Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Kosovo: Time for a New Approach Gerard M. Gallucci
Kosovo: Time for a New Approach
Gerard M. Gallucci
Testimony of November 15, 2011 for the Hearing on the Balkans by the Subcommittee on Europe and
Eurasia, Committee on Foreign Affairs, US House of Representatives
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Events over the last four months in northern Kosovo are unfortunate reminders of the potential for
things to spiral out of control there, with consequences that could be felt throughout the Balkans. On
July 25, units of the Kosovo Special Police (sent from Pristina) attempted to seize control of the two
northern crossing points with Serbia that had been until then manned by local Kosovo police and
members of the European Union Rule of Law Mission (EULEX). In the next days, NATO troops (of
its Kosovo Force - KFOR) and EULEX – both in Kosovo under a UN peacekeeping mandate – sought
to support the action by transporting Kosovo police and customs officials to the two Gates.
The local Kosovo Serbs saw this as an effort to subject them to Kosovo Albanian control and to cut
them off from Serbia. They responded by peacefully resisting and raising barricades to block further
such efforts by the Kosovo authorities or the international forces. KFOR and EULEX reacted by
confronting peaceful protests with armed force, using live fire on September 27, and repeatedly seeking
to remove barricades and close off alternative roads using tear gas, pepper spray and heavy machinery.
US personnel have been on the frontline of these efforts, stepping outside their UN mandate without
any apparent recognition by the Administration of their new role.
Let me clear about three things:
1. The NATO troops and EU police have been acting outside their UN peacekeeping mandate by
trying to impose Kosovo customs in the north without any prior political agreement. They are
there to keep the peace while others seek to resolve the political differences. Their actions
have damaged international credibility and increased tensions dangerously.
2. The great majority of the local Kosovo Serbs in peaceful protest and on the barricades are not
criminals or being forced to be there against their will. They see the actions by Kosovo
authorities and KFOR and EULEX as an attack upon their lives and community.
3. Nothing can be gained by the effort by the Quint countries – the US, UK, Germany, France
and Italy – to impose Pristina's authority through force. The Serbs rebuild their barricades and
use other means to get supplies. The actions by NATO and the EU have only hardened their
rejection of Pristina and made compromise more difficult.
I note that last week, one person (a Kosovo Serb) was killed and several others injured (including a
local policeman) by gunfire in a sensitive mixed area of north Mitrovica. Accounts differ as to what
happened but it seems the gunfire came from Kosovo Albanians.
After 12 years of frozen conflict, it has become clear that an effort to find a practical accommodation
for the north, while Kosovo status remains unresolved, is long overdue. The local Kosovo Serbs have
prevented, through peaceful means, what they see as an effort to impose on them Kosovo institutions
that they reject. The international peacekeepers have reached the limits of their ability to project
political solutions that do not have the support of the local communities in the north. It may therefore
be a good time for all parties - Kosovo Albanians and Kosovo Serbs, Pristina and Belgrade and the
internationals including the EU and the United States - to look for alternatives.
TransConflict (an NGO located in Belgrade which occasionally publishes my analysis) has posted a
paper (attached) that looks at such a possible alternative: status neutral implementation of the Ahtisaari
Plan for Kosovo (developed at the request of the UN Secretary General in 2007). It derives from an
understanding that nothing positive can emerge as long as the two sides continue to see the situation in
zero-sum terms, that for them to win, the other side must lose. Rather, to avoid further conflict and
open the door to focusing on achieving economic progress, each side must be willing to compromise
and consider outcomes that recognize the fundamental interests of the other side, as well as their own.
Simply put, these are:
for the northern Serbs, to be allowed to live in their own communities without political
interference in local matters from Kosovo central institutions and with continued linkages to
Serbia.
for the Kosovo Albanians that the north remain part of Kosovo and function in significant
ways as part of the Kosovo political system.
The paper provides a series of detailed recommendations - for the courts, the police, municipal
competences, finance, inter-municipal co-operation, co-operation with Serbia and extended
competences for north Mitrovica - that could facilitate implementation of the Ahtisaari Plan in north
Kosovo.
