Recently in Balkans Category

Jihadists yet again play clueless and ignorant Westerners for fools. "Srebrenica was an Inside Job" by Andy Wilcoxson in the Balkan Report, June 15:

In the wake of the July 1995 fall of the Srebrenica enclave, thousands of Muslim soldiers and draft eligible men were killed or went missing. Some were captured and summarily executed by Bosnian-Serb forces, and others died in combat.

Western governments, news media, and the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague have assiduously misled the public about the nature of the massacre; at the same time they have remained conspicuously silent about the role U.N. officials and the Muslim regime in Sarajevo played in orchestrating the massacre.

Srebrenica's Fall Could Have Been Prevented

Yasushi Akashi, who at the time was the special envoy of the U.N. Secretary General in the former Yugoslavia, said the U.N. had "limited capabilities" and could not prevent the fall of Srebrenica. He told the Associated Press, "There was a hundred of U.N. troops versus thousands of Serb troops. What could we have done?" [1]

According to the Dutch battalion of U.N. peacekeepers who were deployed in Srebrenica, quite a bit could have been done. They were authorized to call in air strikes if the enclave was attacked, and when it was attacked they did indeed call in air strikes, but they were blocked by the U.N. until it was too late.

According to the debriefing of Dutch Battalion personnel, "The battalion was counting on massive air support...air support was requested around 10.30 hrs. [on July 11, 1995] Then, despite all of its promises, the U.N. still failed to release air power."

The Dutch Battalion's report states that, "Both the battalion staff and the rest of Dutchbat are convinced that the fall of the enclave can be attributed to a distinct lack of support from the air; the limited close air support did not arrive until the battle was actually over." [2]

Even without the U.N.'s help, Bosnian-Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic's regime could have intervened to stop the fall of the enclave and subsequent massacre, but they chose not to act either.

Sefer Halilovic was the commanding officer of the Army of Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war. He was the most senior officer in Izetbegovic's military and he testified under oath at the UN war crimes Tribunal in The Hague that "the command of the 2nd Corps and the General Staff knew when the operation on Srebrenica started, but from a series of testimonies, the people who were in Srebrenica, both from military and political structures, we can clearly see that they asked for help, both of the command of the 2nd Corps and the command of the General Staff and President Izetbegovic, but that they did not receive that assistance. To answer your question whether they had the power and materiel to help, to come to the help of Srebrenica, I think that they did." [3]

Even though Srebrenica was abandoned by its supposed protectors at the U.N. and by its own government in Sarajevo, the Muslim forces based in Srebrenica should have been able to defend the enclave themselves. Instead, on July 12, 1995, they fled the enclave with the rest of the able-bodied men and abandoned Srebrenica's women, children, and elderly to the mercy of the attacking Bosnian-Serb forces.

Although UN Military Observers (UNMOs) were uncertain of the exact number of Muslim military personnel in Srebrenica, they believed "that at least half had side arms as well as heavy machine guns, light mortars, and anti-tank weapons including rocket propelled grenades and more modern ones." [4]

The Command of the 2nd Corps of the Army of Bosnia Herzegovina (ABiH) prepared a report detailing the operation Srebrenica's men undertook to flee Srebrenica across Bosnian-Serb territory to Tuzla. Their report said, "Numbers were not established when the column was formed, but some estimates put the number in the column at 10,000 to 15,000 people, including approximately 6,000 armed soldiers, not counting soldiers from Zepa." [5]

According to UN Military Observers, at the time of the attack the Bosnian-Serb Army's "Drina Corps was known to be stretched in terms of resources" and the strength of the Bosnian-Serb units surrounding Srebrenica was "1,000 to 3,000 infantry with up to 20 tanks as well as artillery and multiple launch rocket systems." When Srebrenica fell, the UNMOs estimated that the local Bosnian-Serb brigades "probably have around 1,500 infantry in total" and together with reinforcements from units stationed in adjacent areas, the total strength of the Bosnian-Serb forces around Srebrenica was "probably no less than 2,000 infantry." [6]

Even if they hadn't been abandoned by the UN and by their own government, 6,000 armed Muslim soldiers should have been able to fight off 1,000 to 3,000 Serb infantry men.

