Recently in Bosnia Category

"Radio Vatikan. The Voice of the Pope and the World Church," the German-language division of Vatican Radio, is not as politically correct as the Pope himself -- who became very quiet after apologizing for quoting the Byzantine Emperor Manuel II Paleologos, who said in 1391: "Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."

Yesterday, February 2, 2012, there were, for example, two articles about the ethnic cleansing of Christians in Africa: "Nigeria: The Muslims could do more (to stop Boko Haram)" and "Egypt: Extremists attack Copts".

I have translated the text introducing a radio programme on "Bosnia: The Ethnic Cleansing of Catholics" (from German):

Until the early nineties there lived 820,000 Christians in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Since the Balkan War broke out, their number has shrunk by nearly half, to 460,000 people. The exodus of Catholic Croats from Bosnia-Herzegovina does not stop: because of countless everyday problems, constant tension and a growing Islamic radicalism.

The language is notably forceful here as it all but orders people to exercise their "choice" not to celebrate. How long will it be a choice? The Islamic Community tells people not just to avoid celebrating, but to "turn off the lights early and let everyone see you're boycotting everything happening on that night." It is imperative to be seen and judged as being in compliance, and not doing something Allah hates.

"Bosnia's Muslims urged to 'boycott New Year'," from B92, December 28:

SARAJEVO -- The Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina has called on Muslims in that country to boycott the upcoming New Year celebrations.

By taking part, said the organization, they would "violate Allah's boundaries, and do something their master hates and despises".

The Islamic Community statement on Wednesday quoted from a book by Almir Dumica, entitled, "Pearls of the Sunnah in the Mosaic of Time":

"On that night, turn off the lights early and let everyone see you're boycotting everything happening on that night. Do not fear anyone's objections. Don't you have a right to choose? Do not say, 'how can I do that, I will change nothing, most people do it... I will be declared a black sheep'."

Muslims are taught that by this behavior they can change a lot, and firstly demonstrate to themselves that the love for their master is much stronger and greater than the fear of objections made by people, said the quote.

What if you want to stay up and watch Matlock?

"On that night go to bed on time, happy and satisfied that the Allah gave you many benefits that you do not consider often, and which you would become aware of only if you lost them," the Islamic Community release further said.

"Think about your health and family... the peace and security you enjoy. Then, each night of the year will be much more dear to you than the New Year's night is to any of those who eagerly await it all year, while a blessed feeling of triumph will overcome your soul and body, because piousness and reason will have won over passions and ugly customs," the message concluded....

Pushing the trumped-up "Islamophobia" narrative in Bosnia. If Dodik is correct that Cerić is trying to move Bosnia toward Sharia, here again we have expended American blood and treasure for another Sharia state -- like Iraq and Afghanistan, both of which have U.S.-backed Constitutions that enshrine Sharia as the highest law.

"'Bosnia moving toward Sharia law,'" from Večernje novosti via B92, December 20 (thanks to George):

BANJA LUKA -- RS President Milorad Dodik says the leader of Bosnia's Muslims, Mufti Mustafa Cerić, was "the main political figure among Bosniaks (Muslims)".

The president of the Serb Republic (RS) deduced that this was "leading toward a creation of a Sharia state".

"I have nothing against Bosniaks and Islam, I respect freedom of religion, but it is the desire of the Islamic Community in Bosnia-Herzegovina to direct political processes in the country that is completely unacceptable," he said.

The president added that this community was attacking the RS and him personally, "to which I have a duty to react, as president and politician".

This was Dodik's response to announcements that came from the Islamic Community (IZ) in Bosnia-Herzegovina, that they would send a proposal to embassies of Islamic countries to declare him persona non-grata for his alleged activity to "spread Islamophobia".

"The IZ statement is a political pamphlet of the lowest kind. It's proof that Mustafa Cerić is the leading political figure among Bosniaks, which is one step toward creating a Sharia state," Dodik concluded.

However, last year he visited a Sharia village that was raided for weapons. Imagine: an entire village full of Misunderstanders of Islam, and nary a True, Peaceful Muslim around to set them straight. "Bosnia U.S. embassy attacker says he acted alone: lawyer," from Reuters, October 30:

(Reuters) - A gunman who opened fire with an assault rifle on the U.S. embassy in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo Friday said he had acted alone, his lawyer said on Sunday.

Lawyer Senad Dupovac said that 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic said he had no accomplices but he expressed concern for the defendant's mental state.

"He is confused and I do not think he is aware of his actions and I believe that he would need psychiatric expertise," said Dupovac, after meeting his client, who was wounded by a police sharpshooter before the arrest.

I expect that he was all too aware of them.

Bosnia's state prosecutor Dubravko Campara said he would ask the state court Monday to order a detention term for Jasarevic on suspicion of terrorism....

Serbian police arrested and later released 17 people at three locations in the southwest of the country, including in the mainly Muslim Novi Pazar, the hometown of the gunman.

Friday's attack in broad daylight paralysed central Sarajevo and saw shopkeepers scrambling for cover as the gunman paced up and down firing on the embassy before a police sharpshooter wounded him and he was arrested....

Bosnian police over the weekend raided the northern village of Gornja Maoca, as well as several other locations, and questioned a number of people suspected of having links with Jasarevic. His wife was also questioned.

Security officials said Jasarevic, who was convicted of robbery in Austria in 2005 and deported to Serbia, had entered Bosnia Friday morning.

He visited a group of followers of the puritanical Wahhabi interpretation of Islam in Gornja Maoca earlier in the year, Bosnian security officials said.

The village was also raided last year when police arrested several men and seized a large cache of weapons.

The villagers there live in accordance with Islamic sharia law. Many young Bosnian Muslims, particularly from rural areas, have in recent years adhered to Wahhabism under the influence of foreign fighters, most of whom left Bosnia after the 1992-95 war.

An update on this story. "Terrorist attack outside U.S. Embassy in Bosnia," by Sabina Niksic for the Associated Press, October 28:

Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina - A man armed with hand grenades and an automatic weapon opened fire outside the U.S. Embassy in Bosnia Friday in what authorities called a terrorist attack. A policeman and the gunman were wounded, but the embassy said none of its employees was hurt.

Sarajevo Mayor Alija Behmen said the gunman "got off a tram with a Kalashnikov and started shooting at the American Embassy." Witnesses told Bosnian television that the man urged pedestrians to move away, saying he was targeting only the embassy.

