Posted on 12/31/2004 2:58:23 PM PST by Destro
Terrorism: the Bosnian connection
New Statesman, August 2, 2004 by Brendan O'Neill
According to the 9/11 commission report, Iran allowed at least eight of the "muscle hijackers", the young men, most of them Saudis, who barked instructions and wielded box-cutters on the flights of 11 September 2001, to travel across Iranian territory to Afghanistan between the preceding October and February. The report does not cite this as evidence that the Iranians had prior knowledge of 9/11. But that has not stopped some commentators from drawing conclusions. "Did we invade the wrong country?" asked Charles Kraut-hammer in the Washington Post.
A longer-term link between Iran and 9/11 is being ignored. Between 1992 and 1996 Iran illegally armed the Bosnian Muslims in the former Yugoslavia, flying in military advisers and mujahedin fighters to take on the Serbs.
UN Resolution 713, adopted on 25 September 1991, ruled that member states must suspend "the delivery of all weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia". Yet in 1992 and 1993 Iran armed the Bosnian Muslims, using Boeing 747s to fly weapons, ammunition, anti-tank rockets, communications equipment, uniforms and helmets to Zagreb airport. In late 1993, roughly 30,000 soldiers were armed and equipped by Iran, and by Turkey.
The Bosnian Muslims stopped receiving arms near the end of 1993, when there was heightened conflict between Muslims and Croats. But after the federation of Croatia and Bosnia was formed in March 1994, the Clinton administration, according to Professor Cees Wiebes of the University of Amsterdam, author of Intelligence and the War in Bosnia 1992-95, gave "a green light to the arms supplies from Iran to Croatia". This opened the floodgates. According to the US House Republican policy committee, in a statement of 26 April 1996, "eight flights a month packed with thousands of tons of arms and ammunition either originating in Iran or purchased and shipped with Iranian backing" arrived in Zagreb. Not only that, but Iran "stationed from 3,000 to 4,000 revolutionary guards [mujahedin] in Bosnia". Mujahedin forces set up training camps: some were financed by Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
Under the 1995 Dayton Peace Accords, the foreign mujahedin units were required to disband and leave. Yet in 2000, the State Department raised concerns about "the hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists" still in Bosnia. In October 2001, Bosnia's interior minister, Muhamed Besic, said that scores of Bin Laden's associates were trying to flee Afghanistan with the intention of "seeking refuge among militant sympathisers in Bosnia". America discovered that it is one thing to give the "green light" to the movement of such forces but quite another to rein them in again.
The link between Iran and 9/11, via Bosnia, is not a directly collaborative or operational one. The link goes deeper than that. It appears that the Bosnia operation, supported by Bill Clinton, played a vital role in globalising the mujahedin mentality, just as western intervention against the Soviets in Afghanistan helped to create it. Many Arabs, as the journalist James Buchan put it, were left stranded in Afghanistan "with a taste for fighting but no cause". Bosnia provided some of them with a new cause.
Brendan O'Neill is assistant editor of Spiked (www.spiked-online.com)
COPYRIGHT 2004 New Statesman, Ltd.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
Wed May 29, 2002
By EDITH M. LEDERER, Associated Press Writer
"The office of the prosecutor did in fact have some information in relation to one of the named terrorists said to have been on one of the hijacked aircraft," Eckhard said, refusing to disclose the hijacker's identity.
In August, just weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, the Yugoslav tribunal unsealed an indictment against three Muslim generals held responsible for war crimes allegedly committed by volunteer foreign fighters under their command, mostly from Islamic countries. They were accused of murdering hundreds of civilians and committing other atrocities.
MORE ON SEPTEMBER 11 AND BOSNIA’S AL-QAEDA NETWORK Another senior commander of Mujahedeen battalion in central Bosnia-Herzegovina was Abu Zubair al-Haili (a.k.a. Mohammed Haydar Zammar, "the Bear"), German citizen of Syrian descent. He was the chief handler of the Hamburg Al-Qaeda cell responsible for September 11 suicide hijackings. He received military training in Pakistan in 1991 plied his deadly skills in what militant Islamic fundamentalists refer to as the " Jihad - holy war" which raged in ethnically strife-torn Bosnia in the 1990s.
Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar (American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon) were not like the other hijackers. The two Saudis militant backgrounds is more comprehensive than the others, despite their young ages. In the mid-1990s both apparently were in the Bosnia conflict, and then fought in Chechnya at various times between 1996 and 1998. This was confirmed by the Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet during the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence hearings.
clinton Legacy bump!
Lying, rapist, America-hater, socialist, lowlife, disgraced, impeached, liberal, demokkkRAT, nazi, scumbag, traitor, dirtbag, subhuman, ex-president, Willie Jeffy Bubba Klintoon.
