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This is breaking news: Ayman al-Zawahiri has officially been named ‘emir’ of Al Qaeda. This makes him the successor of Obama bin Laden, who was taken out by a team of Navy Seals earlier this month. Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf reports that it has read classified documents from the Dutch secret intelligence organization (AIVD). According to the documents, Al-Zawahiri was appointed as Al Qaeda’s new leader during a meeting on May 9, a week after the death of OBL. “On May 9, the leadership of Al Qaeda elected Al-Zawahiri during a meeting in the tribal areas, between Afghanistan and Pakistan”,...

BANJA LUKA, Bosnia- Hercegovina (AFP) - Five robbers dressed as NATO (news - web sites) peacekeepers stole over one million euros belonging to an Austrian bank on the eve of the handover of the mission to an EU force, police said. "Five unknown perpetrators dressed in (NATO-led Stabilisation Force) SFOR uniforms stopped an armoured vehicle transporting Raiffeisen Bank's money to the central Bosnian treasury and stole 2,047 million convertible marks (1,05 million euros, 1,34 million dollars)," police spokesman Rade Mutic told AFP. He added that the 'soldiers' had built a checkpoint in the village of Ljubacevo and had flagged down...

UNITED NATIONS -- The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Monday to transfer peacekeeping duties in Bosnia from the NATO-led force to the European Union next month and called for all war crimes suspects to surrender. The transfer will mean the withdrawal of more than 1,000 American troops serving in Bosnia as part of the NATO force. They will be replaced by EU personnel, with the biggest contingent coming from Finland. British Maj. Gen. David Leakey, who will command the new European Union Force, known as EUFOR, said the Europeans will take over on Dec. 2. More than 60,000 NATO-led troops...

July 12 (Bloomberg) -- A U.S. Army general expressed confidence that his multinational force is closing in on Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the top war crimes fugitives in Europe, even as Bosnian officials pointed to confusion over who is responsible for capturing them. ``We are beginning to strangle them,'' said Major General Virgil Packett, commander of the Bosnia Stabilization Force, at a briefing before the House Armed Services Committee today in Washington. ``We are hearing them squeal a bit.'' With Bosnia and Herzegovina's entry into the European Union on hold until the men can be detained under United Nations...

THE chief UN war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia said she expects Bosnian Serb wartime political leader Radovan Karadzic to be handed over for prosecution by today. Carla del Ponte refused to disclose the basis for her optimism that Karadzic, who has been in hiding for nearly a decade, will be arrested by the end of the month. "I'm still thinking that somebody is looking for Karadzic very hard, and that he will be arrested very soon," she said. "Of course I have (information). But you all understand that I cannot tell it now publicly. Let's obtain the arrest of...

XI. SFOR CONTRACTOR INVOLVEMENT Human Rights Watch did not find direct evidence that SFOR soldiers engaged in trafficking of women and girls in Bosnia and Herzegovina.84 Substantial evidence, however, pointed to involvement by SFOR U.S. civilian contractors, who had more freedom to move around Bosnia and Herzegovina than the SFOR peacekeepers and did not face the same prohibitions on visiting nightclubs.85 The contractors, many of them employed by DynCorp, faced allegations of buying women, transporting trafficked women, and violence against trafficked women. DynCorp issued a statement in January 2002 stating that the corporation "took prompt action to understand and deal...

Web posted February 28, 2004 Source: A1 TV and Dnevnik SFOR Responsible For The Crash? "If the investigation shows that the engine of the plane didn’t run well, the flight controllers on Mostar flight will bear direct responsibility for the plane crash, that is to say the French battalion of SFOR", a source close to Bosnian team, which investigates the plane crash in which Macedonian President Boris Trajkovski and Macedonian delegation were killed, told "Beta" agency. "At the moment when the plane hit the hill, it was even 650 meters lower than minimally allowed flight height. Also, during the fall,...

Bosnia detains senior Croat nationalists over alleged organized crime SARAJEVO (AFP) Jan 23, 2004 A senior former Croat nationalist leader suspected of having links to organised crime was arrested by the Bosnian authorities on Friday, officials here said. Police confirmed that Ante Jelavic, who was a member of the country's presidency until he was sacked in 2001, was detained in a joint operation with the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) in the southern town of Mostar. He was arrested along with Miroslav Prce, former defence minister of the Muslim-Croat federation and Miroslav Rupcic, former head of an insurance company. The state...