Wearing the holy highwaters:

He wore a beard and was dressed in an outfit with short pants that reveal his ankles — typical for followers of the conservative Wahhabi branch of Islam.

One police officer guarding the building was wounded before police surrounded the gunman. After a 30-minute standoff, the sound of a single shot echoed and AP video showed the shooter slump to the ground.

Police arrested the wounded man — who one of Bosnia’s three presidents said is a foreigner — and took him away in an ambulance as pedestrians cowered behind buildings and vehicles. Hospital spokeswoman Biljana Jandric told The Associated Press the gunman had a minor wound to his leg, and would spend the night at the hospital before being released into police custody.

State Prosecutor Dubravko Campara identified the shooter as Mevlid Jasarevic, from Novi Pazar, the administrative capital of the southern Serbian region of Sandzak, who was tried in Austria for robbery in 2005.

Campara said Jasarevic had crossed the Serbian border into Bosnia Friday morning. He said Jasarevic had two hand grenades with him when he was arrested and is also currently under investigation by Serbian police, but did not detail why.

Serbian Interior Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed his identity and said he is 23 years old. Bosnian TV said Jasarevic is a Wahhabi follower.

He was a member, according to this story, of a Tiny Minority of Extremists in Bosnia -- in this case, the Wahhabis. "Islamist shot dead after firing at US embassy in Sarajevo," from Agence France-Presse, October 28:

A gunman opened fire at the US embassy in Sarajevo Friday before being taken out by a sniper, Bosnian radio reported, identifying the attacker as a radical Islamist.

"A man, member of the Wahhabi (branch of Islam), aged around 40, shot at the US embassy with a Kalashnikov rifle," Bosnian national radio said.

Embassy spokeswoman Sanja Pejcinovic would not go into details.

"We can confirm there has been an incident in front of the embassy. The building is closed and we are waiting for the police to seal off the area," she told AFP.

Bosnia is home to a small minority of followers of Wahhabism, a strict and ultra-conservative brand of Islam which is dominant in Saudi Arabia.

During Bosnia's 1992-1995 war between its Croats, Muslims and Serbs, a large number of volunteers from Muslim nations flocked to the Balkan country to take up arms.

Many of these Muslim fighters stayed on after the conflict and obtained Bosnian citizenship. Some in the mostly moderate Bosnian Muslim community have converted to the more radical Islam preached by several ex-mujahedeen.

Reuters photo.

UPDATE: More recent reports state the gunman is wounded, but alive.

It is worth noting that a guilty verdict for Geert Wilders would likely have had an eventual chilling effect on the ability to produce content such as this in the Netherlands as well. It might result in hurt feelings, after all. "Commemorate Srebrenica with these Rare and Important Videos," by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, July 14:

As the world bows its collective head this week in shame to mark the 16th anniversary of not rescuing Muslim soldiers from the Serbs they were slaughtering, the Netherlands’ largest internet news portal, NRC, was audacious enough to challenge the official version of the sacred, unquestionable, meticulously constructed lie known as the “Srebrenica Genocide,” heralding a significant change in attitude toward the nature of the incident. As Stefan Karganovic of the Srebrenica Historical Project put it, “The expression of such heretical views would have been unthinkable in Holland [or anywhere else] a short time ago.[...]

The preceding lays the foundation for much of what is in the 2010 film “Srebrenica: A Town Betrayed,” which follows interviews and revelations by Bosnian-Muslim investigative journalist Mirsad Fazlic, who doesn’t appreciate the fictitious, black-and-white version of the Bosnian war that is perpetuated by the international community and by Bosnian officialdom, which still honors wartime president Alija Izetbegovic as a national hero when Fazlic and others know he was the opposite. The film really begins only at the four-minute mark, and its main shortcoming is the ubiquitous, stubborn marriage to the notion that the number “7-8,000 killed” is anything other than a concoction that the world has been working backwards for 16 years to make seem real.

Among numerous of the film’s jaw-dropping revelations — including the fact that the humanitarian convoys which the Serbs were allowing to pass to Srebrenica were being intercepted by Bosnian “hero” Naser Oric and sold on the black market (and including Srebrenica police chief Hakija Mehovic describing the meeting at which the Bosnian leadership floated a proposal by Bill Clinton that 5,000 Srebrenica residents be sacrificed) — are the following:

1. “Mladic had four tanks and 400 men. In reserve he also had 1600 armed locals. But Mladic didn’t trust them since they lacked discipline and would use every opportunity to revenge [Srebrenica warlord] Oric’s attacks on the villages. The Serbs were outgunned by NATO’s fighter aircraft, 450 Dutch peacekeepers and Oric’s 5,500 soldiers.” (The first fact is important as a contradistinction to the Mladic that has been presented to the public, and there is more in the film in that regard. The latter factoids are important to illustrate that Srebrenica was set up for the Serbs to overpower, with the Muslim side “winning by losing,” as Nebojsa Malic calls it.)

2. In reference to the 50 Serbian villages that were being attacked by the Muslims of Srebrenica: “Especially disturbing was a religious dimension to the killings. Men were castrated in an anti-Christian gesture of circumcision. Pregnant women were disemboweled with cuts in the form of a cross. Some people were crucified, nails driven through their hands.”

3. “In April 1993 military chiefs from both sides — General Sefer Halilovic and General Ratko Mladic — signed a UN plan for Srebrenica and the other cities to become demilitarized zones. The Muslims promised on their side to stop the aggression against the Serbs around the enclaves and against the 15,000 Serbs still living in the capital Sarajevo.” (The Muslim side naturally didn’t hold to their end of the bargain, but what makes the excerpt exceptional is the word “aggression” for once attributed to the correct side of the Bosnian war.)

4. “Islam will win, since Bosnia is an Islamic country.” (Graffiti on the walls of a destroyed building in Kravica, where on January 7, 1993 — Orthodox Christmas — Muslims destroyed the town, killing 49 men, women, and children.) [...]

... If one can’t spare an hour to watch “A Town Betrayed,” below is a seven-minute primer on the subject matter: [...]

Next is a short and shocking video clip titled “Hiding Genocide; Before the Srebrenica Massacre: Jihad In the Balkans”

More videos:

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.

"We have no right to be naive." Indeed. "Bosnian Serb leader calls for referendum on scrapping country's top war crimes court," by Irena Knezevic for The Associated Press, April 13 (thanks to George):

The Bosnian Serb leader has accused the international community of helping Muslim Bosniaks create an Islamic state and claims the country's top war crimes court is an illegal institution that demonizes his people.