When the Bosnian-Serbs attacked the enclave, UN Military Observers were stunned that the Muslim army didn't attempt to defend it. In their report they state: "The ABiH had the force ratios to defend the enclave particularly considering its hilly, wooded nature." They went on to write, "The advantages militarily seem to have been with the [Muslim] defenders to at least hold out for longer and have inflicted greater losses on the Bosnian-Serb Army than believed. However, the ABiH leadership seems to have actually acted against their own interests to carryout a successful defense." [7]

Dutch Battalion personnel in Srebrenica were surprised when Muslim troops in the enclave did not avail themselves of the weapons they were offered. On the morning of July 6^th 1995 battalion personnel "Informed the Bosnian government forces that, if the Bosnian-Serb Army crossed the enclave boundary, the arms in the weapon collection point in Srebrenica would be released. Later, when this situation did indeed occur, the Bosnian government forces did not avail themselves of this opportunity." [8]...

There is much more. Read it all.

A few years back, when I posted here at Jihad Watch some material from the intrepid Julia Gorin and others showing that the "moderate Muslims" of the Balkans were a bit more jihad-minded than most of the learned analysts had been saying, the calumnies came thick and fast. Internet libel artists, one of whom -- in a new low even for that clueless dhimmi publication -- now works for Commentary, began a guilt-by-association smear campaign, claiming that to point out the jihadist character of the Muslim forces in Bosnia and Kosovo was tantamount to supporting Milosevic, fascism, genocide, etc. That's like saying that to oppose Communism made one a Nazi, since the Nazis were anti-Communist (except during the years of the Hitler-Stalin Pact), but many were taken in -- and one of the chief charges by those screaming "Fascist sympathizer!" was that the claim that Kosovar jihadists trafficked in Serbian organs was a fabrication.

Well, it wasn't.

Travel has led me to be a bit late with this, but it is worth revisiting: "Richard Holbrooke Dies, and the Next Day his Legacy Comes to Life: Latest 'Serbian Myth' Proves True: Organ Extraction," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, December 15:

I’ll tell ya, Albanians give a whole new meaning to the term ORGANized crime.

It’s an interesting day for Balkans observers when one headline comes in reading “Kosovar Leader says People Lost a Friend in Holbrooke” and the one immediately following it reads “Kosovo PM is head of human organ and arms ring, Council of Europe reports” .

Of course, readers of this blog knew that all along.

Allow me to personally leak the U.S. diplomatic cables from yesterday and today, which I can hear from here: “F************************ck!”

(And not because our officials didn’t know about all this, but because it got out.)

In a follow-up to this story last month — which underscored the involvement of an individual who had been a senior-level official (it wouldn’t be an Albanian racket if it didn’t!) — the UK Guardian was the first to report yesterday:

Two-year inquiry accuses Albanian ‘mafia-like’ crime network of killing Serb prisoners for their kidneys

Kosovo’s prime minister is the head of a “mafia-like” Albanian group responsible for smuggling weapons, drugs and human organs through eastern Europe, according to a Council of Europe inquiry report on organised crime.

Hashim Thaçi is identified as “the boss” of a network that began operating criminal rackets in the run-up to the 1999 Kosovo war, and has held powerful sway over the country’s government since.

The report of the two-year inquiry, which cites FBI and other intelligence sources, has been obtained by the Guardian. It names Thaçi as having over the last decade exerted “violent control” over the heroin trade.

Figures from Thaçi’s inner circle are accused of secretly taking captives across the border into Albania after the war, where a few Serbs are said to have been murdered for their kidneys, which were sold on the black market. [Note: The “a few” clearly doesn’t include the couple hundred who were kidnapped and killed for organs during the war, though not all of the 300 captives at the time were Serbian.]