In accordance with the decision by NATO defence ministers to reduce the Alliance's presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), SFOR has confirmed that due to the improved security situation in the country it will reduce its military presence to about 7,000 soldiers by June 2004. Each of the three SFOR brigades will be renamed as a Multi-National Task Force (MNTF) and consist of approximately 1,800 soldiers. Many of SFOR's armoured and heavy weapons will be withdrawn from BiH. The changes will allow SFOR to shift from being a peace stabilisation mission to a conflict deterrence force. It will maintain situation...

SFOR troops seized an unspecified amount of weapons and ammunition from Radovan Karadzic's house in Pale during a sweep targeting the most wanted war crimes indictee from the 1992-1995 conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). Peacekeepers also found documents that they hope will help capture the fugitive. Two people were detained for questioning. "We searched two premises this morning, including the house of Radovan Karadzic, but found no evidence that he was there,'' SFOR spokesman Lieutenant Matthew Brock said Sunday (11 January). The operation, which began early Saturday and is expected to end Monday, targets indicted war crimes suspects and...

THE BALKANS: The War on Terror Moves In December 11, 2003: SFOR reported a SFOR peacekeepers "sealed off" an area near Zenica, Bosnia. The operation included ground troops and helicopters. SFOR was responding to a tip that certain houses in the area held arms and munitions linked to a "terrorist group." A subsequent report said the terror group could be Al Qaeada. There was no follow-up report after the operation.

Every six months the Pentagon sends nearly 4,000 soldiers to Bosnia and brings nearly 4,000 soldiers home. To see how it's done is to understand why keeping peace has become harder than waging war—and why the Pax Americana has stretched the mighty American military to the limit by William Langewiesche..... One day last fall in Bosnia, I met a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, a peacekeeper there, who said he worried about America's role in the world. He was a big, blond Californian, nearly thirty years old, who had risen through the enlisted ranks before qualifying for his commission. Now...

SARAJEVO, July 29 (AFP) - A US soldier was killed and two others were injured Tuesday when their vehicle collided with a civilian truck in northern Bosnia, NATO-led peacekeepers said. The accident occurred at about 10 am (0800 GMT) near a US base not far from the town of Brcko and is being investigated, said a statement from the NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR). The three soldiers were part of a 1,500-strong US contingent serving with SFOR, which has 12,000 troops deployed in Bosnia to maintain security following the country's 1992-95 war.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - Corruption, organized crime and political obstruction remain serious problems in Bosnia as the U.N. mission charged with reforming the country's police prepares to wrap up its work, a U.N. report released Friday said. In a report to the Security Council, Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged Bosnia to speed up "judicial and legal reform" and hand war crimes suspects over to the U.N. tribunal as the country continues to rebuild after the 1992-1995 Bosnian war. "Key challenges lie ahead, most importantly the full establishment of the rule of law," Annan wrote. "Until local authorities hand over war crimes...

Peacekeepers held in Bosnian bar raid Peacekeepers had been banned from the bar By Nick Hawton BBC correspondent in Sarajevo The Nato-led force in Bosnia, S-For, has confirmed that 10 of its soldiers were detained following a raid on a bar near the capital, Sarajevo. The bar is believed to be part of a network of establishments involved in the trafficking of women from eastern Europe. Any punishment will be meted out by the soldiers' home officials Last week the UN in Bosnia warned of an increase in the activities of criminal gangs who force women into prostitution. The raid...

Pulp RealityBalkans Theatre of the Bizarre  If, twelve years ago, someone had written a book about the Balkans wars that contained even a tenth of what has actually happened since, they'd have been laughed right out of every publishing house in the world. Truth, as Mark Twain remarked, really is stranger than fiction. That, alas, does not prevent so many events in the Balkans from seeming as if they rolled right off the pages of some cheap, trashy pulp novel. Here are just a few scenes from this theatre of the bizarre.The Serbian CircusThree days ago, a court in...