But without outside help, Kosovo Serbs and Albanians are unlikely to be able to rise above their history
and achieve compromise. The northern Serbs would prefer outright partition and remaining part of
Serbia. The Albanians would prefer not to have a Serb majority in the north.
Unfortunately, the responsible internationals – the Quint and most especially the US – still support
imposition of Pristina authority and institutions in the north. Reportedly, US elements of KFOR are
even now seeking to close all alternative roads along the boundary to force the northern Serbs to
capitulate to Kosovo customs in the officials crossings. The rest of KFOR and EULEX appears to be
simply waiting for Serbs to abandon their barricades in the coming cold. (They refused a Serb offer to
allow them through the barricades if they do not use this access to impose Kosovo customs officials on
the boundary.) The illegal and counterproductive efforts of KFOR and EULEX to seek to force the
northern Kosovo Serbs to surrender have only increased distrust and strengthened the local resistance
to any compromise. The Serbs show no sign of being ready to take down their barricades.
Since 2008, Quint policy – strongly encouraged by the US – has been to bully and threaten Serbia and
the Kosovo Serbs to accept the loss of Kosovo and to abandon the north to Pristina. Some view this as
one more bit of “punishment” for Serbia despite its new reality of democracy and eagerness to become
fully part of Europe. But pressure and use of force has not worked. No Serbian leader – despite EU
threats to deny the country EU membership unless it cooperates – can simply surrender Kosovo or end
support to the north. The northern Serbs see no alternative but to continue to resist. The Kosovo
Albanians see no reason to compromise when they have US support to continue demanding everything.
(The Europeans have been surprising willing to follow the US hardline, perhaps because they wish to
avoid being left alone in the Balkans.) This leaves the alternatives for the north the same they always
have been: continued frozen conflict or partition – both of which might lead to further ethnic conflict
and/or flight – or some compromise solution. As things now stand, north Kosovo may have to see
more conflict before everyone looks to compromise. It is a good time to look for other approaches to
Kosovo than trying to force one side to lose everything. If the United States cannot support an effort to
achieve real compromise, then it should get out of the way and bring our soldiers home before they get
further involved in one more conflict far from home.
Friday, November 11, 2011
Bosnia and the myths of peaceful Islam and the hidden Islamic jihad
http://www.faithfreedom.org/articles/islamic-jihad-articles/bosnia-and-the-myths-of-peaceful-islam-and-the-hidden-islamic-jihad/
Bosnia and the myths of peaceful Islam and the hidden Islamic jihad
Bosnian Islamic fighters - Bosnian Islamic fighters during their Jihad which was blessed by President Bill Clinton
The hidden “Islamic jihad” and dimensions of Bosnia have been ignored prior to the conflict, during the civil war in the early 1990s, and afterwards. This misrepresentation of reality meant that thousands of Islamists from all over the world were aided by so-called democratic powers and the role of the mass media and many leading academics served the ambitions of Al-Qa’ida and other outside powers. Therefore, what is the reality of Bosnia and why is it claimed that all communities resided in peace and tranquility?
According to many naïve Western commentators Bosnia was a tranquil reality where Muslims and Christians lived happily together for many centuries. Not only this, the Western rhetoric claimed that in modern times it was the Muslim leadership in Bosnia which was open-minded, democratic, modernist, and which desired to maintain a multi-cultural and multi-religious society.
The truth could not have been further and Western commentators and academics are clearly glossing over reality because the Ottoman Empire was not based on enlightenment. On the contrary, the Islamization of Bosnia was paid by the blood of Christians and the slavery and forced conversions of young Christian boys who were forcibly converted to Islam via the barbaric devshirme system.
John R. Schindler stated in his book called Unholy Terror that “The most hated aspect of Ottoman rule in Bosnia, and the one whose memory lingers most sharply even today, was the practice of devshirme, the blood tax imposed on Christians. For three centuries beginning with the conquest of Bosnia, the Ottomans annually levied male children as tribute; every year, up to one-fifth of Christian boys in Bosnia – usually aged fourteen to twenty, but some were younger – were forcibly taken from their families in contingents of a thousand and shipped to the imperial court at Istanbul to become warrior-slaves in the janissaries, the Sultan’s elite guard. They were converted to Islam….” Page 23 – Unholy Terror
The Christians of Bosnia clearly faced pogroms, institutional discrimination, and a system which was brutal. If Christian men happened to fall in love with Muslim women then they faced the death penalty because it is forbidden in Islam, however, countless numbers of Christian women were taken by Muslims, just like in modern day Egypt and Pakistan, and the legal authorities deemed this permissible.