Legal proceedings began in a Pristina district court today into a case of alleged organ trafficking discovered by police in 2008. That case - in which organs are said to have been taken from impoverished victims at a clinic known as Medicus - is said by the report to be linked to Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) organ harvesting in 2000....

There is much more. Read it all.

Of course, when people point out the activities of jihadists in the Balkans, the Commentary crowd accuses them of supporting the enormities and crimes, real and/or trumped-up, of the local opposition to that jihad. Of course, that accusation neither logically follows nor accords with fact. "Bosnia: Muslims 'wanted to draw NATO into war,'" from AKI, October 7 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

The Hague, 7 Oct. (AKI) - Bosnian Muslims wanted to draw NATO into their country's 1992-1995 war to help them against the Serbs, British general Michael Rose told the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on Thursday.

Serbs deliberately targeted civilians with sniper fire in the capital Sarajevo in order to intimidate them, said Rose, who served as chief of the UN peacekeepers in Bosnia in 1994.

He was testifying at the trial of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, who is conducting his own defence.

But cross-examined by Karadzic, Rose conceded that there had been some cases in which Muslims fired at their own people to blame the Serbs and trigger foreign intervention.

He also said that reports in western media on Serb attacks on eastern town of Gorazde were often exaggerated.

Karadzic is being tried on eleven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment is focusing on the shelling of Sarajevo and a massacre of 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995....

A few years back, if you spoke about jihadists in the Balkans, you were an "Islamophobe" who denied the patent reality that all Muslims in the Balkans were moderate, peaceful lovers of America. If you dared say anything about this, you were probably a secret supporter of Milosevic and genocide to boot, beyond the pale of decent human beings. Just ask the enlightened dhimmis and jihad collaborators at Commentary.

But as always, the truth will out. "Radical Islam on rise in Balkans, raising fears of security threat to Europe," from AP, September 18 (thanks to all who sent this in):

SKOPJE, Macedonia - SKOPJE, Macedonia (AP) -- An online music video praising Osama bin Laden has driven home a troubling new reality: A radical brand of Islam embraced by al-Qaida and the Taliban is gaining a foothold in the Balkans.

"Oh Osama, annihilate the American army. Oh Osama, raise the Muslims' honor," a group of Macedonian men sing in Albanian, in video posted on YouTube last year and picked up by Macedonian media this August. "In September 2001 you conquered a power. We all pray for you."

Although most of Macedonia's ethnic Albanian minority are Muslims, they have generally been secular. But experts are now seeing an increasing radicalization in pockets of the country's Islamic community, particularly after armed groups from the ethnic Albanian minority, which forms a quarter of the population of 2.1 million, fought a brief war against Macedonian government forces in 2001.

It's a trend seen across the Balkans and has raised concerns that the region, which includes new European Union member Bulgaria, could become a breeding ground for terrorists with easy access to Western Europe. Many fear that radicalized European Muslims with EU passports could slip across borders and blend into society.

At the center of the issue is the Wahhabi sect, an austere brand of Islam most prevalent in Saudi Arabia and practiced by bin Laden and the Taliban.

"Wahhabism in Macedonia, the Balkans and in Europe has become more aggressive in the last 10 years," said Jakub Selimovski, head of religious education in Macedonia's Islamic community. He said Wahhabis were establishing a permanent presence in Macedonia where none existed before, and that "they are in Bosnia, here, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia and lately they have appeared in Bulgaria."

It is the first time a high-ranking official in the former Yugoslav republic's Islamic community has agreed to speak openly about the presence and threat of radical Islam....

"It has never yielded any dividends, of course, but repeated failure only prompts the architects of the policy to redouble their efforts."

Indeed. And that goes also for Pakistan, and so many, many other venues.

