Terrorist Cells Find Foothold in Balkans

Washington Post ^ | December 1, 2005 | Rade Maroevic and Daniel Williams

[kronos77]

In particular, Islamic radicals are looking to create cells of so-called white al Qaeda, non-Arab members who can evade racial profiling used by police forces to watch for potential terrorists. "They want to look European to carry out operations in Europe," said a Western intelligence agent in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia and Montenegro, adjacent to Bosnia. "It's yet another evolution in the tools used by terrorists."

...

n addition, Serbian police accidentally came across a key suspect in the March 2004 bombings of Madrid commuter trains while he was traveling through the country by train. He arrived in the Balkans in July, and Serbian police investigators conjecture that he was seeking haven either in Bosnia or Kosovo and perhaps safe passage to the Middle East. They quickly extradited the man, Abdelmajid Bouchar, a Moroccan citizen, to Spain.

...

Last Thursday night, Bosnian police arrested a fifth suspect in the town of Hadzici, near Sarajevo. The police found about 20 pounds of explosives hidden in woods near his home. The man, whose name has not been made public, is suspected of being in charge of providing explosives to the rest of group.

Police officials here say Bektasevic, 19, also ran a Web site on behalf of Abu Musab Zarqawi, the Jordanian who heads the insurgent group al Qaeda in Iraq. He had pictures of the White House in his computer, they added.

[ncountylee]

Clinton's legacy.

[ncountylee]

With a big Wesley Clark assist.

[citizencon]

Milosevic had Bosnia under control until Clinton and his magnificent general Wesley Clark interfered and let loose the Bosnian Muslim terrorists. Clinton's war worsened the situation in the Balkans. Ironically, Clark says that the Iraq War has created more terrorists.

[Ciexyz]

Yes, Clinton's legacy. Hillary will give us more of the same, if she's elected Prez.

[VOA]

How can parts of the area still be lawless?
I thought Bill Clinton saved the place, just like he saved Haiti...(end sarcasm)

[Bogolyubski]

Yep. This situation is absolutely a legacy of a Lord Hee-Haw and his little Stepford-General, Wesley (with help from St. Madeleine the Hideous also). However, that was six long years ago. Would someone care to explain why the Bush administration still has our troops on the ground in Bosnia and Kosovo propping up regimes that are tacitly supporting the creation of units such as those described in the article?

No dount Clinton, Clark & Co. are utter treasonous scum who would both go before a firing squad if there were any justice. But wasn't all that supposed to change six years ago? Wasn't there going to be a "new tone" in Washington?

[ncountylee]

Would someone care to explain why the Bush administration still has our troops on the ground in Bosnia and Kosovo propping up regimes that are tacitly supporting the creation of units such as those described in the article?

Only as part of NATO.

[BIGLOOK]

"They want to look European to carry out operations in Europe,"
The new Castrati? (ala Ottoman Empire)

[GAB-1955]

What was the alternative? A Balkans civil war spreading throughout Europe? Look what was going on: Serbs, Croats, Bosnians, Kosovars, Albanians, and Macedonians were all trying to get their piece of the pie. There were mass expulsions of populations all over the places; Croatian General Ante Gotovina supervised the expulsions of 200,000 Serbs in 1995. The Bosnian Serbs were shelling Sarajevo from three mountain ridges surrounding the area. That sort of multi-sided war would have led to foreign intervention of one sort or another, because no side had the strength to win. Serbia wouldn't have; Croatia didn't have the strength, even working with the Bosnians, who they despised; and Bosnia had no strength at all.

So who would you have preferred to intervene? NATO? Or Iran? The U.N. certainly botched their peacekeeping. Remember all the observer hostages the Bosnian Serbs took?

That NATO intervention might not have been pretty, or wanted by the people of former Yugoslavia, but it was necessary to prevent a worse war from starting.

Some of us remember what was going on as well as the Serbs.