In fact the myth of peaceful Islam in Bosnia could not be further from the truth because conditions for Christians in Bosnia was especially brutal because the landed elites who were Muslim, ruled over their Christian subjects with disdain. The Western hype of multi-cultural Bosnia is just that and in the middle of the 19th century you had around one hundred mosques in Sarajevo but only one Orthodox Christian church.
Non-Muslims suffered the fate of being dhimmis and converts to Islam used their power in order to maintain a system which supported every indignity that you could imagine. It was a policy based on the “superior Muslims” against the “enslaved Christians” and if the Christians did not accept dhimmitude, paying heavy taxes via jizya, and allowing young Christian boys to be converted to Islam and taken away to Istanbul, then the Islamic sword awaited them.
World War Two also witnessed the mutual support of the Muslim elites with Nazi Germany and Orthodox Christians faced the brutality of many forces. This notably applies to the Croatian Catholic Ustasha regime which was genocidal towards the Serbian Orthodox Christians and it must be stated that Muslims participated fully within the military wing and police force of this brutal and barbaric regime. At the same time Muslims served under the Nazi regime of Germany and the 13th Volunteer Mountain Division of the Waffen-SS (Handschar) was famous for killing Orthodox Christians.
John R. Schindler states that “Despite strong local support, Himmler’s Bosnian division ultimately did little to help the Nazi cause or defend the Bosnian Muslims…….the 13th Division’s actual combat record was slight, while its depredations against unarmed Serbs were impressive; the Muslim troops spent more time killing and looting than actually fighting…….the 13th Division ended the war ingloriously, plagued by war crimes and desertion.” Page 36 – Unholy Terror
Again, it must be remembered that this Bosnia is the same Bosnia that Western journalists and academics claimed was peaceful and based on religious and ethnic toleration. It would appear that these journalists and academics deem the control of land in the hands of Muslims; converting Christian boys to Islam by the barbaric devshirme system; killing Christian males for marrying Muslim women; no rights under law during cases involving Christians and Muslims; a brutal jizya tax system; the mass inequality of the dhimmitude system; and the fact that Muslims joined forces with both the Ustasha fascist regime and the Nazi SS; somehow, all this in the eyes of Western academics and journalists meant ethnic and religious bliss.
If the same journalists and academics had vindicated Western European and Arab slavery of Africans in Africa then the mass media would have ridiculed such disgraceful notions of history. However, the same mantra was used in order to vindicate the Muslim side in Bosnia during the 1990s.
The communist interlude in Yugoslavia certainly contained Islamists in Bosnia but Muslim elites like Alija Izetbegovic were waiting in the wings and his pan-Islamic dreams for the Islamization of Bosnia and then further afield remained strong. However, when the conflict broke out in 1992 the media in the West remained silent about this and other future crimes by both Bosnian Islamists and international Islamic jihadists who glorified in beheading Orthodox Christians and spreading a new Islamic jihad.
The hidden “Islamic jihad” in Bosnia was covered up because this suited the needs of interested parties and it was not productive to show America, Alija Izetbegovic, Al-Qa’ida, the global jihadist network, and other nations, working hand in hand. Therefore, the “Muslim victim card” was played and the same applies to re-writing history. The Serbians, who had been the victims of Islamic jihad under the Ottomans and then suffered so brutally under the Ustasha/Nazi/Islamic collaboration during World War Two, were once more victims, just like they had been under the Habsburg Empire, because during the 1990s it is clear that the mass media sided with all anti-Serbian forces. This applies to supporting Croatia, the Muslims of Bosnia, and the Albanian Muslims of Kosovo.
In my article called Bosnia and Clinton’s Radical Islamists, I comment that “Sky News has obtained clear and proper evidence of a major cover-up and footages of massacres against Serbian Christians have been seen. According to the investigation and footages which were shown, it is abundantly clear that thousands of radical Islamists from all over the world were given a free-reign in Bosnia.”