"ICJ Ruling: Blow to Serbia, Boon to Tadić & Jeremić," by Srdja Trifkovic at the Lord Byron Foundation for Balkan Studies, July 22 (thanks to George):

[...] Aiding and abetting Muslim designs in the Balkans, in the hope that this will earn some credit for the United States in the Islamic world, has been a major motive of American policy in the region since at least 1992. It has never yielded any dividends, of course, but repeated failure only prompts the architects of the policy to redouble their efforts.

It is virtually certain that Washington will be equally supportive of an independent Sanjak that would connect Kosovo with Bosnia, or of any putative Islamistan, from western Macedonia to southern Bulgaria to northern Caucasus. The late Tom Lantos must be smiling approvingly wherever he is now, having called, three years ago, on "Jihadists of all color and hue" to take note of "yet another example that the United States leads the way for the creation of a predominantly Muslim country in the very heart of Europe."

In the region, the ICJ verdict will encourage two distinct but interconnected trends: greater-Albanian aspirations against Macedonia, Montenegro, Greece, and rump-Serbia (Preševo), and pan-Islamic agitation for the completion of the Green Corridor - an Islamic belt anchored in Asia Minor and extending north-westward across the Balkans into the heart of Central Europe.

Beyond the Balkans, it will breed instability in each and every potential or actual separatist hotspot, from Galilee to Kashmir, from the Caucasus to Sinkiang....

In "Ground Zero Mosque: Americans Get a Taste of Serbdom" at Republican Riot, June 13, Julia Gorin exposes some chickens that are coming home to roost in Kosovo, and that may soon be laying eggs at Ground Zero:

Last week I blogged about the radical Islam that, thanks to our interventions in the Balkans, has entrenched itself in Kosovo and is now proceeding according to plan. That is, targeting not the Christians whom we helped them target originally, but the ultimately intended victims: the area’s non-radicalized Muslims. I also mentioned the connection of this trend to the participation of Albanians on the Gaza Flotilla.

The very day that I posted these items, there was a new blog acknowledging the same problem — from none other than the Weekly Standard’s Stephen “Suleyman Ahmad al-Kosovi” Schwartz. Schwartz spent the 1990s making radicalization of the Balkans inevitable by shilling for the “national” interests of the nominal Muslims there — who surely would be immune to the radicals we were infesting the region with!

An excerpt:

From Kosovo to Gaza

BY Stephen Schwartz, June 9, 2010

Kosovo media have reported that an Islamist ideologue from that country, Fuad Ramiqi, was among the participants in the ill-fated attempt to break Israel's naval blockade at Gaza. Ramiqi was joined by three Albanian Muslims from Macedonia — Sami Emini, Jasmin Rexhepi, and Sead Asipi.

Fuad Ramiqi is the representative in Kosovo of the European Muslim Network, a fundamentalist organization…Ramiqi, a soldier in the Yugoslav army who joined the Bosnian army during the 1992-95 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, runs his own Brotherhood franchise, the Muslim Forum of Kosovo (MFK), created in 2006.…

Late in May, local police rounded up five Wahhabis…in the environs of the Kosovo city of Prizren. The Islamist suspects included three Bosnian Muslims…and two Kosovars…According to a Bosnian Islamist web report, the police action was officially described as a response to an assault by the five Wahhabis on a Kosovo government employee who distributed the Bible to his neighbors during his off hours…Wahhabi attacks on individuals, including another Christian, have made headlines across Kosovo throughout the past two years.