Milorad Dodik told the Bosnian Serb Parliament Wednesday that the State Court had so far convicted ten times more Serbs than any other ethnicity, and called on lawmakers to approve a referendum for those living in the Bosnian Serb part of the country that will decide whether they should continue to answer to the court....

Dodik claimed Wednesday that the court continues to present Serbs as the sole guilty party in the war, and is thus justifying international efforts to take away Serb autonomy. He accused the international community of helping Muslim Bosniaks create an Islamic state.

"We have no right to be naive," he told the Bosnian Serb Parliament. "The creation of an Islamic state is a project... Unfortunately some of the people representing the international community who sit in Sarajevo and elsewhere in the world for their own reasons support the realization of that Bosniak goal."...

Setting the Record Straight on Bosnia
by Andy Wilcoxson

In a recent article published by the American Thinker, Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi attacked Jihad Watch, and he attacked Serbian-American scholar Srdja Trifkovic’s “attempts to portray the Bosnian War as a case of Serbs being the victims of supposed jihadist aggression.” According to Al-Tamimi, “the Bosnian War overwhelmingly consisted of Serb aggression” with “aims of a Greater Serbia.”

With that article, Mr. Al-Tamimi has exposed himself as a shill for the Islamist cause in Bosnia. Alija Izetbegovic, the war-time President of the Bosnian-Muslims, and his Defense Minister, Hasan Cengic, were both outspoken jihadists.

Izetbegovic is the author of a book entitled the Islamic Declaration, which he wrote in 1970 and published in 1990. In his book, Izetbegovic advocates Sharia law, asserting that “the Islamic movement should and can, take over political power as soon as it is morally and numerically so strong that it can not only overturn the existing non-Islamic power, but also build up a new Islamic one.”

Izetbegovic brands Western feminists “a depraved element of the female sex” and says, “There can be neither peace nor coexistence between the Islamic faith and non-Islamic social and political institutions.” Izetbegovic asserted that “means of mass influence -- the press, radio, television and film -- should be in the hands of people whose Islamic, moral, and intellectual authority is indisputable.” And he advocated banning “casinos, night clubs, dance halls and all other forms of entertainment incompatible with the moral tenets of Islam.”

In 1983, Izetbegovic and Cengic were tried and convicted by the Yugoslav authorities for attempting to incite an Islamist uprising similar to the Islamic Revolution that gripped Iran in 1979.

According to the 1983 trial judgment, “Alija Izetbegovic asserted that Islam must be a state system or social system in all countries where the population is Muslim, and that the necessary conditions should be created to turn Bosnia and Herzegovina into an Islamic republic with Islamic laws.”

The judgment also quoted Izetbegovic as saying “Our imams should be armed and they should interpret and apply Islam following the example of Iran’s Shiite imams.” The judgment quoted Cengic saying, “The goal of the Islamic revolution in our country is the creation of a unified Islamic state comprising the area of Bosnia-Herzegovina, Sandzak, and Kosovo.”

The judgment went on to quote Cengic’s view that “Jihad should be pursued to its final outcome in order to exterminate the enemy and the infidels.” He said, “We should not wait for a challenge or a provocation. Muslims must invent a challenge. They must be the ones who produce the challenge, and the goal will then come by itself.”

Cengic believed that “The Muslims should be prepared for self-sacrifice to achieve their goals.” The judgment quoted him admonishing Muslims, “do not take an infidel as your friend. Do not be friends with your fathers or your brothers if they favor the absence of our faith.” He said, “A Muslim woman should not nurse the children of a non-Muslim woman. A Muslim cannot receive the blood of or give blood to a non-believer. Muslims must be superior to all others, and every effort should be made to create an environment in which everyone will be of pure Muslim blood.”

Of the five judge panel that convicted Izetbegovic and Cengic, three (including the presiding judge) were Muslims, one was a Croat, and one was a Serb. Of the 63 witnesses who testified in the trial, 58 were Muslims.

During the war, Izetbegovic and Cengic enlisted the help of jihadists from around the world. Renate Flottau of the German newspaper Der Spiegel and Eve-Ann Prentice of the London Times and Guardian, both were eyewitnesses to the presence of Osama bin Laden at Alija Izetbegovic’s offices in Sarajevo in 1993 and 1994.

According to the 9/11 Commission Report, terror mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, along with three of the hijackers (Nawaf al Hazmi, Salem al Hazmi, and Khalid al Mihdhar), all fought in the Bosnian jihad.

In 1996, just after the Bosnian war ended, the U.S. House Committee on International Relations launched an investigation into America’s role in Iranian arms transfers to Croatia and Bosnia. Their investigation found that the Iranian government had provided a full two-thirds of the Bosnian-Muslims’ military hardware.

According to their report, “Iran ordered senior members of its Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (“IRGC”), the elite force used to advance militant Islam, to travel to Bosnia to survey the military needs of the government. IRGC trainers taught the Muslims how to use anti-tank missiles and helped with troop logistics and weapons factories. The IRGC also incorporated religious indoctrination into military training. Iran used this leverage to urge Hizballah to send foreign fighters to the region as members of the Mujahideen. The effort was successful, and a force of thousands drawn from several pro-Iranian groups and other Islamic Opposition movements assembled in Bosnia.”

In spite of Mr. Al-Tamimi’s denials, the Bosnian-Serbs were the target of jihadist aggression. The Muslims had been setting-up paramilitary groups in Bosnia long before the war started in 1992.

In an interview with Izetbegovic’s party newspaper, Halid Cengic (Hasan’s father and a party official) boasted that “already on August 1, 1990, we had a platoon armed with automatic weapons, a machine-gun and a mortar. They all had camouflage uniforms and they pledged their allegiance in the Ustikolina mosque, with their hands on the Koran.”

In 1991, a year before the war started; Izetbegovic’s party officially established the Green Berets and the Patriotic League paramilitary organizations. Just prior to the outbreak of war in the spring of 1992, the Green Berets were reported to have had more than 80,000 Muslims under arms in Bosnia.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who is responsible for the Bosnian war. Was it the outspoken jihadists who were jailed in the 1980s for trying to incite an Islamic revolution, and who spent the years leading-up to the war establishing Islamist paramilitary groups, or was it Radovan Karadzic, a doctor, who spent the years leading up to the war practicing psychiatry and writing mediocre poetry? This isn’t a difficult puzzle to figure out.