“This free-reign meant that innocent Serbian Christians were to meet terrible and disturbing deaths at the hands of radical Islamists who celebrated openly while cutting the heads off innocent civilians. The same Islamic forces which unleashed September 11th and which stone people to death in order to create “year zero,” were welcomed openly by ex-President Clinton and by people within his administration.”
Vojin Joksimovich in his book called Kosovo is Serbia states that “Tudjman preferred Milosevic to Bosnian Muslims and their leader Alija Izetbegovic, whom he detested and described him as an Islamic fundamentalist with ambition to create an Islamic state in Europe. Needless to say, Washington and the Germans, as appeasers of radical Islam, did not allow Tudjman and Milosevic to proceed with their plan which would have avoided the war and associated sufferings.” Page 106 – Kosovo is Serbia
Vojin Joksimovich also states that “During the war in Bosnia, Milosevic supported every single peace proposal for termination of the war, starting with the Vance-Owen plan in 1993 in contrast to President Clinton who undermined four peace proposals and thus extended the bloody conflict in an attempt to deliver victory to the Bosnian Muslims. Milosevic fired Milan Babic, Republic of Serbian Krajina president, for rejecting the Vance Plan for autonomy of Krajina which Milosevic considered acceptable.” Page 107 – Kosovo is Serbia
However, for Muslim elites the Bosnian conflict provided an opportunity and Alija Izetbegovic who had ties with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and who openly admired Ayatollah Khomeini, saw an opening for Islam in Bosnia and his pan-Islamism meant that he ignored the Sunni-Shi divide.
Izetbegovic’s Islamic Declaration made it clear that he supported a pan-Islamic state which would include vast areas of land and link Europe with the Muslim world in the Middle East, Central Asia, North Africa, and to nations like Indonesia. In his views “There can be no peace or harmony between the ‘Islamic religion’ and non-Islamic social and political institutions.”
However, despite Izetbegovic having links with the Muslim Brotherhood and obtaining support from Iran in the 1980s during the height of a Muslim crackdown against all forces of moderation in Iran, he somehow emerges under the wings of moderation during the Bosnian conflict. The leader of America, Bill Clinton, in the early 1990s was not concerned about Izetbegovic stating that “Islamic society without an Islamic government is incomplete and impotent.”
Before the war broke out in 1992 it is clear that the Muslim leader understood full well about which direction he wanted Bosnia to go. Izetbegovic visited Iran before the conflict erupted and asked for support. John R. Schindler comments that “Izetbegovic and his entourage, including his sons, were treated royally by the Iranians, the culmination of the Bosnian Islamists’ love affair with revolutionary Iran. They wanted Tehran’s help, and they received it. Izetbegovic asked Iranian leader Rafsanjani about the views of Iranian intelligence regarding the situation in Bosnia, regarding the risks of a war, and explicitly asked for Iranian “help” if hostilities broke out. The Bosnians were pleased when they were informed that they could count on Iran’s full support; they received blank checks…..” Page 54 – Unholy Terror
Therefore, we have a whitewash of past history and how the Serbian Orthodox Christians suffered during the Ottoman Empire. This applies to the brutality of the devshirme system, dhimmitude, pogroms, and the enslavement of Christians. The reality of history is being reduced in order to meet current political trends and this collective amnesia also applies to the Muslims supporting both Croatian fascists and the Nazi Party during World War Two.
Turning to events in the 1990s it is clear that Alija Izetbegovic had an Islamic vision for Bosnia and he also spoke about the need to support all Muslims throughout the former Yugoslavia. At the same time he was welcomed with open arms by Iran and he had links with the Muslim Brotherhood. However, this meant nothing to Bill Clinton and Al-Qa’ida was given a free-reign in Bosnia by America and other forces which had vested interests.