Confrontations between Wahhabi intruders and local Muslims have been visible in all the Western Balkan countries, including Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Albania. The presence of three Macedonian Albanians at the scene of the Gaza bloodshed is unsurprising to observers of Islam in the Balkans, since Macedonian Muslims have succumbed almost totally to the influence of Arab money. The pattern of unwanted radical immigration into the Balkans continues. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty last month reported…that Wahhabis have disrupted Islamic religious life in the resort town of Ulcinj, on the Montenegrin coast near the northern border of Albania…Leaders of the official and moderate Islamic religious community in the town complained to local media as well as RFE/RL that Wahhabis had threatened and physically attacked local imams, and invaded administrative meetings…

Mustafa Canka, a Muslim journalist from Ulcinj, blamed Islamic officials for “institutional weakness, idleness and neglect, based on personal interests and selfishness.” He described the local Muslims as afflicted by “disorientation, inadequate response to contemporary problems, and ignorance.”…He said the radicals now have many supporters, but that their influence will not endure. He repeated his criticism of local Muslim religious functionaries, who he said were trained in the local form of Islam and did not recognize the danger when they “opened the door wide” to radical newcomers. […]

In response to this Jewish Muslim and patron saint of Balkans Islam, Jim Jatras questioned why radical Islam only becomes a problem when the local Muslims start suffering from it — but not while we’re helping to put the local non-Muslims under the rule of the Muslims? Indeed, what we were doing to Balkans Christians while furthering the Muslim causes in the region was never of any concern to the shameless al-Kosovi Schwartz.

Jatras added:

What’s amazing is that he can peddle this swill to dumb-ass Americanos who will read it, nod their heads about all this worrying “Islamism” (imported, mind you) without ever asking:

1. How come nobody worries about importing “Islamism”…among non-Muslims — just Muslims?

2. Might this be less of a problem if the West (mainly the US) had not placed Muslims in political power in Bosnia and Kosovo, at the expense of their Christian neighbors?

3. [Weren’t] people like Mr Schwartz, now gravely warning of the “Islamist” danger, enthusiastic advocates of Item 2, above?

Even more richly, in a Tuesday debate about the Ground Zero mosque on “Russia Today,” Stephen Schwartz was listed as a moderate Muslim who has publicly voiced his opposition to the mosque. Opponents of the Ground Zero mosque view it as a sort of flag marking an area of conquest.

Ah. So as usual, it’s good for the Serbs but not good for Americans.

Because if the subject is monuments to conquest — and on sacred ground — please consider the countless statues, monuments and street names dotting the landscape of the conquered Serbian holy land of Kosovo — tributes to the killers of Serb civilians and Albanian “collaborators” who merely sold groceries to Serbs or were married to them. These fallen KLA “heroes” and fathers of a Muslim Albanian Kosovo are memorialized everywhere, along with international politicians who helped make it happen (streets are named after Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bob Dole, Eliot Engel, Wesley Clark, George W. Bush, Madeleine Albright, Tony Blair, and ex-ambassador/CIA operative William Walker). [...]

If the Ground Zero mosque goes ahead, Americans will get the slightest sense of what it feels like to be a Serb living on Serbian land, occupied by one’s tormentors. Some might call it poetic justice. I call it the logical conclusion of Western policies in the Balkans, where the demise of the Free World was sealed by our own hand. What we did to Balkans Christianity when we joined the jihad against it on five fronts was the beginning of the end for all of us.

Indeed. Read it all.

But surely the moderate, peaceful, America-loving Balkan Muslims that we hear so much about will rise up and cast the Saudis and their clients out, won't they? Friend and Ally Update: "Saudis fund Balkan Muslims spreading hate of the West," by Bojan Pancevski in The Sunday Times, March 28 (thanks to Tien):

SAUDI ARABIA is pouring hundreds of millions of pounds into Islamist groups in the Balkans, some of which spread hatred of the West and recruit fighters for jihad in Afghanistan.

According to officials in Macedonia, Islamic fundamentalism threatens to destabilise the Balkans. Strict Wahhabi and Salafi factions funded by Saudi organisations are clashing with traditionally moderate local Muslim communities.

Fundamentalists have financed the construction of scores of mosques and community centres as well as handing some followers up to £225 a month. They are expected not only to grow beards but also to persuade their wives to wear the niqab, or face veil, a custom virtually unknown in the liberal Islamic tradition of the Balkans.

