Posted on 01/31/2004 8:09:43 PM PST by Destro
THE BALKANS: Al Qaeda Looking for Blond Recruits
January 20, 2004: Al Qaeda continues to show up in Bosnia. A Bosnian government official issued a statement asserting that Al Qaeda is looking for young Bosniak Muslims to enlist in a so-called white Al Qaeda. Heres the telling quote, as reported by western sources from a Bosnian Serb newspaper: "Reports by international intelligence services saying that future terrorists will be blue-eyed and blond indicate that Al Qaeda is recruiting in Bosnia-Hercegovina 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." The recruiting is allegedly done by non-governmental aid organizations funded by Islamists.
January 13, 2004: Several sources are once again reporting active Al Qaeda recruitment in Bosnia. These sources run from speculation in the Bosnian press to unofficial statements by SFOR. The specific targets of Al Qaeda recruiters are Bosniak Muslims who have become Wahabi (the conservative form of Islam from Saudi Arabia). The Al Qaeda recruiters are identified as Islamist mujahadeen fighters who came to Bosnia for the war against Serbia, married Bosnian women, and have stayed on in Bosnia. One report had Bosnian recruits fighting in Chechnya. As Europeans, it is assumed Al Qaeda believes the Bosnians are better able to slip through police and transportation security checks.
I'll bet he saw no shortage of military-aged Muslim men in Tuzla. Tuzla is where thousands soldiers arrived from Srebrenica, according to the Bosnians themselves in statements before their parliament. The Bosnian Government also refused to give the ICRC (red cross) the names of the soldiers who arrived in Muslim-controlled territory after Srebrenica fell. How can people get at the truth without getting this information from the Bosnian government about who, and exactly how many, did arrive from Srebrenica alive?
Is he for real in the sense that was he in Tuzla? I don't know. Maybe so. If he was there in 2001 that was pretty long after the fall of Srebrenica, so what is the question? He could hardly have been an eyewitness. As I said, I don't follow his posts, so... what is he claiming other than that he was in Tuzla and that Serbs have horns growing out of their heads?
I was in Sector North (Krajina) when Srebrenica fell. I don't claim to know what really happened there. I wasn't there myself. Even had I been there myself, I still might not have known exactly what was going on, any more than those poor DutchBat guys knew for sure.
What is clear to me: The people of Srebrenica were first and foremost sold out by their own leaders (nothing new there -- also nothing new in the 90s Balkans wars -- just as the Krajina Serbs were first and foremost sold out by their leaders, Croats in Vukovar and a few other places ditto... the Bosnian Muslim leadership seemed to do it most often to greatest effect, however). And, yes, sorry, but something monstrous did occur in Srebrenica and I certainly don't think the VRS had clean hands there. Far from it. There was a ghastly massacre of some sort. Or rather, a series of massacres.
Whether the number was 8,000 or 2,000 killed -- does it really matter? Either is unacceptable. To put it mildly. I'm not going to argue numbers.
Looked at from Mladic's point of view, what was he supposed to do with all those military-aged guys? Take them prisoner and keep them imprisoned somehow somewhere? What to feed them? (He didn't exactly have any Guantanamo handy.) Should he just let them go so they could fight against him sometime next Tuesday? So perhaps the unthinkable was thought of, and done. It wasn't the first time nor the last time it was done in former Y, and it certainly wasn't only Serbs who ever thought of it and did it, either. But neither were they above it. As Wraith said, all sides committed atrocities. That includes the Serb side.
The above paragraph is not in any way meant to excuse the killing of unarmed men. I shouldn't have to say that. But people get strange ideas on here sometimes. Also the fact that their own leaders sold them out doesn't excuse what the Serbs did. Just as the Krajina Serbs being sold out by their leaders doesn't excuse what the Croats did. And so on until we've gone all around the ring of Croats, Muslims and Serbs.
Here's a link to the story of the fall of Srebrenica as written by a Bosnian Muslim soldier who was in Tuzla at the time. A few details are not accurate, for instance about what happened in Croatia, as he seems to have got Op Flash (May, Sector West) and Op Storm (August 4, Sectors North and South) mixed up (but that's okay, he wasn't there -- I was -- and it's peripheral to his story). Also, he was perhaps not aware that the Bosnian Muslim authorities refused to take in the Srebrenica "refugees" (technically, they were DPs) in Tuzla town (even though UNHCR insisted they had room for 10,000 more DPs in the town of Tuzla -- the Bosnian Muslim leadership was trying to make a political point to "the international community" and never mind the poor DPs), so UNHCR (not the "regular UN") set up the camp at the old airfield for them. Otherwise, for the most part, this is a pretty good account of what was going on at the time, I think. I've read and heard the accounts of UN/UNHCR/UNHCHR/ICRC who were in the area at the time, and this guy's story mostly matches those accounts.