Vojin Joksimovich in his book called The Revenge of the Prophet highlights the role of Al-Qa’ida because he states that “Osama Bin Laden saw a great opportunity in Bosnia and established a base of operations in Europe against Al Qaeda’s true enemy, the U.S. The Afghan Jihad and the Gulf War combined to produce fertile ground for 9/11. However, Bosnia became the direct springboard for 9/11, the Madrid train bombings and probably London.” Page 298 – The Revenge of the Prophet
Just like the mass media and academics had falsified history they were now ignoring the reality of Bosnia. Islamic jihadists were given the “green light” alongside terrorist networks and thousands entered Bosnia with the complicity of the Bosnian Muslim government and agencies which were serving Bill Clinton. Therefore, the beheadings of Orthodox Christians were not shown on television, nor were images of thousands of Islamists who were killing in the name of Allah and of course the real underdogs were the Bosnian Serbs because they were fighting Bosnian Muslims, Croatians, Islamic jihadists, and covert military support and training from Western nations who were involved in murky dealings with nations like Iran, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and a host of other nations.
The Islamic agenda of Izetbegovic before the war was ignored and then during the war the mass media and academics, alongside political leaders, all developed collective amnesia. Memories of history remained strong but somehow the Orthodox Christians of Bosnia were meant to welcome their future “dhimmi” status if Izetbegovic’s dreams were to come true.
John R. Schindler states that “How the mujahidin, bin Laden’s holy warriors, came to Bosnia, were funded by corrupt Islamic financiers, and left their unfortunate mark on Europe is a tale of fanaticism, criminality, and violence that must be explained to understand the actual course of events in Bosnia during the war and after.” Page 147 – Unholy Terror
El-Mujahid fighters in Bosnia and other Islamists enjoyed torturing Christian captives and beheading them and then sending these images to the internet. Just like Islamists have done after capturing Americans and other nationals in Iraq and other parts of the world. However, for Bill Clinton and the Western media this did not concern them because they had to highlight the “Muslim victim card.” Yet the same Americans who were disgusted when Muslim jihadists did this to their nationals in Iraq did not know that their own American government tolerated this during the war in Bosnia.
In fact it is known that billions of dollars were sent to Bosnia in order to fund an Islamic jihad and Islamists entered Bosnia freely and with tacit support. John R. Schindler states that “Izetbegovic and SDA higher-ups mendaciously claimed to have no knowledge of el-Mujahid or any such units, a pleasant fraud that nobody in the West seemed interested in unmasking. Izetbegovic’s mid-November 1993 visit to the “el-jihad unit of the Army of Bosnia and Hercegovina” was reported by Sarajevo radio, including the president’s counsel to the holy warriors to “be merciless towards the enemy,” but none of the legion of Western journalists in the capital bothered to take note.” Page 167 – Unholy Terror
Izetbegovic stated that “He who rises against Islam will reap nothing but hate and resistance” and the Bosnian Orthodox Christians new full well that he was not interested in sharing power or a democratic nation which was based on pluralism. On the contrary Izetbegovic was warning the Christians to accept dhimmitude and Islamization. At the same time he welcomed support from the Muslim Brotherhood, international Islamists, Al-Qa’ida, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Islamic channels via Sudan and other nations.
Izetbegovic also stated that “….In perspective, there is but one way out in sight: creation and gathering of a new intelligence which thinks and feels along Islamic lines. This intelligence would then raise the flag of the Islamic order and together with the Muslim masses embark into action to implement this order…..”
Chris Deliso who is the author of The Coming Balkan Caliphate: the Threat of Radical Islam to Europe and the West , comments that“…the proliferation of foreign-funded fundamentalist groups has challenged the power and legitimacy of traditional Balkan Muslim communities in unprecedented and often violent ways. Well-funded groups like the Saudi-backed Wahabbis continue to exploit internal schisms within local communities…”
Chris Deliso also comments that “The direct relation between Bosnia as a localized jihad and Bosnia as a springboard for Islamist attacks in the West became felt almost immediately. Hundreds of foreign mujahedin, treated as heroes and presented with Bosnian passports after the war, were naturalized into the country, and were awarded their own enclaves ruled by Sharia law. Veterans of the Bosnian war who had seen it as just another in a series of jihad operations proved reluctant to settle down into rural ‘retirement,’ however. Failed terrorist attacks against the 1996 G-7 Summit in Lille, France and Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999 both involved veterans of Bosnia. Indeed, “five years before the sophisticated terrorist assault on the U.S.,” the Los Angeles Times would conclude in October of 2001, “the French were starting to uncover loosely linked violent networks spreading into several countries, all tied together by a common thread: Bosnia.”