The “Greater Serbia” conspiracy alleged by Mr. Al-Tamimi is precisely the kind of Muslim propaganda that he dismisses as “imaginary” in his article. Before the war even started, the Serbs, together with the Croats and the Muslims, agreed to the Cutileiro Plan -- named for Portugese diplomat Jose Cutileiro -- who brokered the deal under the auspices of the European Community. Under the terms of the Cutileiro Plan, Bosnia was to be a sovereign nation separate from Serbia, thereby eliminating any possibility for a “Greater Serbia”.

It was the Muslims, not the Serbs, who reneged on their commitment to the Cutileiro Plan and opted for war instead of negotiations. After the war ended, Cutileiro wrote a letter to the Economist magazine stating that: “After several rounds of talks our ‘principles for future constitutional arrangements for Bosnia and Hercegovina’ were agreed by all three parties (Muslim, Serb and Croat) in Sarajevo on March 18th 1992 as the basis for future negotiations. These continued, maps and all until the summer, when the Muslims reneged on the agreement. Had they not done so, the Bosnian question might have been settled earlier, with less loss of (mainly Muslim) life and land.”

Even if the Bosnian-Serbs had secretly been fighting for a “Greater Serbia,” they would have needed the cooperation of Slobodan Milosevic and the Serbian government in Belgrade -- which was not forthcoming.

In 1991, when the Serbs in the Krajina region of Croatia tried to secede from Croatia and join Serbia, they were rejected by Milosevic. In May of 1992, barely a month after the war began in Bosnia, the Yugoslav government, which by then had been reduced to Serbia and Montenegro, passed a resolution stating unequivocally that it had no territorial pretensions towards Bosnia-Herzegovina.

In addition to that, Slobodan Milosevic publicly denied, on numerous occasions, that he wanted any kind of a greater Serbia. Greater Serbia was impossible from the start. It was written off by the Serbian leadership before the Bosnian war even started. Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic were faced with a choice in Bosnia. Their choice was to let their people be subjugated by the likes of Izetbegovic and Cengic, or to stand and fight. Anyone in their position would have opted to fight.

There may be room to criticize the tactics they used during the war, but it is extremely hypocritical for the Muslims to point the finger at them and complain about the humanitarian consequences of the Bosnian war when they’re the ones who started it.

Al-Tamimi’s criticism of Srdja Trifkovic is entirely disingenuous. He has no right to accuse others of intolerance, when he makes lying accusations about the Bosnian war that certainly appear as though they were crafted to incite racial hatred against Serbs.

[i] John R. Schindler, Unholy Terror, Zenith Press, 2007, Pg. 123-124. See also: Testimony of Eve Ann Prentice, Slobodan Milosevic trial transcript, ICTY, February 3, 2006; Pg. 47949

[ii] The 9/11 Commission Report, Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, Official Government ed.; Pg. 58, 147, 155.

[iii] US House of Representatives Committee on International Relations, Final Report of the Select Subcommittee to Investigate the United States Role in Iranian Arms Transfers to Croatia and Bosnia (“The Iranian Green Light Subcommittee”); October 10 & 25, 1996; Pg. 543-545

[iv] ICTY Case No. IT-97-24-T, Judgement: Prosecutor v. Milomir Stakic, July 31, 2003; ¶ 33

[v] “Bosnia Teetering on the Brink of a Bloodbath,” Evening Standard (London), March 4, 1992

[vi] Jose Cutileiro, The Economist, December 9-15, 1995, Pg. 6

[vii] Testimony of Milan Babic, Slobodan Milosevic Trial Transcript, ICTY, pg. 13115-13116. See also: “Other Report on Serbian Assembly Session SPO deputies walk out of Serbian Assembly over failure to debate Krajina issue,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts, June 1, 1991, Source: Yugoslav News Agency in Serbo-Croat 1527 gmt 29 May 91

[viii] “Yugoslav Presidency Denies FRY Involved in Bosnia-Hercegovina Conflict,” BBC Summary of World Broadcasts; May 27, 1992, Source: Tanjug in Serbo-Croat 1526 gmt 25 May 92

Did these guys and Daniel Patrick Boyd call each other? No, we periodically see accused jihadists who find themselves in court refusing to recognize the court's authority to try them. After all, the fundamental aim of jihad is to impose Islamic law, which would do away with non-Islamic legal institutions.

Fortunately, as much as they refuse to acknowledge laws other than Sharia, they may yet find the prison walls the courts put them behind to be quite real. An update on this story. "Bosnia Muslim bombing suspects defy court," by Maja Zuvela for Reuters, February 9 (thanks to Twostellas):

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Four of six Bosnian Muslims indicted on terrorism charges in a 2010 deadly bomb attack refused to enter pleas on Wednesday in a show of defiance of the Bosnian state court.

Prosecutors in December charged Haris Causevic, Adnan Haracic and Naser Palislamovic with carrying out the attack on a police station in the central town of Bugojno which killed one policeman and injured several others.

The men aimed to intimidate the population, coerce the police and destabilize the country, the indictment said. The remaining three men were accused of helping the prime suspects after the attack.

Causevic and Haracic pleaded "not guilty" and Judge Tatjana Kosovic entered not-guilty pleas for others after they said they did not recognize the court.

Palislamovic failed to turn up at the hearing.

"My client does not want to show up and I was told that he does not recognize this court," his lawyer Izet Bazdarevic said.

One of the suspects, Haris Spago, went further after the judge refused to allow him to give a prepared 10 minute speech and said: "You may enter the plea instead of me but I will not sign any document that has the insignia of this court."

Most of the suspects sported long beards and caps typical of followers of the radical Sunni Muslim Wahhabi sect, which has taken root in Bosnia under the influence of Muslim foreigners who fought alongside Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 war.

The indictment said the three main suspects planned to attack the police station "in a premeditated attempt to kill several individuals and cause material damage, knowing that many policemen would be in the building to provide security for a religious event on June 27."

The bombing was one of the most serious security incidents in Bosnia since the war ended. Police have recently stepped up efforts to curb small but vocal Wahhabi groups.

