THE COMING NEW SURGE in
European Islamist Terrorism: The Momentum Has Begun
Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, September 2003, pp. 9,12-13 -
Terrorism
By Gregory R. Copley, Editor
INTELLIGENCE SOURCES IN THE Balkans and Middle East indicate that the Iranian
and Osama bin Laden terrorist networks, assets and alliances built up in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Macedonia, Southern Serbia and elsewhere in
the Balkans are preparing for a significant new slate of operations. Initial
operations in this "new slate" have already begun in Kosovo, and are expected to
expand in southern Serbia in late October and into November 2003.
The intelligence, from a variety of primary sources within the Islamist
movements, points to:
1. Escalation of Islamist terrorist attacks on Serb civilians within the
predominantly Muslim region of Kosovo and Metohija, which is in the Serbian
province of Kosovo;
2. Commencement during October-November 2003 of seemingly-random bombings of
public places, including schools, in Muslim-dominated cities in the southern
Serbian/northern Montenegrin Raska Oblast (this oblast, or region - not a formal
sub-state as in the Russian use of the word "oblast" - is referred to by
Islamists by its Turkish name, Sandzak) as a prelude to wider violence in this
area, and eastern Montenegro, adjacent to the Albanian border and reaching down
to the Adriatic;
3. Coordination of incidents by the so-called "Albanian National Army" - a
current iteration of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA, or UCK: Ushtria Clirimtare
e Kosoves, in Albanian; OVK in Serbo-Croat) - in Kosovo and the former Yugoslav
Republic of Macedonia with activities in Raska, led by the Bosnian radical
Islamist party, SDA (Party of Democratic Action) of Alija Izetbegovic, and all
supported by Albanian Government-approved/backed training facilities inside
Albania, close to the border with Serbian Kosovo;
4. Escalation of incidents - including threats, political action, terrorist
action - within Bosnia-Herzegovina, designed to further polarize the Serbian and
Croat population away from the Muslim population;
5. Eventual escalation of "incidents" to create a "no-go" area for Serbian,
Montenegrin, Republica Srpska security forces and international peacekeepers in
a swathe of contiguous territory from the Adriatic through Albania, Kosovo,
Montenegro, Southern Serbia and Macedonia into Bosnia-Herzegovina, effectively
dissecting the Republica Srpska state (which is within Bosnia-Herzegovina) at
the Gorazde Corridor and isolating Montenegro;
6. Using the extensive safe-haven areas and "no-go" zones created by the
actions, undertake a range of terrorist actions against targets in Greece -
which is contiguous with Albania and (FYR) Macedonia - during (and possibly
before) the August 2004 Olympic Games. Specific intelligence points to the fact
that the Islamist groups have already predetermined target opportunities during
the Games.
The new intelligence contradicts the public positions of both the Government of
Serbia and the High Representative for Bosnia-Herzegovina that terrorist threats
in their two states were now not evident. The Serbian Ministry of Interior did,
however, acknowledge increased activities by Wahabbists (such as the bin
Ladenists) and intelligence on planned Islamist bombings in southern Serbia in
the coming months. Significantly, however, Bosnia-Herzegovina High
Representative Paddy Ashdown published, in The Washington Times of October 6,
2003, a letter to the editor in which he said:
"After September 11 [2001], the Sarajevo authorities took important steps to
ensure that Bosnia-Herzegovina could not in any way be used as a platform for
terrorist attacks of any sort, in Europe or elsewhere. This country is not a
terrorist base, nor will it become one."
Mr Ashdown's statement, in which he actually attempted to predict the future, is
not borne out by the evidence of radical Islamist activities inside Bosnia.
There were several significant motivations behind the new wave of coordinated
actions, according to our sources and analysis by Defense & Foreign Affairs.
(i) Iran and al-Qaida Breakout: The Iranian Government, as well as the Osama bin
Laden organization (now being referred to as al-Qaida), have been working since
at least the breakup of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in
1991-92 to build a strong base of Islamism and terrorist capability in the heart
of Europe, and relying on the entree to the area given by Alija Izetbegovic's
SDA party in Bosnia. Neither Iran nor bin Laden undertook this extensive work
for nothing and, despite the very large Iranian Embassy presence in Sarajevo,
Iran's Shi'a clerics have been happy to provide training, logistics and
intelligence while allowing the Wahhabist/Salafist bin Laden organizers to work
more openly with the Sunni Bosnian Muslims. The Bosnian structures were used to
support and actively participate in the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
against the United States.