“Most disturbingly, with the seminal attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington several individuals, including fundraisers, planners, and actual hijackers were associated with the Bosnian jihad. In addition, a tight-lipped CIA source also told the Washington Times on September 18, 2001 that there was a definite connection between the 9/11 plotters and Albania-based Islamic terrorists. Finally, a group of Albanian-American imams who had gleefully predicted the attacks the month before, and who had links with Kosovo Albanian organized crime structures, were briefly detained in Kosovo by UN police; however, they were inexplicably released. In November, 2007, it was revealed that some of the 9/11 hijackers had also been trained in Turkey, which despite being a secular Islamic state had also long been a two-way conveyor belt for international mujahedin and fundraisers active in both the Bosnian and Chechen jihads.”
It is clear that Muslim demographic factors will continue to alter the landscape of parts of the Balkans and alongside this will be major investments from Islamic nations which desire to spread and create Islamic states in Europe. Added to this are Islamic terrorist cells and individuals who were welcomed into Bosnia and Kosovo by local Muslim elites and by policy makers in Washington during the conflicts of Bosnia and Kosovo.
Policy makers in Washington now have a different agenda but more recent terrorist activity is evidence that the international Islamists have spread their ideology alongside Muslim elites in Bosnia who had an Islamic agenda. The “Muslim victim card” is still being used and this needs to be challenged because the conflict in Bosnia was complex and the Bosnian Serb leadership faced a “hidden Islamic war” and a “covert war,” whereby international players openly manipulated the situation on the ground.
Serge Trifkovic (Srdja Trifkovic) who is the author of The Sword of the Prophet states that “The American intervention in the Balkans – humanitarian bombings, multicultural Muslims, and all – was the Clinton team’s exercise in counter-realism. Its end result is the strengthening of an already aggressive Islamic base in the heart of Europe that will not go away.” Page 227 – The Sword of the Prophet
John R. Schindler states that “Although Sarajevo’s supporters went to great lengths to deny it, there was no avoiding the reality that after 9/11, as al-Qa’ida attacks multiplied across the world, a disturbing number of the terrorists involved had close ties to Bosnia and the holy war waged there. The dedicated cadres bin Laden had first nurtured in Afghanistan and brought to fruition in Bosnia were ready for the all-out confrontation with the “apostates” and “infidels” that al-Qa’ida had promised.” Page 296 – Unholy Terror
John R. Schindler continues by stating that “The role of the West in the fate of Bosnia cannot be underestimated. The willful blindness of Western elites, the dishonest and mendacious representations of Bosnia and its war presented by intellectuals, academics, entertainers and journalists, decisively influenced the course of the conflict, to the benefit of radical Islam.” Page 324 – Unholy Terror
The events of Bosnia and the role of Izetbegovic and radical Islam did not fit the Western agenda and for multi-cultural media outlets which desired to maintain the “Muslim victim card myth” it suited their quaint upbringings. Therefore, while the Serbians were being demonized the international Islamic brigade was slitting the throats of Orthodox Christians and they clearly had the blessing of Izetbegovic.
The ramifications of Bosnia continues and this applies to Islamic terrorist cells; Islamization funding projects by Bosnian Muslim elites alongside funding from Saudi Arabia and other Islamic nations; demographic factors; the “Muslim victim card” in order to radicalize Muslim youths; and other factors.
However, despite everything it appears that America is still intent on a unified Bosnia whereby a Christian majority will be ruled by Muslim elites. Maybe the leadership in America could point to a nation where non-Muslims welcomed being ruled by Muslims and what happened once they became ruled by Islamic Sharia law?
It is clear that the Bosnian Serbs cannot trust the international community because of past deeds and the ongoing reality of Kosovo where Orthodox Christians reside in fear and in the knowledge that many Orthodox Christian churches and monasteries have been destroyed.
The past reality of Islam in Bosnia means that you have no history of mutual co-existence because dhimmitude, jizya, pogroms, and the devshirme system was brutal. Therefore, you had a Muslim landed elite and an Orthodox Christian peasantry which was taxed heavily in order to maintain Islamic power and control.