Wait a minute. An Iranian "martyr" in Bosnia? But...but...for years we were told that all the Bosnian Muslims were moderates who loved America and just wanted self-determination! How did an "Islamic martyr" get in there? "'Documentary film about the Life of the First Iranian Martyr in Bosnia,'" by Julia Gorin at Republican Riot, December 18:

But Bosnia wasn’t a jihad, right? And all those charges of ‘mujahedin’ presence were just vicious serbianationalist propaganda, right? Right?

In fact, Bosnia and Kosovo weren’t jihads only in the eyes of the West. The Muslim world — including former Pakistan president Musharraf in his book — knows better.

As Liz, who sent me this, wrote:

Everyone shed a tear for this dear, sweet Iranian who “went to Bosnia as 'diplomat of Iran', but was 'martyred' by those ‘racist Serbians.’”

Documentary Film about the Life of the First Iranian Martyr in Bosnia

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) - According to the reporter of Navideshahed; the documentary film about the life of "Martyr Rasoul Heydari" has been made and produced by "Revayat - e Fat'h" Institution. This documentary film will be broadcast from Channel One of TV today (Saturday, November 6th 2010) and tomorrow (Sunday, November 7th, 2010).

It should be mentioned that "Martyr Heydari" was born in Malayer City in 1960. He was the only son of his family. Rasoul spent his childhood with religious studies. Since he was a clever boy, he became the honor student when he was at school. He was in the second grade of high school when his family moved to Ahvaz City. They returned to Malayer City after two years. He registered in a technical school in order to continue education when they came back to Malayer City. Since then, he became familiar with the basic alphabet of politics at that time.

Concurrent with the Islamic Revolution of Iran and along with the revolutionary people of Iran, Rasoul participated in anti - regime demonstrations. He was once arrested by the police forces of the Shah Regime. After finishing education in 1979, Rasoul joined Sepah Pasdaran [The Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution] in Hamedan City. Later in 1980, Rasoul formed the Sepah Pasdaran in Malayer City. He severely started to fight against the agents of SAVAC [The intelligence service of the Shah Regime before the Islamic Revolution]. After some time, Heydari went to Kordestan Province. He fought against the anti - revolutionary forces in Paveh City there.

Rasoul Heydari created epic in solving the problem in "Serish Abad" and also freeing "Bayangan" in 1979. Following the beginning of the imposed war, he went to the battle fields. He participated in different operations. He was injured in these operations several times.

He got married in 1981. And after some time, he went to the battle fields again. Rasoul fought with the Iraqi aggressive forces in "Gilan - e Gharb" and "Sar - e Pol - e Zahab" battle fields for some time.

In 1984, Rasoul stopped the enemy and prevented the enemy to reach to the considered targets in the North West region of the country. Rasoul sincerely served in the battle fields during the imposed war for 65 months.

Rasoul started to study in "Political Sciences" Course in "Imam Hossein University" after finishing of war. Concurrent with the aggression of the racist Serbian to the Bosnian Muslim people, Rasoul went to Bosnia as the diplomat of Islamic Republic of Iran.

Finally and after years of jihad and fight in the way of truth, Rasoul Heydari was captured by the Serbian forces on "Eyd - e Ghadir" [An Islamic celebration day] of 1993. He was passing over a road at that time. Then he was martyred by the Serbian forces on that day. He was 32 years old at that time. Rasoul Heydari has three children.

Those heartless Serbianationalists!

And on a Muslim holiday, no less. Unlike the Bosnian Muslims and mujahedin of Srebrenica, who would mainly raid and slaughter surrounding Serbian villages on Orthodox Christmas, Easter, Saint George’s Day, Saint Vitus’s Day, and the holiday of Blessed Peter.

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....

What? Jihadists in Bosnia? But...but...they're all peaceful, America-loving moderates! Aren't they? Aren't they? "Bosnia bomb probe finds weapons, Islamist link seen," from Reuters, September 6 (thanks to Sr. Soph):

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnian police have uncovered a large cache of weapons and detained a new suspect in the course of their inquiry into a June bomb attack that killed one policeman and injured six others, the prosecutor's office said.

The attack, outside a police station in the town of Bugojno, was one of the most serious security incidents in the Balkan country since an ethnic war ended in 1995.

Shortly after the blast, police arrested the suspected mastermind and his helper -- both believed to be followers of the radical Sunni Muslim Wahhabi sect....

The Wahhabi sect has taken root in Bosnia under the influence of Islamists from abroad, some of whom stayed on after fighting alongside Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 war.

Police have stepped up efforts to curtail the small but vocal Wahhabi groups. In February they raided a community in the northern village of Gornja Maoca and arrested several men accused of trying to destabilise the fragile country....

The central question here is: do the "moderates" here have the political will, support of the population, and is it their own genuine intention, to prevent the outright Islamization of Bosnia? Time will tell.

And a follow-up question: do said "moderates" have a better defense than to glibly insist the chapters and verses quoted by the "radicals" were "taken out of context?"

We get that one a lot, of course, when we report on jihadists' own reliance on Islamic texts and teachings to motivate and defend their acts. Oddly, enough, such bland pronouncements just never seem to halt the jihad. It keeps happening, and we keep reporting on it. "Bosnia: Radical Muslims urge boycott of security forces," from AdnKronos International. August 17:

Sarajevo, 17 August (AKI) - Radical Wahabi fundamentalists have been leafleting mosques throughout Bosnia Herzegovina urging Muslims not to join the country's police and army.

AdnKronos is frequently a useful source, but one can't help but note what amounts to a George Carlin-esque attempt at softening the blow of a succinct term like "jihadist" by stretching it out over more syllables. By the year 2020, they should be up to a good paragraph or so in the mainstream media.

"Those are forces devoted to a fake god who we should fight against with all of our powers," read the leaflets, which Wahabis have been putting in mosque collection boxes.

Members of Bosnia's Muslim community dismissed the leaflets as a "desperate and insane appeal".

The leaflets also contained several passages from the Koran which had been "misinterpreted" and "used out of context", they said.

Funny how that keeps happening.

Similar leaflets were found in mosque contribution boxes just before the bombing of a police station in the central Bosnian town of Bugojno on 27 June that killed one policeman and injured six others.

Wahabi leaflets first appeared in Bosnia when the government decided to contribute to NATO forces in Afganistan and Iraq. The leaflets accused the government of "betraying our Islamic brothers" in these countries.

Bosnia's imams are said to be deeply concerned by the bombing in Bugojno and the reappearance of wahabi pamphlets. Bosnian mosques are not well protected and it is impossible to monitor people entering them, according to the imams.