Government sources in traditionally secular Macedonia (official title the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia), said they were monitoring up to 50 Al-Qaeda volunteers recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Classified documents seen by The Sunday Times reveal that Macedonian officials are also investigating a number of Islamic charities, some in Saudi Arabia, which are active throughout the Balkans and are suspected of spreading extremism and laundering money for terrorist organisations.

One of the groups under scrutiny is the International Islamic Relief Organisation from Saudi Arabia, which is on a United Nations blacklist of organisations backing terrorism. It did not respond to inquiries, but has previously denied involvement in terrorist activities, calling such claims "totally unfounded".

According to its website, it works in 32 countries to provide relief to the victims of natural disasters and to carry out humanitarian, health and educational projects.

"Hundreds of millions have been poured into Macedonia alone in the past decade and most of it comes from Saudi Arabia," said a government source. "The Saudis' main export seems to be ideology, not oil."

Sulejman Rexhepi, leader of the Islamic community in Macedonia, said a number of mosques had been forcibly taken over by radical groups. Four in central Skopje are no longer under the control of the official Islamic authorities. New imams claim they have been "spontaneously" installed by the "people".

"Their so-called Wahhabi teachings are completely alien to our traditions and to the essence of Islam, which is a tolerant and inclusive religion," said Rexhepi.

In some mosques believers are being told that Macedonia, which sent 200 soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan, has been tricked into supporting a crusade against Islam spearheaded by Britain and America. Radical clerics have shown footage from Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories to illustrate their claims that the West is waging war on Islam. [...]

Rahman, a 35-year-old cab driver from Skopje, Macedonia's capital, said he had stopped going to his local mosque since it was taken over by extremists. "Following the Haiti earthquake the new imam said God would punish the West for their wars in Afghanistan and Iraq with natural disasters," he said.

Bekir Halimi, an imam trained in Syria, runs Bamiresia, an Islamic charity that has been investigated for alleged terrorist links and money laundering. Police raided its offices but failed to find any evidence of terrorist links.

"We are fully entitled to receive funding from both governmental and non-governmental organisations from Saudi Arabia," said Halimi, who refuses to name the sources of his funding but rejects any suggestion of criminal activity....

Last month, Bosnian security forces raided a village strongly influenced by Salafi extremists and found a weapons cache.

In raids elsewhere rifles, bombs and rocket-propelled grenades have been uncovered....

War is Deceit: "The report quoted Bosnia-Herzegovina Ministry of Security sources as saying a large number of Wahhabis moved to the region under the pretext of helping to build a mosque."

There may be a mosque involved in the plans, but that doesn't rule out far more, after the fashion of locales such as "Islamberg." But if any law enforcement action should ensue, the resulting propaganda will fixate on the claim of a defiled mosque. "Large number of Wahhabis' streaming into Bosnia-Herzegovina," from World Tribune via GeoStrategy Direct, January 19 (thanks to Don):

Muslim terrorists in the Balkans have established a terrorist training camp in northeast Bosnia-Herzegovina, according to a report in the newspaper Dnevni List.

The Mostar-based Croatian newspaper reported Jan. 6, quoting security sources that the special training camp is located near Gornja Moaca in the northeastern part of the country.

U.S. intelligence agencies have been closely monitoring Muslims in the Balkans amid concerns that fundamentalist Muslims have been recruiting there.

Intelligence reports continued to surface that Al Qaida and other Islamist groups have been aggressively recruiting Europeans and others who do not appear to be from the Middle East or South Asia as part of plans to thwart western counterterrorism security measures.

The report stated that residents near Gornja Maoca, a village between Tuzla and Brcko, are concerned because "a large number of the Wahhabis have arrived in the area over the last few months."

The report quoted Bosnia-Herzegovina Ministry of Security sources as saying a large number of Wahhabis moved to the region under the pretext of helping to build a mosque....