Overall, the distortions of past history and events during the war is one of international shame because the media bias was not only extreme, it was dangerous. Therefore, Islamists within the Bosnian elites were given a power base and they increased their power base by blocking any compromise and allowing thousands of Islamists from all over the world to enter Bosnia.
Today global Islamists and the followers of Izetbegovic are still dreaming about an Islamic state and Saudi funding and other policies are intent on changing the Balkans. Islamists also hope to use the demographic factor in order to achieve this. Therefore, the Bosnian Serbs need either an independent nation state or to be allowed a referendum in order to join Serbia.
If not, the Serbs face another de-Orthodox Christianization reality and this factuality can be seen in modern day Kosovo where their culture, churches, and community is under constant threat. The rich history of Orthodox Christianity in Kosovo faces a bleak future and one of little hope. If the Bosnian Serbs continue to wait or are forced by the international community to accept Bosnian centralization then surely the same fate awaits them and this applies to Islamization.
Islamist Terrorism in Bosnia as Turkish Interference Continues in the Balkans
http://www.weeklystandard.com/print/blogs/islamist-terrorism-bosnia-turkish-interference-continues-balkans_607715.html?page=2
Islamist Terrorism in Bosnia as Turkish Interference Continues in the Balkans
Stephen Schwartz
November 3, 2011 1:14 PM
On Friday, October 28, a 23-year-old Slav Muslim from Serbia named Mevlid Jasarevic fired an automatic weapon for 30 minutes at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina. According to the Washington Post, Jasarevic also carried hand grenades and had been arrested for theft in Austria in 2005 and for waving around “a large knife” during a tour of south Serbia by Western diplomats last year.
No American personnel were injured in the Sarajevo incident, but a Bosnian policeman guarding the embassy was wounded. The embassy is a fortress-like structure erected well away from the center of the city after the Dayton Accords ended the Bosnian war in 1995. It is located at Number 1, Robert C. Frasure Street, named for a U.S. diplomat who was killed, with two other Americans, then-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Kruzel and Air Force Colonel Sam Nelson Drew, in a driving accident on a mountain road above Sarajevo during the negotiations that led to the Dayton agreement.
Jasarevic’s assault was stopped when he was shot by one of a group of Bosnian police who arrived at the embassy. The terrorist was treated at a local hospital and handed back to Bosnian judicial authorities on October 31. On November 2, as also reported by the Washington Post, two Bosnians, Dino Pecenkovic, 24, and Munib Ahmetpasic, 21, were arrested for having driven Jasarevic to Sarajevo from the local headquarters of the ultra-fundamentalist Wahhabi sect, in the small northern Bosnian village of Gornja Maoca.
Last year, Bosnian police raided Gornja Maoca, arresting eight extremists and seizing military equipment and explosives. When Jasarevic carried out his attack, news reportsshowed him with the characteristic untrimmed beard and short breeches that hard-core Wahhabis wear in alleged emulation of Muhammad.
This skirmish involving an obscure radical Muslim points to a neglected frontline zone in the Balkan struggle against Wahhabism. Jasarevic comes from Novi Pazar, a Muslim-majority town in a small area known as “the Sandzhak”—a Turkish word meaning “banner” and denoting an administrative district under the Ottomans—that is divided between Serbia and Montenegro.
Close observers of the Balkans have expressed concern about Islamist agitation in the Sandzhak of late. Muslims from the Serbian area of the Sandzhak call themselves “Bosnian” but speak a Serbian dialect, and their religious institutions have been contested. Until recently, although living in Serbia, they were subject officially to the spiritual jurisdiction of Mustafa Ceric, the Bosnian “grand mufti” located in Sarajevo and aligned with the Egyptian fundamentalist hate preacher Yusuf Al-Qaradawi.