Okay, back to Mr. Jones. He was, if genuine, apparently in one area at one time long after there was any war. And he was an American SFOR (or whatever they were called at the time he was there -- first it was IFOR, then SFOR...then was it changed again?) So he's the way he is.
About the American IFOR/SFORS: I really appreciate our military and I'm not speaking against them in any way. I really liked and admired the American military officers who were in Cambodia. But, the American IFOR/SFORs were the laughingstock of the local people and also other internationals in theatre.
My first sight of the American IFORs, I was shocked. They came into our UN canteen in Zagreb in January 1996 and PUT THEIR FEET UP ON THE TABLES (yes, they did!). They were cocky, loud and loved to shoot off their mouths about how they, the great Americans, were going to do what the stupid UN couldn't do -- and as guests in OUR dining room! (Never mind the poor UN had a sucky mandate precisely because of the US of A and these idiots weren't around when there really was a war.)
The Norwegian IFORs were really great. Totally different. I liked them. That's another story.
The whole time I was there, the poor Americans mostly hunkered down in their compounds and whenever they did go out (even when riding trams in Zagreb or going to their own PX in Slavonski Brod in BiH near the border with Croatia) they wore flak jackets and helmets and the whole works. I actually felt sorry for them, especially when it was hot. And they looked ridiculous. Nobody else went around like that, not even the other IFORs. I'm not faulting our American soldiers. They were just following orders. And I felt sorry for them being laughed at. They couldn't help what their orders were.
So how could an American IFOR/SFOR get much of a clue about what BiH was all about? They never really mingled with the local people. And you have to move around to different areas and talk with all kinds of people to even begin to understand what it's all about there.
BTW, the American military who were there all along (way before there were any IFORs or SFORs) running the MASH at Pleso (near Zagreb airport) were tops. Can't say enough good about them.
Anyway, I wondered if maybe the American SFOR types had changed their ways since I left the area. After all, I want to give Mr. Jones the benefit of the doubt. Nope. Found this:
... about American troops...
Here colloquially, theyre known as Russians with money. Because when the Russians went somewhere in the old days, they would build a fort and they would stay inside it. They wouldnt go downtown to have a coffee or anything. They didnt have any money. They were entirely suspicious (of others), they were ideological, and so they just really fortressed themselves in.
When Americans came to Tuzla after the war, they built this fortress, and they stayed in it. And when they went out, they went out in armored convoys with 50-caliber machine guns pointing at every old lady with a basket going shopping. And they treat everybody as though theyre drug-crazed Iranian terrorists, and frankly that is why the locals laugh at them. They call them Russians with money because they know they can afford a coffee but they still never go downtown for a coffee because theyre scared their (sic) going to be kidnapped if they go downtown for a coffee.
That is the way American soldiers are viewed. They are viewed from peace-building perspective as a joke, whereas the Scandinavians, the Dutch are really liked because theyre downtown in the coffee bars. Theyre talking to people. Theyre doing things... But if you want someone to stop a war, you cant do it without America. ...So youve got to get America in perspective.
This interview was done in October 2003, so apparently they haven't changed. BTW, the person being interviewed is Canadian and ex-military. And what he says is exactly right. (Besides, I saw them acting precisely as he describes back in 1996-1998. And they were called "Russians with money" back then, too. I just hoped they'd changed their ways.)
Anyway, Joan has a good point. If you just go to one place at one time, you only see one aspect of the war. You have to move around -- or at least stay in one place which changes hands during the war to get a broader view. It's like taking one frame out of a movie, and thinking that's the whole film.
I've seen each of the three sides grossly mistreat each of the three other sides. I've also known ordinary people on all three sides who never mistreated anyone. Some were even heroic in saving or preventing people of the "other" ethnicity from harm.
I carefully read the Srebrenica story you posted, but it only seems to support the claim that Nasir Oric's soldiers were attacked in a series of firefights by the BSA as they tried to make it to Tuzla.
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