Now that both Iran and al-Qaida are under pressure from the US, their networks
in Bosnia - now far stronger than in 2001, and with virtually all international
and Serbian capabilities to stop them suppressed for fear of political outcries
in the event of again attacking the "Muslim victims" - are preparing to launch
their new break-out attacks against the US and the West, both in order to
polarize the Muslim world from the West at the Olympics [see below] and to build
a stridently Islamist state (or network of states: Bosnia, "Sandzak" [Raska],
Kosovo, Albania, parts of Macedonia, etc.) within Western Europe [see below].
(ii) Olympics: The August 2004 Athens Olympics, with large crowds present and an
estimated four-billion television viewers worldwide, has been identified as the
most obvious symbolic point to force, using terrorist "spectaculars," the schism
between the West and the Muslim ummah, with the objective of polarizing the
Muslim world around a "new caliphate" of radicalism, forcing the West to further
react against the Muslim world, thereby reinforcing the tendency to drive
Muslims toward the radical leaders. This interpretation is not based on
speculation, but on known plans for the Olympics within terrorist groups related
to al-Qaida and Iran. The Athens Olympics provides the perfect selection of
terrorist targets, especially given the thus-far poor performance of Greek
security services in preparing for the Games, as well as because of the
proximity of Athens to major terrorist operating areas and support lines
(through the Eastern Mediterranean, Albania, etc.).
(iii) Islamist-Controlled Territory in Europe: The prospect of creating an
Islamist territory, comprising Bosnia, Kosovo, and adjacent areas, reaching from
the Adriatic into the heart of Europe, is the most significant strategic gain
foreseen by the Islamists since Muslim fortunes in Europe waned when the siege
of Vienna was raised by the King of Poland in 1683. Numerous Islamist sources
have indicated that they believe that this "return to Europe" is now within
their grasp, offering enormous political symbolism of the success and power of
the radical Islamists to the Muslim world, particularly if such an achievement
is made as a result of great loss by the West.
Iran, Iranian surrogate forces and al-Qaida are under increasing pressure to
begin the escalation of operations in the Balkans, not just because of the
imminence of the Olympic Games, but also to help deflect US-led pressure
against, and preoccupation with, Iran and counter-terror operations in
Afghanistan and elsewhere. Revived US pressures on Syria - a major strategic
ally and conduit for Iran - is seen as escalating the urgency of the "break-out"
operations in the Balkans. The Balkans, however, also remain a strategic goal in
their own right, quite apart from their value in relieving pressure on Iran and
the damaged prestige of the terrorists and Islamists as a result of the current
"war on terror."
During the first half of August 2003, 300 Albanian-trained guerrillas -
including appr. 10 mujahedin (non-Balkan Muslims) - were infiltrated across the
Albanian border into Kosovo, where many have subsequently been seen in the
company (and homes) of members of the so-called Kosovo Protection Corps which
was created out of Kosovo Albanian elements originally part of the KLA. In fact,
the Kosovo Protection Corps seems almost synonymous with the Albanian National
Army (ANA), the new designation for the KLA. The guerrillas were trained in
three camps inside the Albanian border at the towns of Bajram Curi, Tropoja and
Kuks, where the camps have been in operation since 1997.
The US Government, during the Clinton Administration, supported these camps, and
some sources have said that US and German nationals were still involved in
training guerrillas in the camps. Their existence is known to the Albanian
Government, which reportedly also provides both protection and support for the
facilities. They brought with them from Albania a variety of light weapons,
including mortars and landmines.
Some elements of the 300 in the August 2003 group - believed to be the mujahedin
element - went into action almost immediately, in the Serbian-occupied Kosovo
town of Gorazdevac, near the city of Pec (in the West, close to Montenegro), on
four occasions and on one occasion killing some children. Significantly, the
Albanian doctor who examined two of the children injured in one of the attacks,
Dragana Srbljaka and Djordje Ugrinovic, was accused by Serbian Government
authorities and by other local medical authorities of having "purposefully
making a wrong diagnosis of fractures, instead of gunshot wounds." He put
plaster over the gunshot wounds and discharged the children, rather than
hospitalizing them.
