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| Fundamentalist Mujahedeen attract speculation, fear in Bosnia By Terry Boyd and Ivana Avramovic, Stars and Stripes Stripes Sunday magazine, April 14, 2002
Last May 25 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Vojin Jovanovic tried to roast a pig, a Serb tradition marking the 40th day of mourning for his wife. Just after the widower and two friends set the animal on the spit, about 200 Mujahedeen — fundamentalist Muslim fighters who had settled in Bosnia — appeared. They took the pig and threw it in the Bosna River, the western boundary for the tiny hamlet of Bocinja in central Bosnia. "They said, ‘This is an Islamic Republic!’" Jovanovic said. The Serbs might not have been innocent victims in the confrontation. In a February interview, Monica Thams, a Swedish aid worker who was in Bocinja that day, said the Serbs probably meant to provoke the Mujahedeen by roasting the pig in front of their mosque during Friday prayers. If that was their goal, they succeeded. At least 75 Mujahedeen charged the Serbs, Thams recalled. As she tried to get out of town before things really exploded, Thams met two cars of police trying to hold back perhaps 200 Mujahedeen in dozens of vehicles. "They came out of nowhere!" she said, adding that the Mujahedeen began manhandling the outnumbered local police. There is no question that there are Mujahedeen in Bosnia. The question is whether they are dangerous, whether anyone is watching them closely or whether anyone knows for sure where they are. Bosnian officials say it is clear that there are links between international terrorists and people within Bosnia. Two Bosnian passports belonging to naturalized Egyptians found in a suspected al-Qaida safehouse in Kabul clearly link terrorists in Bosnia to Afghanistan. Despite the war on terrorism, the situation in Bocinja — and indeed Bosnia — is not dramatically different from last May. Bosnian officials say they are conducting an ongoing push to expel those who are in the country illegally, but Islamic fundamentalists remain in significant numbers. SFOR patrols monitor the Mujahedeen — and vice versa. "We observe them, they observe us," said Maj. J.M. "Jens" Jorgenson, assistant chief of staff for personnel at SFOR’s Nordic-Polish Battle Group headquarters in Doboj, about 20 miles north of Bocinja. SFOR has removed a small base in Bocinja, about 50 miles west of the main U.S. SFOR headquarters at Eagle Base, because there have been fewer incidents since 2000, when Mujahedeen attacked two generals in two separate incidents. Both times, SFOR officials were escorting Serbs trying to return to the village. Two years ago, there were about 86 Mujahedeen families living in Bocinja, according to police authorities in Doboj. Most left last year after U.N. officials started repatriating Serb returnees driven out during the war. Officially, only six Mujahedeen families remain. However, Mujahedeen still gather regularly in the hamlet, especially after midnight, according to Bosko Jovanovic, leader of Bocinja’s Serb families. He and other Serbs told Stars and Stripes that among the fundamentalist are Abu Hamza, a former Mujahedeen commander whom authorities identify as a Palestinian named Hamsa Husamedin. "Without a doubt, Abu Hamza is the big boss here," Jovanovic said. In the nearby city of Zavidovici, local International Police Task Force chief Mesaka Tadulala confirmed some of Jovanovic’s claims. He said he sends SFOR reports about gatherings in Bocinja, but no one even acknowledges the intelligence. Tadulala listed numerous frustrations, including a lack of cooperation from Bosnian police. He is so uncertain about the loyalty of his own Bosnian staff that he never tells them about upcoming operations, the Fijian policeman said. "We’re here to monitor, to be present, but not really do anything," Tadulala said. American SFOR officials have been keeping an eye on the Mujahedeen since the start of the mission in Bosnia, said U.S. Army Maj. Edward Larkin, spokesman at the Eagle base Media Operation Center. "If we have good information we track them," Larkin said. He declined to discuss specifics citing "operational security." Assessing the danger Media reports indicate, and Bosnian workers at Eagle Base confirm, that U.S. Special Operations Command forces — Army Delta Force and Navy SEALs — come and go from Bosnia, part of teams trying to apprehend Serb war criminals. One worker, who asked not to be quoted, said he worked with some of the soldiers, and was even presented an SOCOM unit medal for his efforts. But until Sept. 11, local police and SFOR were concerned mainly about Bocinja and other Mujahedeen communities as obstacles to the return of Serbs. SFOR officials do acknowledge that Mujahedeen from all over the Muslim world have used Bosnia as a base. "We know they came here and used this for [rest and recreation] and for training," Jorgenson said. While that’s not an ideal situation, Jorgenson said, international officials believed that Mujahedeen would never launch attacks in their safe haven. That attitude apparently changed with the attacks in September. In January, the U.S. asked the Bosnian