Al Qaeda's Balkan Links

The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.

For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.

These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw light on these actions.

They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of "humanitarian" agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank and from bin Laden's so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in 1994.

The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today's post-war Balkans.

These drug rings in turn form part of an estimated $8 billion a year Taliban annual income from global drug trafficking, predominantly in heroin. According to Mr. Bodansky, the terrorism expert, bin Laden administers much of that trade through Russian mafia groups for a commission of 10% to 15% -- or around $1 billion annually.

The settling of Afghan-trained mujahideen in the Balkans began around 1992, when recruits were brought into Bosnia by the ruling Islamic party of Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, as well as Italy, Germany and Turkey. They were all given journalists' credentials to avoid explicit detection by the West. Others were married immediately to Bosnian Muslim women and incorporated into regular army ranks.

Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around 6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.

The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993, according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time. The reports add that bin Laden then visited a terrorist camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994. The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport records have been lost. Around that time, bin Laden directed al Qaeda "senior commanders" to incorporate the Balkans into an complete southeastern approach to Europe, an area stretching from the Caucasus to Italy. Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon reputed to be the second in command of the entire al Qaeda network, headed up this southeastern frontline.

By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo. Elaborate command-and-control centers were further established in Croatia, and Tetovo, Macedonia as well as around Sofia, Bulgaria, according to the U.S. Congress's task force on terrorism. In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Not even stalwart NATO ally Turkey escaped the network. Areas beyond government control were also visited by bin Laden in 1996 according to London-based Jane's Intelligence Review. The government has been battling two terrorist groups: Jund al Islam, whose assassinated Syrian leader was one of bin Laden's closets confidantes, and the Kurdish PKK, whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, merged his group's activities with those of Iran's Hezbollah in 1998.

Furthermore, as revealed in the February 2001 East Africa bombing trial testimony of Jamal al Fadl -- an al Qaeda operative in charge of weapons development in Sudan -- uranium used in "dirty bombs" that release lethal radioactive material, had been tested in 1994 by members of the Sudan-based Islamic National Front in the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern Cyprus. Cyprus, both its north and southern sides, has also become a center for offshore money laundering by Arab banks fronting al Qaeda funds into the Balkans. The CIA puts al Qaeda's specific Balkan-directed funds -- those tied to the "humanitarian" agencies and local banks and not explicitly counting the significant drug profits added to that -- at around $500 million to $700 million between 1992 and 1998.

So where was the U.S. in all this? It was not until 1995 that the Clinton administration was forced to start pursuing the Islamist network in the Balkans. Not quite a month after the Dayton accords had been signed in November 1995, an influx of Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent tacit approval of the administration, in violation of U.N. sanctions. While publicly pressing Bosnian President Alia Izebegovic to purge remaining Islamist elements, the administration was loath to confront Sarajevo and Tehran over their presence.

Instead, Islamist groups went quietly underground as the windfall of weapons landed in their hands. They later joined up with a new Islamist center in Sofia established as a kind of rear guard by the al Zawahiri. Following the Zagreb arrest and extradition of renowned Egyptian militant Faud Qassim, an al Zawahiri favorite, the Sofia-based militants planned the deployment in Bosnia of terrorists capable of planning and leading possible major terrorist strikes against U.S. and SFOR facilities, according to al Fadl's testimony to the House Task Force on Terrorism.

Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.

By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.

Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.

Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.

With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans. Today, in general, the Balkans are left without the money, political resources, or institutional strength to fight a war on terrorism. And that, for the Balkan Islamists, is a Godsend.

The level of evidence is extremely low, that is why they keep on changing the rules and the standards.

As low as the evidence against Bin Laden and his involvement? Many things are very clear. Such as the position of Milosevic when the war crimes were comitted, his responsibility, his power over the army, his financing and supporting the various paramilitary units, the same units responsible for numerous crimes against civilians.

Let's put it this way, if it is apparent that Bin Laden was behind the WTC terrorist attacks, then it's even more obvious what Milosevic was behind. His links to Karadzic, Mladic, Martic are very well known. And the money he sent them to finance their "activities".

As compared to the easy life Izetbegovic, Augosto Pinochet et al??? If you are going to be a war-criminal, make sure the USA and Europe back you first. The only rule.

The Brits are quite happy to let off old Nazis that live in their country etc. etc.

VRN

Law of the Jugle then. Boy, have we come a long way.

VRN

That's wonderful then. I don't mind people having different opinions (otherwise life would be very boring), but the inability to apply the same standards and the moral trumpeting from hypocrits makes me sick (won't mention Robin 'ethical foreign policy' Cook and his buddies).

VRN

Law of the Jugle then. Boy, have we come a long way

Actually, I was talking about the links, financing and support that Milosevic himself had admitted. I am not sure you read the interview where he was explaining where all that federal money went. It apparently went into good hands, so that Serbia's national interests were being protected, according to him. And Mladic, Karadzic, Martic were those protectors. Law of the jungle? Just plain evidence Voronin, simple facts.