[VOA]

from the article:
...police in Croatia arrested five Bosnians whom Italian military
intelligence had fingered for involvement in a plot to bomb the
papal funeral. The group originated in Gornja Maoca, a town in
northeastern Bosnia, and had planned to smuggle rocket launchers,
explosives and detonators into Italy. The plot fell apart,
Western intelligence officials said, when a suspect was arrested in Rome in April.

Sounds like the only reason Bosnia is not regarded as a flaming-hot
source of Islamic terrorists...
is because investigators are doing a great job of playing defense.
I guess the press thinks that a person can't be a terrorist until
they've murdered a few innocents.

(Just like it's been here in the USA...with the lefties saying
"there's no terrorism threat" because Dubya has done a good job of
defending against terrorism.)

[WilliamofCarmichael]

the Balkans are becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks in Europe. . ."It's yet another evolution in the tools used by terrorists."

The W-P employees made no mention of the radical Muslims' most valuable tool that made all the other tools possible, Bill Clinton.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: intervention

It's not the intervention so much IMO, it's more a matter of whose side were we on.

To wit, "Clinton-Approved Iranian Arms Transfers Help Turn Bosnia into Militant Islamic Base " (from an Internet search)

[kronos77]

It is newer question who started the war and with what reason, cause man can allways lie about it.
One that it counts is what remains after the war. That you cannot lie about.

Before Clintons adventure on Balkans- Osama was in Afghanistan.

After Clintons adventure on Balkans- Osama still in afghanistan, but allover the world also. Oh, and yes, New York have cople of thousands inhabbitants left.

Sincerely. Who killed people on manhaten?
Osama or William Jefferson Clinton?

You can kill Osama, but ideology of leftism and defetism and American self-destruction embodied in Democrates and leftiess will live.

Serbs surrvived Clinton. Can Americans surrvive him also?

[kronos77]

Oh, and yes, New York have cople of thousands inhabbitants LESS.

Sorry for mistake.

[mark502inf]

why the Bush administration still has our troops on the ground in Bosnia and Kosovo propping up regimes that are tacitly supporting the creation of units such as those described in the article?

First, the "regime" in Bosnia is exactly who found and arrested the terrorists. They are also the same regime who has sent soldiers to serve alongside us in Iraq. Second, we only have about 220 soldiers left in Bosnia, brought down from a high of 30,000 ten years ago. The EU runs the international force now in Bosnia and the Americans are under a small NATO element that is training the Bosnian military and assisting in counter-terrrorism nd tracking down the remaining war criminals. President Bush's Balkans policy has been a success in terms of drawing down U.S. forces, maintaining stability in the region, and increased cooperation in the war on terror. That's probably why you don't hear much about it.

[Jacob Kell]

"we only have about 220 soldiers left in Bosnia, brought down from a high of 30,000 ten years ago."

Great. If Bush was President during the '90s, odds are there probably wouldn't have been any of all that fratricidal war crap.

[mark502inf]

Great. If Bush was President during the '90s, odds are there probably wouldn't have been any of all that fratricidal war crap.

Well, he certainly would have acted more decisively. Bush chastised Clinton for publicly taking ground troops off the table at the start of the Kosovo War. Clark's poorly planned air campaign was initially so weak and escalated so slowly that Milosevic was not induced to call off his ethnic cleansers and meanwhile, with no ground threat, the Serb paramilitaries stayed dispersed and actually accelerated the pace of their atrocities.

[Jacob Kell]

THere wouldn't have been a war, IMHO. Milosebitch knew that Clinton was a wussy who was reluctant to go very far in war. Bush on the other hand would have scared that son-of-a-bitch into behaving himself.

[GAB-1955]

We've certainly survived Clinton. Five years into W's administration, many of the bad decisions he made have been reversed, or made harmless by time.

Osama's organization has transformed more into a franchise, with the MO the bomb in the subway or hotel rather than blowing up a building.

Very shortly, the number of conservative judges is going to skyrocket when the Democrats lose their filibustering power.

The Iraq war is progressing well.

China is growing as a world power, but is showing some serious social cracks that are keeping it from working at full efficiency--and the U.S. and Taiwanese intelligence are doing to China what China does to us.

We're going to make it.