government to hand over six Algerians whom Bosnian officials arrested in October for plotting to attack the U.S. Embassy and Eagle Base. One of the six, Bensayah Belkacem, once lived in Bocinja, according to police. The six now are prisoners at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. On Sept. 20, Mirodrag Pandurevic, assistant to the Bosnian Minister of Communications and Civil Affairs, told Stars and Stripes that a government review of citizenships given to foreigners during the war was nearly complete, and that 420 citizenships were given to people from Arab countries. Pandurevic added that the review found no terrorists or people wanted on Interpol warrants. Four months later, that position has changed dramatically. "That was then, this is now," said Ivica Misic, Bosnia’s anti-terrorism chief and deputy foreign minister, as anger briefly flashed across his face. During a February interview, Misic said that foreigners, including Muslim fundamentalists, poured into the country for nine years. The arrested Algerians apparently were among at least 741 Arabs and some 3,000 total Mujahedeen who came from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and other Muslim nations to the Yugoslav republic during the Bosnian civil war. Most came on "jihad," or holy war, against the Serb and Croat armies and Serb paramilitaries, fighting as a foreign battalion under the III Corps of the Bosnian army, according to Sead Numanovic, a journalist and former Bosnian military intelligence officer. All foreign fighters were to leave Bosnia within 30 days of the 1995 Dayton accord that ended the war. But most managed to get citizenships in those 30 days. Bosnia’s current reform coalition government is investigating whether corrupt members of the former Party of Democratic Action government handed out Bosnian citizenships illegally to foreigners, Misic said. "Now, we can see a pattern," he said. Cleaning house Bosnian and international officials are reviewing 10,000 total citizenships, said Misic and Tomislav Limov, the deputy Interior minister. In an attempt to prove to the international community that the new coalition government is serious about the war on terrorism, Misic said he expects a significant number — perhaps as many as 40 percent — to be revoked. Those declared persona non grata will be offered first to their countries of origin, then to the United States, Misic and Limov said. Both said unequivocally that they’re not worrying too much about the niceties of civil rights for these outsiders. "I would rather risk violating constitutional laws and make injustice to individuals who can be compensated rather than to allow through our neglect a tragedy to happen that can never be corrected, whose victims could never be compensated," Misic said. Added Limov of those in the country illegally: "We will follow the laws and we will guarantee their rights. But we don’t need them either. It’s expensive for us to feed them and guard them [in Bosnian prisons]. It’s cruel, but it’s true." "You can never know who the bad guys are," Misic said. "But, you can know who violated Bosnian law. That’s the bottom line." However, few Bosnian officials view the Mujahedeen as ticking time bombs. They say most have no criminal records, and have settled down with Bosnian wives. "We don’t believe that the terrorists here are of the worst breed," Misic said. Sleeper agents and the possibility of new terrorists coming across Bosnia’s porous borders worry officials more, Limov said. Limov and Misic both praised the cooperation between the international community and Bosnia. But, they say, on the most sensitive issues, the flow of intelligence appears to be one way. When U.S. officials asked Bosnia to turn over the Algerians, they declined to share recordings of cell phone conversations allegedly between Bensaya Belkacem and top al-Qaida officials in Afghanistan including Abu Zubaydah, the suspected head of al-Qaida operations. "We didn’t get the content of the conversations," Limov said. Explaining why the U.S. held back intelligence, an American official told the Los Angeles Times that "Bosnia-Herzegovina is still a developing democracy, to put it mildly, and their rule of law is not quite mature enough to handle this issue." Today, Mujahedeen and their local Bosnian sympathizers are not limited to Bocinja. According to local police, they have spread out into the nearby cities of Zavidovici, Zenica, Doboj and Ilidza. On a recent Sunday, two 3rd Infantry Division soldiers told Stars and Stripes that they frequently see bearded Mujahedeen wearing traditional Muslim clothing in those cities. "Go into Zenica and you see ’em all over the place," said one soldier, who requested that his name not be used. The soldiers produced a green patch, about three inches wide by two inches inches high, with the words "El-Mudzahid" in an arch. It is the patch that Mujahedeen wore while serving with the Bosnian III Corps. "You can buy these from ’em all day for like two [konvertible marks — about $1] each in Zenica," he said. Asked if his unit helps in the SFOR effort to track Mujahedeen, the soldier answered, "That’s way out of my lane, sir. All I know is what I see." |