Sandzhak Muslims are poor, rural folk and the object of derision by Muslims in Bosnia proper, who recognize them immediately by their Serbian idiom. On October 16, the president of Serbia, Boris Tadic, and Bakir Izetbegovic, the Muslim representative in the three-member Bosnian presidency (which also includes a Serb and a Croat), announced an agreement under which the “Bosnian Muslims” living in the Serbian Sandzhak would be united with the “Serbian Muslims” elsewhere in that country. The latter group had hitherto been governed from Belgrade, the Serbian capital, in a separate religious administration. Notwithstanding the horrors of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, at least 3.5 percent of Serbia’s population is Muslim, totaling around 250,000 out of 7.3 million.
The joining of “Bosnian Muslims in Serbia” to “Serbian Muslims,” was, according to Tadic and Izetbegovic, arranged by Mustafa Ceric and Mehmet Gormez, a Turkish Muslim cleric. Gormez last year became head of Turkey’s state religious affairs directorate, or Diyanet. Imposition of unity on the Muslims in Serbia, who differ in their self-identification, and the involvement of a Turkish government representative in brokering the arrangement, has not been well received by Sarajevo Muslims. Bosnian Muslims in Bosnia accuse their “grand mufti” Ceric of selling out their Sandzhak coreligionists, in the interest of an unethical deal with the Serbian government.
Further, the intrusion of the Turkish Diyanet and Gormez in the Sandzhak stirred lively condemnation by Bosnian Muslim intellectuals, similar to recent protests over Turkish meddling in the affairs of the Muslim communities of Macedonia, where Islam is a minority faith, and Kosovo, where it represents the overwhelming majority.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in a state visit to Macedonia in September, prayed publicly at a Sufi shrine that has been vandalized and occupied by Wahhabis. As head of the Diyanet, Gormez reports to Erdogan. Turkish religious outreach in the Balkans as well as in the large Turkish emigrant communities of Germany and the Netherlands is guided by the politicians in power in Ankara, representing Erdogan’s Justice and Development party, known by its Turkish initials as the AKP. In Kosovo, Erdogan’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and his education minister, Omer Dincer, have called for revision of local textbooks to provide a more favorable picture of Turkish dominion over the Balkans, from the mid-14th to the early-20th centuries. Kosovar historians have protested that textbooks should not be changed to accommodate Turkish demands.
When news arrived in Bosnia that the Sandzhak Muslims had been handed over to control by Serbia, reactions were much sharper. A blog, Glasnik Nacionalnog kongresa Republike BiH (the Newsletter of the National Congress of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is a political group rather than a legislative institution), is well-known for its sharp criticism of corruption in Bosnian politics. Unfortunately, it appears only in Bosnian. But in its October 17 issue, it included an article by one Vahid Sendijarevic, declaring “Turkey was only an occupier in Bosnia-Herzegovina and cannot be trusted,” and denouncing Turkish mediation between the Bosnian Muslims and Muslims in Serbia.
From a Muslim intellectual, such language was startling. Sendijarevic stated, “Turkey’s relations with Serbia were always more important than the fate of the Muslims in Serbia and the Muslims in Bosnia, and of Bosnia itself.” He pointed out that during the 19th century, the Ottomans granted autonomy to Serbia, including the right of Serbia to expel its Muslims, but turned “uncontrollable” Bosnia-Herzegovina over to the Habsburg empire. Sendijarevic added, “Turkey thinks only of the interests of one nation, the Turks.” He concluded, “the worst trickery played in Bosnia-Herzegovina today is symbolized by Ceric, who issued the policy statement, ‘Turkey is our mother,’ meaning that the Turks are our guardians and have a green light to interfere in our affairs and decide things on our behalf.”
Bosnians perceive that Turkey is undergoing an economic boom and that Serbia has been promised entry into the European Union, while Bosnia-Herzegovina sinks deeper into poverty and unemployment, with an increasing brain drain of its educated youth, who yearn only to emigrate, with no hope of their country’s acceptance by the EU.
With his Wahhabi beard, short pants, and automatic weapon, Mevlid Jasarevic from Novi Pazar was motivated probably more by hatred of the West than outrage at Bosnian Muslim machinations in his community, when he fired at the American Embassy. But the little strip of land in south Serbia called the Sandzhak bears watching, as it becomes a new theater for the intrigues of Erdogan’s government, and a place where distant clashes half-glimpsed by outsiders may produce major consequences in an increasingly chaotic world.