Sorry; just ignore that post. Lost my head. Happy New Year!
You forgot to capitalize Nazi and "dirtbag" should have two words or at least a dash between dirt and bag.
I'm working on it, a.
However, the KLA in part had several ties to terrorism. The KLA raises part of their funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo are at the heart of the " Balkan Route" that links Afghanistan and Pakistan to the drug markets of Europe. This roue is work an estimated 400 billion a year and it handles 80% of heroin destined for Europe. But, it is acknowledged, that Bin Laden's Al Queda had " both trained and financially supported," the Albanians, and that the Kosovo border had been infiltrated by Bosnian, Chechen and Afghan, mujaheedeen, in " crossings, of parties up to 50 men." " Documents found on the body of a KLA member showed that he had escorted several " volunteers" into Kosovo, including more than a dozen Saudis. Each " volunteer" carried a passport identifying him as a Macedonian Albanian."
....................................
Shortly fter the formation of the first mujadidin unit, a second mujadidin group started out from Albania toward Kosovo. On the night of July 18-19, 1998, that group had two misfortunes. The first was " meeting" a patrol of the Yugoslav Army Border Control. The second, the group was supposed to be led, by a Lt. Colonel in the Iraqi army, Nuri Salif Muhamed, who had attempted to enter Kosovo, from the other side, from Serbia, but members of the Interior Miniistry of Serbia arrested him in time, in the village of Resen, near Bosilegrad.
So my questions are as followed. How large was our contact with the KLA? Were 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar trained by the United States? Both men, traveled to Bosnia in the mid 1990's? Bosnia is now the major center of Al Queda, it is now the pipeline of recruits to Afghanistan and Iraq, the King Fahd Mosque, the largest in Bosnia recruits fighters and volunteers- so i guess as Richard Clarke says- we really stopped a jihad there
UN relief supplies intended for the surrounded Muslims at Sarajevo ended up being sold on the black market, making corrupt UN soldiers and Bosnian Muslims marketeers rich.
French commando's rappelled from a US Green Beret helicopter and stormed an Iranian traning facility for Bosnian Muslims located in a three story ski-resort in the middle of the night. The Iranians later admitted they were pklanning attacks on NATO. A US State Department spokesman: ' this is a very serious development we cannot tolerate foreign fighters who are a threat to our soldiers.'
So, i checked 'General' Clark's book, out at the library, and i was struck by several passsges.
" Even as the diplomatic efforts were moving forward, my commanders and I had been watching for weeks as the KLA slowly rebuilt it's strengh." pg. 327
" by the morning of May 26, we had considerable info about the KLA's plans to attack into Kosovo. ..... I was uneasy from the moment i learned of the plan, not that my reacion would make any difference. What i evisanged were the green troops, ( green not when you have 3000 Iranian Republican guards) lightly equipped trying to make an infantry assault against the least of the degraded of the Serb forces. But, i also reconized the full signifaicance of the KLA's offensive for us. pg. 328
I warned there would be other difficult decesions. the capabilities of the KLA would have to be fully exploited. We had scrupulously avoided direct contact with them in Albania. pg.. 339(Now why would that be?)
Shelton floated the idea of just arming the KLA, and letting it's soldiers fight. I was glad that Washington was consdering doing something with the Kosovars. I always felt that if they were going to operate it had to be as guerillas, but that's no long term solutuion. just means of prolonging and enlarging the crisis. ( pg. 343)
Throughout the summer of 1998, when the conflict was preventable, some questioned the facts on the ground or the Serbs intent. How many villages have really been destroyed? Perhaps they are only directing their effors against the terrorists, others distrbute the blame, the serbs are just responding to the attacks from the KLA. ( pg. 420)
So my questions are as followed. How large was our contact with the KLA? Were 9/11 hijackers Nawaf Alhazmi and Khalid Almihdhar trained by the United States? Both men, traveled to Bosnia in the mid 1990's? Bosnia is now the major center of Al Queda, it is now the pipeline of recruits to Afghanistan and Iraq, the King Fahd Mosque, the largest in Bosnia recruits fighters and volunteers- so i guess as Richard Clarke says- we really stopped a jihad there
CORRECTION, THE US ACTED DUMB, AND INSTRUCTED OUR MILITARY BLOCADE TO LOOK THE OTHER WAY AS THE IRANIANS WERE SMUGGLING ARMS TO MUSLIM FANATICS IN BOSNIA TO TERRORIZE THEIR CHRISTIAN NEIGHBORS. I was screaming at the TV news as they reporting such stupidity. Clinton wanted to be loved by the Muslim terrorists, I guess?
...bill clinton...
The gift that just keeps on giving!
bttt
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