Posted on 10/30/2011 8:45:34 AM PDT by Decombobulator
The young man wore a long beard and pants that stopped above his ankles. He sprayed the U.S. embassy in Bosnia with machine gun fire.
The recent rise of militant Wahhabis and other Islamic radicals across the Balkans, including in Bosnia, Serbia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Albania, Montenegro and even European Union member Bulgaria, has triggered concerns that the region could become a breeding ground for terrorists with easy access to Western Europe or the U.S.
The shooter in Friday’s incident, 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic, came from Serbia — the southern region of Sandzak, a Wahhabi stronghold — but also had strong links with a conservative Bosnian Muslim village that has attracted police attention in the past.
Many fear that militant Wahhabis and other extremist Muslims from the Balkans could slip across borders and blend into Western societies before conducting terrorist attacks.
There have already been incidents. In March, a Kosovo Albanian acting alone fatally shot two American airmen in Frankfurt. In 2008, three ethnic Albanian brothers originally from Macedonia were implicated in a plot to attack the U.S. Army’s Fort Dix military base in New Jersey.
The presence of radical Muslims in the war-ravaged Balkans is linked to mujahedeen foreign fighters who joined Bosniak Muslims in their battle against the Serbs in Bosnia’s 1992-95 war for independence.
The Islamic fighters in Bosnia were largely tolerated by the U.S. and the West because of their opposition to former Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic’s quest to create a “Greater Serbia” out of the former Yugoslav republics.
The issue of radical Islamic influence is particularly politically charged in Bosnia, a country divided between Bosniak Muslims, Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs. The Serbs maintain there is a huge presence of Wahhabis in the country, while Bosniaks downplay the problem and at times claim it does not exist.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I was in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia working with the governments, right after the wars ended. There were known enclaves of radical islamists in Bosnia. But they were closely watched and contained by the government. The vast majority of the muslims in Bosnia were muslims in name only. The government certainly didn’t “tolerate” them.
Bill Clinton owns that 100%.
Bush recognized Kosovo so to say Bill owned a 100% isn’t necessarily accurate.
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