The Wahabi movement first appeared in the Balkans during the 1990s wars, when 'mujahadeen' from Islamic countries came to Bosnia to fight on the side of local Muslims.

Wahabi cells have been radicalising supporters, running training camps and plotting violence in recent years, according to a number of terrorism experts

Bosnia state security agency OSA director Almir Dzuvo said in July there were some 3,000 well equipped radical Islamist militants in Bosnia, who posed a serious terrorism threat to the country.

As is so often the case with the Balkans, analysts are quick to attribute the problem of jihadist activity to the influence of "Wahhabism," though without accounting for why the Wahhabists' teachings resonate so readily with what we were told were peaceful, secularized, tolerant Muslims. To suppose otherwise, of course, raises the specter of there being something about Islam, even among our modern, moderate "friends and allies" that is not of the Wahhabists' invention, but nonetheless generates acts like the one described below.

In any event, however, the West in general, and NATO countries in particular, are dismally willing to stand idly by while Saudi petrodollars fund an Islamic revival, complete with its inherent problems of Sharia law and jihadist doctrine, in the Western pet project comprised by the Muslim components of the former Yugoslavia. At the root of that inaction are two issues: the economic blackmail of dependence on oil, and the politically correct article of faith that Islam must be a "Religion of Peace"... if people would just stop "misunderstanding" it.

"Bosnia: Suspected Islamist bombing 'the beginning' say experts," from AdnKronos International, June 28:

Sarajevo and Belgrade, 28 June (AKI) - Sunday's bloody bombing of a police station in Bosnia in a suspected radical Islamist attack is only the beginning of a wave of violence in Bosnia, terrorism experts said on Monday.

Police have arrested at least five people over the attack in the central town of Bugojno, in which one person was killed and six wounded.

Among those arrested was Haris Causevic, who admitted planting the explosive device near a police station in the town 75 kilometres northwest of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

Causevic is believed to be a member of the fundamentalist Islamic Wahabi Islamist movement. Benevolence towards Wahabism by Bosnian authorities have allowed it to radicalise supporters and plot violence, according to Galijasevic and other terrorism experts.

Local politicians have for too long treated Wahabi groups propagating violent Islam with excessive tolerance, Bosnian terrorism expert Dzevad Galijasevic, told Adnkronos International (AKI).

"This (attack) was to be expected and it is just the beginning," Galijasevic, who is a Muslim, told AKI.

"Bosnia has a very stormy period ahead," he warned.

Galijasevic said about five percent of Bosnia's 1.5 million Muslims had been indoctrinated by Wahabi ideology, but the number of their supporters may be about 12 per cent of the population.

Though Wahabism is considered a radical religious movement in Bosnia, Wahabis are playing a central role in terrorist activities in the Musim-majority country, according to Galijasevic.

"Their activities have nothing to do with religion," he said.

There had been scores of murders and terrorist activities in Bosnia, but local authorities have played these down as "isolated incidents and ordinary crime," Galijasevic said.

"Bosnia-Herzegovina simply isn't ready to explicitly call it terrorism, although western intelligence agencies are pefectly aware of what's going on," he stated.

Galijasevic claimed radical Islam had a strong supporter in wartime Bosnian Muslim president Alija Izetbegovic and current Muslim member of the joint state presidency Haris Silajdzic, who condemned Sunday's bombing as an attack on the state.

Galijasevic heads a non-governmental southeast European counter-terrorist organisation with Serbian expert on terrorism Darko Trifunovic and a Croatian Domagoj Margetic.

They have frequently warned that Bosnia has become a European hotbed of radical Islam and Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist activities.

Trifunovic agreed that most of Bosnian Muslim leaders have ignored the activities of radical Islamists and played down their terrorist activities.

Not to mention playing down their having anything to do with "religion."

"We have been highlighting this problem for years, but no one paid attention," he told AKI.

Attacks such as the one in Bugojno were the "logical consequence" of ignoring the security threat posed by Wahabism, he said.

"I'm afraid this is not the end," Trifunovic said.

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....

But...but...I thought all the Muslims in Bosnia were moderate, peaceful, and pro-American! "Bosnia court charges Muslim group for 'terrorism,'" from Reuters, December 22 (thanks to Maxwell):

SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnia's state court indicted a group of radical Muslims on Tuesday on charges of terrorism and arms trafficking, saying they had planned to destabilise the country.

A total of five people were charged with being in the group which, the court said, "purchased and possessed weapons, explosive and various products suitable for making improvised explosive devices."...

"All of this was prepared in order to carry out an attack on one of the identified objects ... with the aim to seriously intimidate the citizens and destabilise the fundamental political, constitutional, economic and social structures of Bosnia and Herzegovina," it said.

Evidently these Muslims misunderstood Islam to be directing them to make war on non-Muslims:

The court did not name the possible targets but local media reported the group had planned to attack a Catholic cathedral in Sarajevo and a monastery in the central town of Fojnica.

Some media also said the group might have planned attacks on the international peace force deployed in Bosnia as well as on Bosnia's own armed forces, whose units are expected to join international troops in Afghanistan next year.

Some members of the group were arrested last year but released due to lack of evidence. Media said they were members of the fundamentalist Wahabbi branch of Islam, which has in recent years attracted young Bosnian Muslims.

Many foreign Islamic fighters or mujahideen arrived in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war to fight along Bosnian Muslims against Serbs and Croats. Most of them have left the Balkan country under U.S. pressure but some have remained.

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....

This is nothing new. Many years ago, in another lifetime and long, long before 9/11, I myself played Sir Toby Belch in a production of Twelfth Night that made everyone Muslim and set the whole thing in the Ottoman court, notwithstanding how preposterous that made the story line. But that one was just a case of a director trying to make a splash; this one is explicitly politically motivated -- although the point seems a bit unfocused. If Hamlet is a Muslim prince, who is King Claudius? The United States? Does Hamlet's indecision become that of a young Muslim deciding whether or not to join the violent jihad?

From Backstage, with thanks to AntidhimmitudeFrenchChapter:

Hamlet has become a Muslim prince at the Ottoman court in an adaptation of Shakespeare's tragedy which its Bosnian director says reflects the world after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

In possibly the biggest theater co-production the war-torn Balkans region has seen in some 20 years, Haris Pasovic is seeking to put "Hamlet" into a 21st Century setting.

