A Jihad Watch exclusive commentary by Stella L. Jatras.
In his book, My Life, President Clinton devotes many pages to his peccadilloes with Monica Lewinsky, a woman young enough to be his daughter, and proudly writes he did it “Because I could.” However, he gives scant attention to the destruction of the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia. Let us take a look at the results of what President Bill Clinton is so “proud” of regarding U.S. intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo.
A Telegraph (UK) of 26 July report titled, “US hunts Islamic militants in Bosnia,” writes: “American military intelligence and the CIA have deployed hundreds of officers in Bosnia to track suspected Islamic militants amid concerns that the country has become a refuge, recruiting ground and cash conduit for international terrorism. Almost a decade after the end of the war in the former Yugoslavia, Bosnia has become a ‘one-stop shop’ for Islamic militants heading from terrorist battlegrounds in Chechnya and Afghanistan to Iraq, according to European intelligence officials.”
A Wall Street Journal (Europe edition) article of Nov 1, 2001 titled, “Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links,” reported, “The Balkan’s uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region’s impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe’s backyard.
“For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-training networks throughout Albanian, Kosovo, Macedonia (FYROM), Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.”
At the same time the Clinton administration was supporting the Bosnian [Muslim] government of Alija Izetbegovic, that government issued a passport to Osama bin Laden at their Vienna embassy in 1992.
In a very revealing commentary titled, “We bombed the wrong side?” of April 6, 2004 (Canadian National Post), Gen. Lewis MacKenzie, first UNPROFOR commander in Bosnia, wrote, “The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized and indirectly supported their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early ’90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to others.” Christopher Layne and Benjamin Schwarz wrote on the Opinion Page in The Washington Post on March 26, 2000, “Was it a Mistake? We Were Suckers for the KLA.” The Kosovo Liberation Army is engaged in sex slavery, prostitution, murder, kidnapping and drugs. Furthermore, it is an army that was trained by Osama bin Laden dealing mainly in drugs, as confirmed in the May 4, 1999 article by Washington Times reporter Jerry Seper, in which he wrote, “Some members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, which has financed its war effort through the sale of heroin, were trained in terrorist camps run by international fugitive Osama bin Laden — who is wanted in the 1998 bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa and killed 224 persons, including 12 Americans,” yet we are told by the previous administration that at the time, Osama bin Laden was not the known threat that he is today.
In The Spectator [UK] article of Sep 6, 2003 titled, “How we trained al-Qa’eda,” author Brendan O’Neill wrote, “For all the millions of words written about al-Qa’eda since the 9/11 attacks two years ago, one phenomenon is consistently overlooked – the role of the Bosnian war in transforming the mujahedin [Islamic warriors] of the 1980s into the roving Islamic terrorists of today.”
Ironically, the U.S. is accusing Iran of intervening in the affairs of Iraq, yet in a House Republican Research Committee Report on Terrorism & Unconventional Warfare, titled “Iran’s European Springboard?” analysts Yossef Bodansky & Vaughn S. Forrest wrote as far back as 1992, “Thus Tehran and its allies are using the violence in Bosnia-Herzegovina as a springboard for the launching of a jihad in Europe.” Yossef Bodansky is the author of “Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War On America.”
Through Clinton’s misguided foreign policy, Bosnia has become al-Qaeda’s corridor into Europe. As an example, Spanish media reported that one of the suspected terrorists involved in the Madrid bombing was born in Bosnia and linked to al Qaeda. (Financial Times, April 8, 2004/BBC monitoring). Reuters of 30 Dec 2003, writes, “UN adds Bosnia charity director to al Qaeda list.” Furthermore, The Associated Press of 28 June reported, “In mosques and storefront Muslim charities, U.S. and European intelligence agencies are engaged in covert conflict in Bosnia, tracking up to 300 suspected Islamic militants and shutting down those financing them.”
As for President Clinton’s “successful” mission in Kosovo, National Review Online of March 19, 2004, wrote, “A pogrom started in Europe this week, with one U.S. official being quoted as saying, ‘Kristallnacht is underway in Kosovo.’ Serbs are being murdered and their 800-year-old churches are aflame. Much of the Christian heritage in Kosovo and Metohija is on fire and could be destroyed forever. By these deeds too many of Kosovo’s Albanians have shown that their rhetoric about ‘democracy’ and ‘multiethnicity,’is false, and demonstrates also that the international community’s acceptance of them have been naive.”
Americans are rightly outraged by the beheadings of our citizens. However, photos of Saudi Arabian mujahedin holding the severed heads of Serbs in Bosnia as early as 1992 or the most recent photo of KLA terrorists holding the severed of Serbs in Kosovo as late as 1999 went virtually unreported.
During a CATO discussion group the question was raised: “How could we bomb a sovereign nation in violation of the UN Charter, International law and the tenants of NATO.” The answer from one of the pro-NATO bombing panelist said, “Because we could.” Sound familiar?
Iyad Allawi, Prime Minister of Iraq, is quoted as saying (The New York Times, June 21) “We will do all we can to strike against the enemy forces aiming at harming our country, and we will not stand by with our hands tied.” President George W. Bush said precisely the same thing when he said that we will do whatever it takes to defeat (Muslim) terrorists,” yet we denied the Serbs the right to defend themselves against the same enemy that we are fighting today. As Gen. Charles Boyd, USAF (Ret), former Deputy Commander in Chief, European Command said, “The Serbs are not fighting to conquer new territory, but to hold on to what was already theirs.”
I would like to suggest that if we are serious about finding Osama bin Laden, we look in Bosnia and Kosovo.
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As a career military officer’s wife, Stella Jatras has traveled widely and has lived in many foreign countries where she not only learned about other cultures but also became very knowledgeable regarding world affairs and world politics. Stella Jatras lived in Moscow for two years (where her husband, George, was the Senior Air Attaché), and while there, worked in the Political Section of the US Embassy. Stella has also lived in Germany, Greece and Saudi Arabia. Her travels took her to over twenty countries.