Plain and simple as Tudjman backing his 'boys' in Bosnia and Izetbegovic taking Saudi and Kuwaiti money, arms and mujahideen. Of course, if Milosevic had been a sensible chap, he should have just cut off the Bosnian Serbs so that they could be carved up by the Croats and Bosnian moslems, like they did before, or was that just a made up story? I don't know if you read my links but the alternative scenario would have had everyone living under Izetbegovic's lovely radical Islamic state, or is that just pure propaganda and Izetbegovic is just a fun loving guy who meant no harm and really wasn't put in prison several times for his plans and actions to turn the whole of the SFRY into a radical moslem state Mr. Blubegovic? 'Nuff said.

VRN

Tudjman just as well. He is just not among us any more. And not just for supporting his "boys in Bosnia", but even more importantly for the crimes against Serb civilians during Oluja, and driving out more then 250.000 of them out of Croatia. He would have quite a lot to be held responsible for. Just as the generals that have been brought before Hague that were under his command.

Thanks for posting the facts w/ citations.......proving that poor Hoppie continues to defend Clinton's funding, supplying, training, and promotion of Bosnian & KLA Mujhadeen

Especially thanks to posting the article regarding the brutal Mujhadeen attacks on the moderate Muslims led by Fikret Abdic.

Humanitarian Warriors such as Hoplite supported the Mujhadeen V Corps campaign of pillage and destruction against the legally elected President of Bosnia Fikret Abdic. Hoplite continues to refuse to address the simple question Why didn't the Humanitarian Warriors support the moderate Fikret Adbic instead of the fundamentalist Iztbegovic ?

.............why ?

But explain this to me Bluster: If Milosevic can be indicted as he is a the top of the Chain of Command, why is Izetbegovic still free and no ministers of the Tudjman regime indicted??? Is it at this points that certain governments plead 'national security' or that such actions could destabilize the balkans further. The Hague is a joke. If there was a way to set up a court that could try major world criminals, the Hague is the perfect way NOT to do it, and that is why it is a court for banana republics and why Senator Dole etc. says that a World Court will be DoA. That's not justice, but a media circus.

VRN

Don't expect to get a sensible answer. In fact, it's not even worth the effort. For what it's worth, we have history on our side, we just may be all dead by the time something comprehensive and sensible is published in the West...

VRN

Hmm you have a point. If they can bring and indictment against Izetbegovic then I see no problem in bringing him before the Hague court. And if they can link him with the mujahadeen fighters, or even with Naser Oric and his forces, then there is nothing to argue about. Anyone responsible for war crimes should be held responsible.

And you can't say that the Hague court isn't doing their job. After all they have brought people of various nationalities before the court. You see it as a banana court, a media circus, I may not see it that way. Which doesn't mean that your criticism and objections aren't justified, but without this kind of court, there would be many people free with lot's of blood on their hands. Some still are. And don't say that they would be helf responsible at home, cause in many cases they clearly wouldn't be. The Croat generals that were eventually brought to Hague (with a lot of opposition in Croatia) would probably never be before a court, had there not been Hague and demands by the west towards Croatia to extradite them. Just as in Serbia. At least that's how I see it.

It's quite simple. I suspect that you, like myself, would rather be tried in our own 'soverign' courts that at the Hauge. It does a job, but it is politically motivated and influenced by outside forces. The Western governments turn the evidence tap on and off at will. If you know anything about the acquis communautaire that your state and others wishing to join the European Union is about, one of the most fundamental parts is 'independence of the judiciary'. Under these standards, the Hague and it's methods wouldn't stand a chance.

Impartial and fair justice has to be seen to be done (not just told), which is not the case with the Hauge - if it were, then the nationalist of all those communities would have a much lower level of support. The fact that the Hauge does nothing to counter this and mirrors the colonial administration approach that is taken by persons such as Wolfgang Petritsch which means that it will never be accepted as impartial (and that's without even mentioning who payed/s, supplies, researches the whole Hauge thing). If the major powers refuse to accept a World Court, then why should any of the parties believe the treatises that the Hauge is impartial? Looks like a question of who yields the biggest stick, no?

VRN

I must say, it's very hard to disagree with you. Because in so many ways you are right. Personally, I have never made any illusions about the complete impartiality (and honesty)of such institutions, about the double standards, hypocrisy that is a common thing in international politics, even from a judicial point of view.

Had there been real justice, and intent to bring all sort of war criminals before a court, those of the last decade and those dating back to WW2, and post WW2, then you should have had both people like Arafat, Gadafi, Sharon, high UN officials that were in Bosnia, certain NATO people, some American politicians, some Slovenian (Mitja Ribicic, for post WW2 outerjudicial executions) and a bunch of people from all over the world with blood on their hands. All that is very true. And I am afraid that justice will never get all of them, even though they would deserve it.

Dude,

awesome, line of thinking re: Nasir Oric-Iztbegovic chain of command.......

Then you would also agree that Kfor commanders bear a measure of responsibility for the four fold increase in murder rate since they took control ?

And not just the KFOR in Kosovo, but some high UN officials in Bosnia as well. Some of them even cooperated with Bosnian war criminals, drank alcohol together with Karadzic and Mladic, giving them a carto bianco for their crimes. Even Srebrenica is partly to be blamed on the UN. And then you have Lord Owen, and a couple of other lords who were involved. Man, I would loved to see them in front of the Hague court, and bringing witnesses to testify about their role. I am sure Karadzic would have much to say about them as well as about Milosevic. But then, that must be the reason why they don't really take great effort to arrest him. Hypocrits.

And where the hell is Naser Oric? He should be cleaning his laundry together with Slobo.

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