is a stinging criticism of what he describes as failed U.S. policy in the Middle East. Some liberals were critical of the TFTUW because of its methods and analysis. Now, according to one senior government intelligence analyst, "The taskforce reports have been vindicated over and over again."