"One of the most important issues of the 21st century is the world's increased understanding of the Muslim issue following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York," Pasovic, himself a Bosnian Muslim, told Reuters in an interview this week.

"I think the Muslim world today is facing the question: 'To be or not to be?', and I don't mean metaphysically," he said before the show's premiere late on Wednesday in Sarajevo.

Sarajevo-born Pasovic was among the most prominent theater directors in the then-Socialist Yugoslavia, living and working in Belgrade before Bosnia's 1992-95 war....

This time he chose the Ottoman court for its resemblance to Shakespeare's Danish one, where characters vie bloodily against one another for control over the throne and the court's affairs.

The play, set in obviously Eastern, though minimalist scenery, is visually striking with colourful costumes and mystical music performed live on stage.

It was well received in Sarajevo, a traditionally multi-ethnic city dominated by moderate Muslims since the war.

Just as Ottoman princes wore undershirts embroidered with Islamic prayers before they went into battle, Pasovic's Hamlet wears an undershirt on which the line "To be, or not to be -- that is the question" is printed in Arabic script.

"That undershirt is important because it is like a human skin. I think that every serious man today must wear the question 'To be, or not to be?'," Pasovic said.

And so a story in a Christian setting, in which the hero questions the injustices of the world and his own personal tragedy, can just as well apply to Muslims.

"Hamlet is a universal story that concerns us all," Pasovic said. "These issues do not concern only Muslims, but all people equally, showing that we all share the same problems regardless of religion, nation and culture."

Carl Savich sets the record straight on matters about which there has been a great deal of misinformation in Serbianna (thanks to Fraser). Be sure to click on the link, as this is a photo feature: there are many important photos there, including one of Bosnian Muslim President Izetbegovic, who was characterized as a moderate in the West, in a meeting with an al-Qaeda unit in Bosnia, and others of churches vandalized by Muslim troops, who painted the Islamic crescent (that's right, the "crescent of embrace") on the walls.

The Bosnian civil war that lasted from 1992 to 1995 was characterized by an unprecedented propaganda campaign by the US government and media. US propaganda portrayed the civil war as a barbaric assault by Orthodox Serbs against secular, tolerant, pluralist Muslims. Muslim ultra-nationalist demagogue Alija Izetbegovic was portrayed by US propaganda as a secular, democratic political leader.

In fact, Izetbegovic had formed a militant and radical Islamic political party in 1990, the SDA, Stranka Demokratska Akcija, the Party for Democratic Action, which was in fact an ultra-nationalist Islamic Party. What US propaganda concealed was the militant and radical nature of Islam that Izetbegovic espoused. Izetbegovic espoused a radical Muslim ultra-nationalism that rejected the secularism of Mustafa Kemal Pasha Ataturk. Everyone knew Alija Izetbegovic was a radical Muslim ultra-nationalist, except the US government, media, and sycophantic Western intelligentsia. It was a transparent case of self-delusion.

This Islamic intolerance was manifested in the systematic and planned destruction of Christian churches and Christian cemeteries in Srebrenica and throughout all of Bosnia. This destruction of Christian churches and cemeteries was stringently covered up in the US and in the West. The Bosnian Muslim assault on Christianity in the Balkans was suppressed by the US media and US government. What did they seek to conceal?

Jihadists working from bases in Europe -- and even in that vaunted bastion of Islamic moderation, Bosnia. From Bulgaria's Sofia News Agency, with thanks to Fraser:

The terrorists that carried out the Madrid bombings in March 2004 have been trained at special Al Qaeda based in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The news was broken Tuesday by the chief of the local police department Dragomir Andan at a special press conference. RIA Novosti cited the top police chief as saying that all 11 terrorists left for Spain passing through Sarajevo.

It was also reported that the explosives used in the terror acts were produced in Bosnia.

Muslims have told me that there are no jihadists in Bosnia, or that their number is negligible. Who, then, is doing the recruiting, and who is being recruited? From Israel National News, with thanks to Sparta:

(IsraelNN.com) Serbian news outlets have been reporting with increasing intensification in recent days on attempts by Islamist terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda, to recruit soldiers among Bosnia's Muslims.

The independent Serbian news agency FoNet reported on Tuesday that Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina are being recruited to join the what has been called "white Al-Qaeda".

Slobodan Radulj, former member of Bosnia-Herzegovina's anti-terrorist task force and an adviser to the Serb member of the presidency of Bosnia-Herzegovina, told the Nezavisne Novine Serbian daily, "Reports by international intelligence services saying that future terrorists will be blue-eyed and blonde indicate that Al-Qaeda is recruiting in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. This is why the authorities should prevent radical Islamists from paying young and poor men to go to battlefields and to die there."

There is no jihad in the Balkans, they say. Orthodox Serbs and others are trying to frame a purely ethnic conflict as a jihad, they say.

From a Treasury Department press release, with thanks to the SITE Institute:

In another step today to halt the flow of terrorist dollars that have tainted the charitable community, the U.S. Department of the Treasury Department designated three Bosnian charities under Executive Order 13224. The U.S. is asking the United Nations' 1267 Sanctions Committee to add these entities to its consolidated list of terrorists tied to al-Qaida, Usama bin Laden and the Taliban.

"Today's action continues the international drumbeat to expose the terrorist nodes used to support the infrastructure of hate," said Juan Zarate, the Treasury Department's Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Executive Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes. "Unfortunately, we have seen the vulnerabilities of charities in countries like Bosnia, where there is not only a need for charitable giving but also a susceptibility that such institutions will be co-opted by terrorist sympathizers."

The United States previously designated Bosnian-operated charities that were funneling dollars for terrorist-related activities, including the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF), the Global Relief Foundation (GRF) and the Bosnian branch of Al-Haramain Foundation (AHF), including its director and Vazir, an alias for the organization.

Mourners for the victims of the Srebrenica massacre

From Radio Free Europe.
Highlights of this 1995 UN debacle include an airstrike delayed because it was requested on the wrong form, a trade of 5,000 unarmed Muslims for 14 Dutch UN Peacekeepers, and UN commander Morillon's 1993 quotation, "I will never abandon you."

This will not win Muslim hearts and minds.

The Bosnian Serb government has disclosed the locations of six new mass graves containing the remains of victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

The head of a government-appointed commission, Milan Bogdanic, said the locations are presented in a preliminary report based on information obtained from the Defense and Interior ministries.