Remember, this was within the context of the good war, in which the United States showed the umma that we are not anti-Muslim, and sided with modern, moderate Muslims who love the U.S. dearly to this day. "Bosnia: Muslim ex-commander arrested for war crimes," from AKI, November 4 (thanks to C. Cantoni):

Sarajevo, 4 Nov. (AKI) - A former Bosnian Muslim army deputy commander, Nihad Bojadzic, was arrested in Sarajevo on Wednesday on suspicion of having killed over 20 Croat civilians and prisoners of war during the 1993 Muslim-Croat war, the state prosecutor's office said. Bojadzic was due to be handed over to Bosnia's state war crimes court.

Bojadzic, 47, is suspected of committing the mass killings while serving as deputy commander of the Bosnian Muslim-led army special platoon 'Zulfikar' when it overran the village of Trusina near the southern town of Konjic in April 1993.

Prosecution spokesman Boris Grubesic told media that 19 of the victims were Croat civilians, three were Croatian soldiers who had surrendered themselves, while four people, including two children, were wounded.

Four more Muslims were arrested on the same charges in September and are in detention pending trial....

Carl Bildt throws his hat into the ring for Dhimmi of the Year. From KUNA, with thanks to Sparta:

SARAJEVO, March 12 (KUNA) -- UN Commissioner to the Balkans Carl Bildt on Saturday called for recognizing Islam as part of the European culture, asserting that Muslims in Balkan formed a unique and positive factor in European affairs.

In a statement on the Balkan Convention for Development and Cooperation, which took place in Macedonia, Bildt told KUNA that Muslims in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia and Kosovo, proved that they are characterized with tolerance and cooperation with other societies, noting that they were victims of the others, not visa versa.

Here's some evidence of that wonderful tolerance. You can read more about this in my book Onward Muslim Soldiers. Here is a letter from Bosnia, written in 1860 by the acting British Consul in Sarajevo, James Zohrab:

The hatred of the Christians toward the Bosniak Mussulmans is intense. During a period of nearly 300 years they were subjected to much oppression and cruelty. For them no other law but the caprice of their masters existed....Oppression cannot now be carried on as openly as formerly, but it must not be supposed that, because the Government employés do not generally appear as the oppressors, the Christians are well treated and protected. (Quoted in Bat Ye'or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity Under Islam, p. 423.)

The KUNA article continues:

Bildt, who is the former UN commissioner for Bosnia and former Sweden's prime minister, said the war in Bosnia proved that Muslims were victims and did not practice revenge based upon religion or ethnicity, which reinforces the fundamentals of their religious culture that prevents such practices.

But what happened to the churches?

The official expressed dissatisfaction at the thoughts promoting doubts toward European Muslims or the thoughts that Islam is an abnormal religion in Europe, stressing that cultural and religious pluralisms are the main components of all European societies and there is no single European country occupied by the followers of only one religion or ethnicity.

This is beside the point. The question is not ethnicity or even solely religion. It is about the ultimate goals of Muslims in Europe vis-a-vis Sharia.

Fascinating information from "Al Qaeda in the Balkans: Who in the Balkans wants to destroy America?," by Miroljub Jevtic, Ph.D. in Serbiana, with thanks to Fraser:

The news that a group of mujahadeens headed for Osama bin Laden's jihad were captured on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan would be nothing new, had the Pakistani authorities not announced that one of them was an Albanian citizen. Clearly, Clinton's cooperation with Balkan Islamists in the 1990s is only now turning like a boomerang against the US.

While the official affront is that Bosnian Muslims and Albanians are American allies in the war on terror, the US forces are tied up in Bosnia monitoring and chasing the jihadists who have made Bosnia and Albanian inhabited areas in the Balkans their domicile. Overtly then, Balkan Muslims are supporting the West, while covertly they may seek destruction of it.