After these attacks, some of the mujahedin involved moved immediately Westward,
going through Islamist safe-havens in Raska to Bosnia. Many of the remainder
went to areas on the Kosovo border with central Serbia and/or across into
central Serbia. They also engaged in mining in areas used by Serbia-Montenegro
Army vehicles using claymore-style roadside charges.
It was understood from the Defense & Foreign Affairs sources that US and NATO
intelligence officers operating with UNMIK peacekeeping forces in Kosovo were
aware - or appeared to be aware - of the incursion of the 300 new Islamist
fighters and were also aware, at least to some extent, of the mingling of the
guerrilla fighters with the Kosovo Protection Corps officials.
Significantly, the transit of weapons and fighters to and from Bosnia to the
Kosovo and Albanian areas has been underway for more than a decade. In testimony
to the State Security service of (then) Yugoslavia in September 1991, Bosnian
Islamist Memic Senad (born 1953) acknowledged that Sarajevo Muslims, under
Izetbegovic's SDA, pushed arms and ammunition into Raska (Sandzak), and that
this was done with the knowledge of Izetbegovic. The arms had earlier been
smuggled into Bosnia via Croatia, with the help of Croatian police, before going
on to Raska. These shipments consisted of, among other things, Romanian-made
assault rifles and M56 machineguns. The weapons themselves were acquired in
Slovenia, and one shipment noted by Senad included 1,240 AK-47 assault rifles.
SDA official Hasan Cengic was in charge of buying the weapons, according to
Senad. Hasan Cengic, an Islamist theologian, has been linked with
Iranian-sponsored terrorism since 1983. He is a veteran of the 13th Waffen SS
division of the German Army from World War II, and later a general in the
Bosnian (Islamist) Army as well as former Deputy Bosnian Defense Minister. He
organized much of the influx of foreign mujahedin fighters into Bosnia during
the 1990s and was a member of the governing board of TWRA (Third World Relief
Agency), founded in Vienna in 1987 and linked with a range of al-Qaida-related
and other terrorist groups. The particular shipment cited in Senad's testimony
was escorted from Bosnia and into Raska by a Libyan consular vehicle, with
diplomatic plates. An Islamist organization, Active Islamic Youth, actually
handled the delivery. Amer Musurati, a Libyan diplomat based at the Libyan
mission in Belgrade, Serbia, paid for the weapons, despite a long history of
cooperation between Qadhafi's Libya and the old Yugoslavia of Pres. Tito.
At the same time, the Libyan consulate in Sarajevo backed the People's
Democratic Movement of Rasim Kadic. Kadic was also involved in the distribution
of weapons into areas of Bosnia, Raska and Kosovo. Zelic Cefedin and Kadic were
known to have been in Czechoslovakia where they tried to buy weapons from
Australian citizen Hans Herdla.
What assists in diffusing the whole pattern of Islamist activities is the
seeming lack of coordination and formal organization. The links, however, become
evident in the pattern of cooperation, common targets and accommodations between
groups of apparently different ideologies - such as the Libyans, the Syrian and
Iranian-backed HizbAllah Shi'as, the Wahabbi and Salafi extremist Sunnis, and so
on - which is also evident in terrorist operations around the world. Indeed,
cooperation between Christian (Catholic) Irish Republican Army (IRA) officials
with Libyan and Islamist backers and colleagues, is a case in point. As well,
the issues of a common enemy and, often, a common financing means (usually
narcotics trafficking), brings disparate groups together.
Much of the new round of Islamist activity is centering on the southern Serbian
(Raska) city of Novi Pazar (literally "New Bazaar"). This city of some 30,000
people is approximately 80 percent Muslim. It has one of the most radical
Islamist bookstores in the world, and the store is doing brisk business. Here,
the principal business of the city is crime: illegal smuggling of consumer
goods, heroin and weapons. And with its street bazaars and coffee houses, it
appears as a Middle Eastern city within a countryside populated by Orthodox
Christian Serbian farmers. [During Turkish occupation, it was necessary for
inhabitants to adopt Islam in order to gain work in the cities; thus the farmers
remained Orthodox, the city-dwellers became Muslim.]
Novi Pazar is the focus of the Islamist attempt to build a landbridge from
Albania and Kosovo to Bosnia. Further to the East, in southern Serbia's Raska
Oblast, are three other concentrations of Muslims: Sjenica and Pester area
(lightly populated but mostly Muslim), Prijepolje (some 50 percent Muslim) and -
very close to the Bosnia border where Republica Srpska controls the slender
Gorazde corridor - Priboj (also some 50 percent Muslim). The land between is
Serbian farmland, but the Islamist goal is to link the cities as "evidence" that
the entire region is, or should be, Muslim territory. The same strategy worked
successfully in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Serbian farmers were driven off their
lands during the civil war.