The disclosure of the new graves came after Bosnia's international administrator, Paddy Ashdown, recently ordered Serb authorities to cooperate with the commission or lose their jobs.

The commission has until mid-June to submit its final report on the events in Srebrenica, which, in a historic decision earlier this month, a UN court ruled was genocide.

During the massacre, an estimated 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed by Serbian paramilitary forces. So far, more than 6,000 bodies have been exhumed.

Yes, there was a militant Muslim organization in Knoxville, Tennessee, that was helping fund jihad in Bosnia and Chechnya in the 1990s, but it's no longer active. See? Nothing to be concerned about at all. KnoxNews reports that "a former member of a secretive Islamic fundamentalist organization in Knoxville helped funnel money to militant fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya during the 1990s, but local Muslims said Tuesday the group is no longer active." (Thanks to Nicolei.)

"Mustafa Saied, a former University of Tennessee student and member of the Muslim Brotherhood, told the Wall Street Journal in a story published Tuesday that money raised at the Annoor Mosque ostensibly for poor civilians actually went to Muslim warriors."

In Onward Muslim Soldiers I explore the thought of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan Al-Banna, as well as that of one of its greatest exponents, Sayyid Qutb. I also details its ties to Hamas and other modern-day terrorist groups.

"Knoxville Muslims raised $6,000 to pay for tents, Saied told the paper, but in 1995 a representative of the Benevolence International Foundation, a Chicago-based nonprofit, told him a portion of the money was diverted to fighters in Bosnia and Chechnya. FBI Special Agent James Van Pelt of the Knoxville office said he isn't aware of any criminal prosecution of any people or groups arising from the activities described in the article. 'If something like that would happen today, the person could be guilty of (giving) material support to terrorists,' Van Pelt said.

"The foundation's leader pleaded guilty in 2002 to buying supplies for fighters in the two countries. The U.S. Treasury Department alleged the group also had ties to al-Qaeda, though the charges were dropped as part of a plea agreement.
The paper reported that Saied was part of an active group of Muslim Brotherhood members in Knoxville before he left the campus in 1996, a few credits short of graduating. The Muslim Brotherhood is an international fundamentalist political group.

"Rosalind Gwynne, faculty adviser to the UT chapter of the Muslim Student Association said she was surprised to find out the Muslim Brotherhood had been active on campus. There can be as many as 300 students in the association at any one time, and the mix can vary from year to year, she said. Knoxville's mainstream Muslims said they weren't aware of the group's presence here either. 'I've lived here for 30 years, and this is the first time I ever heard about it,' said Hanan Ayesh, a founder of the Annoor Academy, a Muslim school.

"Most of those involved in the Muslim Brotherhood here were foreign students who get involved in Islamic politics before moving back to their countries of origin, said Mostafa Alsharif, a lifelong Knoxvillian. 'The majority of Muslims in the United States couldn't care less about the Muslim Brotherhood. They're going to stay in the United States. There's no need to be affiliated with something like that,' Alsharif said. Alsharif said the Muslim Brotherhood isn't active here anymore. 'It's not the reality of what's happening in Knoxville today at all,' he said.

"The lengthy Wall Street Journal article detailed Saied's activities in Knoxville nearly a decade ago. Now an adherent of a less strident form of Islam, Saied is an executive at a Florida environmental-testing firm. Said's tale offers a glimpse into how secretive organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood operate in the United States. 'Anti-American sentiment is usually reserved for closed-door discussions or expressed in languages that most Americans don't understand,' Saied told Wall Street Journal reporter Paul M. Barrett. 'While such rhetoric has been drastically reduced since 9/11, it is still prevalent enough to be a cause for concern.'"

Calling CAIR's Ibrahim Hooper: Ibrahim, my friend, what is CAIR doing to counter such rhetoric?

"Saied told Barrett he and other fundamentalist Muslims would meet once a week to drink tea and eat sweets while discussing fundamentalist Islam in secret. Saied said the Knoxville chapter viewed violence as something 'we don't do here, unless necessary.'

"Saied told Barrett he feels guilty about his years as an extremist and is applying for U.S. citizenship. He worries, according to the article, that areas of 'venomous hatred toward Western society' persist on some campuses and in certain Islamic communities."

Islamic communities aren't alone on this one. There is a great deal of venomous hatred toward Western society on college campuses among non-Muslim students.

"Some in the local Muslim community fear that reports of such extremist activities -- even those that occurred nearly a decade ago -- will prompt other Americans to persecute law-abiding Muslims. Ayesh said she sometimes feels like she had more freedom when she first came to America 34 years ago than her children have today."

It's easy to throw around unfocused accusations. Mrs. Ayesh, do you have time for a couple of questions? Please detail some instances of persecution of law-abiding Muslims in America. I know that CAIR lists many, but quite a few of those have turned out be much less than what CAIR claims to be. Illegal immigrants don't count, although even in their case I don't equate deportation with persecution; in any case, you said "law-abiding." Also, and more importantly, please explain: exactly what could you do 34 years ago in America that your children can't do now? And one last thing: exactly what are you and you fellow moderate Muslims doing to eradicate Islamic radicalism -- or even the anti-American rhetoric referred to above -- from the American Muslim community? I'll look forward to your answers; you can contact me here.

Enver Hadzihasanovic (BBC)

"Prosecutors have opened their case against the two highest-ranking Bosnian Muslims to face trial at the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague." This from the Voice of America. "Army commanders Enver Hadzihasanovic and Amir Kubura are accused of allowing the killing of Bosnian Croat and Serb prisoners of war during the Bosnian conflict in the early 1990s. Prosecutors say they did not act to stop their subordinates from mistreating and murdering the prisoners, or plundering and destroying villages.

"The two officers, who surrendered to the tribunal two years ago, have pleaded not guilty.

"Prosecutor Ekkehard Withopf told the tribunal Tuesday that this trial shows members of all sides in the conflict committed war crimes. He said among the war crimes were ritual beheadings by 'Mujahedin,' or Muslim holy warriors, who came from Islamic countries to fight in the war and were under the commanders' leadership.

"Prosecutors say at least 200 Bosnian Croat and Serb civilians were killed in Muslim attacks on Croat forces in central Bosnia-Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995."

In Onward Muslim Soldiers I trace how Bosnia became a magnet for international jihadists in the 1990s, and explain how jihad ideology poisoned prospects for peace there, as it has in so many other places. Now it seems that some of the truth is coming to light.