The American strategists believed that by caving into territorial demands Balkan Muslims are making, the newly established Islamic entities will, because of the American influence and endorsement of it, be a model to the Islamic world, showing the right political path. The Christians of Bosnia, for example, are increasingly being centralized under Islamic authority; Christian Croats are spliced within Muslim federation and dominated by them while the Serbian entity is under tremendous political pressure and may disappear. Meanwhile, Bosnian Muslims want to offer Muslim Turks a dual citizenship because they consider these centuries old occupiers of Bosnia their liberators.

In Macedonia, likewise, the real masters of the situation are the Muslims Albanians who have placed the Christian Slavs there into virtual political ghettos.

Instead of showing themselves content with this, Balkan Muslims are not only setting out towards Islamizing their territories, but also towards actions aimed at America's destruction.

Tradition has it that the most extreme Islamists among Slavic Muslims in the Balkans are from the Raska district, i.e. from Tutin, Novi Pazar and Rozaj so one is to expect extremist Imams to come from this region. Yet, the Islamic extremism and open attacks on the US that is spreading among the Balkan Muslims is preached by an Imam, who is not a native of Novi Pazar, nor of Sarajevo, but is an ethnic Albanian from village of Orahovac in Kosovo. This Imam, Bugari, is a hodja of the White mosque in Vratnik, known as the most Muslim part of Sarajevo.

Ironically, the fiercest fighter of jihad has not turned up from the middle of Bosnia with its numerous Islamic top ranking religious schools, but from Albanian dominated Kosovo, busy teaching the Bosnians in the midst of Sarajevo what real Islam is.

Says Bugari: "The speech of the sword is more sincere than that of the letter. Its blade lies between seriousness and jest. The whiteness of the sword, not the blackness of the letters, for its back knows no rust of doubt'.

Continues he: "The status of Muslims cannot be improved by papers. This doesn't work. It is well known what can improve the status of Muslims worldwide. How was it improved at first? By taking Islam to all places. By convincing people that only God Allah exists."

Bugari concludes with a call to violence: "By purifying the heart of all idols, and then, if necessary, by the jihad. And jihad was necessary and will be necessary! Don't think that we can survive in any other way, except by these three things: faith, economics and responding to Allah when the time for jihad comes".

"[T]aking Islam to all places", including the US is the obligation of every Muslim, preaches Bugari.

This Albanian Muslim Imam is also an avid anti-Semite. Says Bugari: "Americans rule the world, and so do the Jews. With the Americans' help, they have again outsmarted the entire world, especially the economy. We consume American-Jewish products every day. We drink their 'Coca-Cola' and their 'Pepsi', we use their banks, buy their weapons, their 'Nikes' and various other products. Imagine how many 'cokes' a billion and a half Muslims drink every day. According to some data, 700 million 'Coca-Colas' every day, and you know well that 10 percent of every 'Coca-Cola' goes to Israel".

The Jew-hating Albanian Burguri attributes Islamic inability to legitimize their land conquests in the Balkans on the damnation Allah bestowed on Balkan Muslims because they relied on Americans. "We have indeed asked them for help during the war, and we have started to improve." says Burguri. "The Serbs are running away as they can, and we say: Come, Americans, and lend us a hand. This is why Allah is now punishing us."

Finally Burguri sides with Al-Qaeda by accusing America for holding 6 Algerian Bosnians in Guantanamo. "Now they will come and chase the Algerian group to Cuba, then they will chase Imad El-Mis'ri, then they will chase Fiusanin .."

Among those who were placed under surveillance by the authorities and
arrested in Bosnia because of their make-believe humanitarian work that was a cover-up for the terrorist logistic base, an ethnic Albanian was again identified. His name is Durguti. Once more we have someone coming from the town of Orahovac in Kosovo, where Bugari is also from. This may suggest that Orahovac Albanians in Kosovo may be the leading cadre of terrorist recruits, European by race, recruited by al-Qaeda in order to be trained and easily blend in the western societies to conduct terrorist killings....

Read it all.