Just south of the Serbian area of Raska Oblast is the Montenegrin part of Raska
region, where, for example, Bijeljo Polje is some 60 to 80 percent Muslim, and
Pijevlja, close to the Bosnian border, is about 40 percent Muslim. These
Montenegrin towns, like those of the Western Serbian Raska region, are the key
to the illicit arms and narcotrafficking across the Gorazde Corridor to Bosnia.
Further southeast in Montenegro, Albanian Muslims now make up some 95 percent of
the Adriatic town of Ulcinj, only a few kilometers from Albania itself.
But it is Novi Pazar which is the focus of the Islamist activity and ideology.
It is, in essence, the equivalent of Pristina in Kosovo, or Sarajevo, in Bosnia,
as far as the Islamists are concerned. A new Islamist university has opened in
Novi Pazar, ostensibly a normal college, but led by an Islamist mufti of little
formal education. And, as in Pakistan, the divide between "14th Century
Islamists" and "21st Century Islamists" is apparent. This modern institution -
whose officials proclaim it a normal educational institution - reveals its
character in its symbol: the Wahabbi/Salafi dawa symbol, an open Q'uran
surmounted with a rising sun. The university, in a renovated former textile
factory, is a known center of radical Islamist thinking. A book fair held there
in early October 2003 distributed very radical Islamist literature, specifically
advocating conflict with the West.
The dawa sign indicates that the university is predominantly Saudi-funded,
although some Western funding is known to have been pumped into the institution,
reportedly largely to undermine Serb interests in the region.
It is also significant that the graffiti which dominates Novi Pazar supports
Alija Izetbegovic's SDA party, despite the fact that the SDA is a Bosnian party
and Novi Pazar is in Serbia. But many of the residents call themselves "Bosniaks,"
as do the Islamists of Bosnia. The process by which the Izetbegovic followers
are attempting to "legitimize" their claims to southern Serbia is apparent.
[Other parties, such as Stranka za Sandzak, are evident in Novi Pazar, but they
do not match the SDA's control of the streets.]
And if the escalation of violence erupts on the scale anticipated, the Serbian
Government would be forced to attempt to suppress it. This is the deliberate
intention of the Islamists, to force intervention so that the Serbs could be,
again, blamed for suppressing the "Muslim victims." [Italic: my emphasis]
Effectively, the "no-go" status of Raska (Sandzak) would create not only a
corridor for weapons, combatant, narcotics and other trafficking, but it would
also cut off Serbia from Montenegro, and deny Serbia its access to the sea. And
although some Montenegrin politicians, supported by some 2.5 percent of the
population of Serbia and Montenegro, have advocated secession from the Union
with Serbia, this de facto separation of the two states by Islamist militant
action would - along with Islamist action in Montenegro's eastern towns, such as
Ulcinj - spell the end of Montenegro as a self-governing state.
The patterns of recent ANA activities in Kosovo and FYR Macedonia already shows
an upsurge of violence, just as the Kosovo-Serbia talks began in Vienna in
October 2003. The injection of Albanian-trained guerrillas, linked with ANA and
the Kosovo Protection Corps, is also significant. These indicators, plus other
intelligence obtained by Defense & Foreign Affairs, highlight the broader trend
which relates directly to the need by al-Qaida and Iran's clerics to regain
their initiative and to keep the US strategically at arm's-length.
The Olympics, coupled with the forced deterioration of the security situation in
Bosnia-Herzegovina - and the strong likelihood that the Dayton Accords in Bosnia
will be rendered ineffective within, perhaps, a year - all point to a
significant strategic threat emerging to the West in the Balkans.
Defense & Foreign Affairs analysts believe that the collapse of the clerical
leadership in Iran is the only thing which could remove the core backing for the
al-Qaida groups operating in the Balkans, although narcotrafficking, supported
by criminal elements in Turkey, Albania and elsewhere and other criminal
activities would still sustain some of the radical activities, as would ongoing
funding from some Saudi sources. But the removal of Iranian support would (and
associated Syrian fronts) significantly reduce the instability in the Balkans.
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Strategic Policy
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