OSAMA BIN LADEN FOCUSES ON THE
BALKANS
Current Estimate - An estimate of an area of key
current significance
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, August 2003
By Yossef Bodansky, Senior Editor
STARTING IN MID-AUGUST 2003, radical Islamist leaders elevated the role of the
terrorism infrastructure in the Balkans as a key facilitator of a proposed
escalation of conflict into the heart of Europe, Israel and the United States.
The terrorism campaign aims to define the US occupation of Baghdad as the
turning point in the fateful jihad for the future of Islam. The importance of
the concurrent expansion of Islamist operations in the Balkans should be
examined in this overall context.
The most telling development was the nomination of Shahid Emir Mussa Ayzi to
coordinate and run special recruitment operations. Ayzi is a veteran of
Afghanistan who is close not only to the al-Qaida elite but also the Taliban
leadership. Recently, al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's senior commanders
decided to expand the recruitment and activation of Slav cadres, because they
look European and non-Arab, in order to enhance their ability to operate at the
heart of the West.
In August 2003, Ayzi took over this sensitive recruitment drive. The main
recruitment pool consists of Bosnian Muslims with a smaller effort relying on
Russian converts recruited in Chechnya and the Caucasus as a whole. Although the
Islamists had run a recruitment and training drive of Bosnian Muslim expert
terrorists and would-be martyr-bombers since the early 1990s, these cadres had
not until now been used.
Now, circumstances seem to be changing. In late August 2003, Ayzi sent a report
to Mullah Qudratullah, a senior Taliban official, about his success in enlisting
"persons of Slav ethnicity" to the Islamist jihad. He added that some of these
"white devils" had already been indoctrinated and trained to the point of
sending them to carry out "Allah's Work" - that is, terrorist martyrdom-strikes
- "in a number of European cities and on Israeli territory." The preparation of
additional Slav cadres for US operations is in progress, Ayzi reported. The
training and preparation of Ayzi's recruits is taking place in the Balkans and
the Caucasus, mainly Georgia.
The Balkans undertaking is part of an overall increase in the Islamist buildup
under the overall supervision of Muhammad al-Zawahiri, the brother of Ayman al-Zawahiri,
the number two leader in al-Qaida. The senior Islamist commanders now consider
what they call "the Albanian land" - Albania, Serbia's Kosovo province and parts
of Macedonia - to be safe for use as a springboard for the insertion of a new
wave of expert terrorists, including the Slavs, into Western Europe and onward
throughout the West.
Indeed, starting in mid-August 2003, there was a discernible increase in the
number of foreigners in the Islamist mosques throughout Albania. "They
[originally] come from Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Iran. They come from
many countries," noted an eyewitness in Tirana. They arrive [in Tirana] from
Afghanistan," he added. These expert terrorists are being prepared in Albania
for their specific missions in the West.
This training program is conducted under the cover of the Albanian National Army
(ANA or AKSh in Albanian) with most senior trainers and commanders being "mujahedin
who retreated from Bosnia" and are affiliated with al-Qaida.
In return for the Albanian support of this endeavor, the Islamists assist the
local terrorists in preparing for launching spectacular terrorism into the major
cities of Serbia and Montenegro, with Belgrade and Nis believed to be the top
targets. As well, Islamist cadres, mainly veterans of Bosnia, are providing
advance training to thousands of Albanian terrorists in camps in Kosovo-Metohija,
near Prizren, on the slopes of Mt. Sara, in the Kosovo Morava River valley, in
the Albanian towns of Kukes and Tropoje, and around Tetovo in western Macedonia.
These operations are also run under the banner of the ANA/AKSh.
Significantly, the growing importance of the Balkans cause was also reflected in
the Islamist communiques claiming and explaining the bombing of the UN building
in Baghdad. This was the most important and authoritative doctrinal statement of
the Islamist leadership in August 2003.
The statements stressed the situation in Bosnia as a major grievance of the
Islamists against the UN and the West. The first statement was issued on August
19, 2003, by the Abu-Hafs al-Masri Brigades, itself a front group of al-Qaida.
The Islamists claimed that UN officials "oversaw the massacre of Bosnian women
and children in 1992 and 1995," and that "the United Nations was responsible for
the massacre of 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica in 1995 because it sponsored the
idea of 'not establishing an Islamic state in Europe.'"
On August 24,2003, the London-based Al-Muhajiroun, bin Laden's primary
mouthpiece in Europe, elaborated on this theme in order to explain why the UN
building in Baghdad was a legitimate target: "Verily it was the UN soldiers in
Bosnia who were recorded to have stood by when the barbaric Serbs massacred
Muslims. The UN first decided to take away the weapons of the Muslims (fearing
that they might actually defend themselves and establish Islamic rule) and
thereby facilitated their massacre, and were then even photographed helping in
the mass murder and gang rape of Muslim women and children. The wounds are still
fresh."
The statements were clearly intended to compound the disinformation that 7,000
Muslims were killed in Srebrenica, when all independent forensic evidence points
to Muslim casualties in the hundreds, possibly the low hundreds. Continued
emphasis on such allegedly high numbers of Muslim deaths at Srebrenica also
obfuscates the Muslim murders in that city, earlier, of Serb civilians.
Indeed, the August 2003 statements and intelligence, leading up to the proposed
September 2003 opening of the new Islamist shrine - built at Srebrenica with US
funds - all support analysis that a significant new wave of terrorism, this time
by many European Islamists, is to begin soon.
Yossef Bodansky is the Director of the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare of the U. S. Congress, as well as the World Terrorism Analyst with the Freeman Center for Strategic Studies (Houston, Texas). He is a contributing editor of Defense and Foreign Affairs; Strategic Policy. He is a contributing expert at the Israel-based Ariel Center for Policy Research. He is the author of several books (Target America, Terror, Crisis in Korea, Offensive in the Balkans, Some Call it Peace, and Islamic Anti-Semitism as a Political Pursuit), as well as several book chapters, entries for the International Military and Defense Encyclopedia, and numerous articles in several periodicals, including Global Affairs, Jane's Defense Weekly, Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, Nativ and Business Week. In the 1980s, he acted as a senior consultant for the Department of Defense and the Department of State.
Copyright 2003 Defense & Foreign Affairs
Strategic Policy
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