Croatian daily warns of "strong roots" of Wahhabi ideology in Bosnia
BBC Monitoring Europe (Political) - January 30, 2009 Friday

Text of report by Bosnian edition of Croatian daily Vecernji list, on 21 January

[Commentary by Hassan Haidar Diab: "Footage of Mujahidin Will Find Fertile Ground in B-H"; all Arabic proper names are as published pp16,17]

Although the B-H public was genuinely shocked by the broadcast of a half an hour of film footage showing US soldiers being killed in Iraq by sniper shots to the head, anyone who has closely tracked events in that country in recent years should not be surprised by the existence of footage of this sort, which is ultimately intended to speed up the recruitment of young generations of mujahidin and demoralize the US military and its allies in Iraq.

Shock Over Footage

Specifically, even though such footage will find unparalleled fertile ground in B-H, it will be nothing more than the seed of an ideology that has long reaped ripe fruit in B-H, planted back in that country during the war by many mujahidin, including high-ranking Al-Qa'idah officers. For that very reason, the exaggerated shock over the latest footage, and the astonishment at its "quiet" intrigues, are simply yet another indicator of how B-H has a hard time recognizing its own flaws and that it has an even harder time withstanding them. After all, we do not have to delve into the distant past - we need go back only 15 years - to draw an easy parallel between this era and that one and to recall all the "imported" victims of the B-H war who left their ideologically spilled blood as a legacy for some of the Muslims there. Although a majority of the surviving mujahidin, together with the members of Al-Qa'idah, led by the Algerian Abu al-Maali, left B-H after the war ended in 1995 and dispersed to Iraq and Afghanistan, their ideology was permanently instilled in some Muslims in B-H, as evidenced most vividly by the Taleban community of Wahhabis in the village of Gornja Maoca.

Another clear indicator of why B-H should not be "shocked" by the increasingly common presence of men with long thick beards and women hidden in burkas is a statement by Enes Mujkanovic, the self-proclaimed leader of the Wahhabi community in Gornja Maoca, that when God's army enters Rome it will defeat all crusaders, which is entirely in keeping with a statement by Usama Abu Dazana, one of the most wanted terrorists in the Middle East today, who said in a 2006 interview with Vecernji List that there will be no peace in the world until the Vatican - the stronghold of Satan - is razed.

Everything that was stated in that same interview by the Palestinian Abu Dazana - who said, among other things, "We have put down strong roots in B-H in the hope and belief that it will one day enforce Muslim laws and become a Muslim state" - certainly did not vanish, but instead made its way into the hearts of all those Muslims in this region who since the war in B-H have begun fine-tuning religious radicalism based on propaganda from Al-Qa'idah and similar organizations.

Strong Roots

As a man who, after the liberation of Kabul, spent time on every battleground in B-H from 1992 all the way to 1995, and as the right-hand man of the late leader of Al-Qa'idah in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Dazana - who now wears the crown of the military wing of the terrorist organization Denad Al Saham (Army of Damascus), responsible for the murder of Lebanese soldiers in the city of Tripoli and for the deaths of around 20 people killed in a bomb blast in Damascus, and for many other terrorist activities - unquestionably constitutes an exalted authority both among like-minded people in the Middle East and among a certain population of Muslims in B-H.

[Box, p 17] Abu Dajana's Seed of Radicalism

While Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, and many other countries want Usama Abu Dazana dead or alive, B-H should not forget that it was precisely that man and many similar to him who sowed the seed of radicalism in Bosnia-Hercegovina 15 years ago, a seed that over the years has grown into an extended tree on which nothing other than many more "shocking" images and truths will grow.

[Box, p 17] Veterans of the Afghanistan War

Among those who shed their ideological blood and are remembered and honoured to this day are the veterans of the war in Afghanistan, Shayk Anwar Shaban, who was killed after the war, Abu Haris Libija, who died during the war in central Bosnia, Abu al-Moataz, the former commander in the defence of Jalalabad, who was killed near Zavidovici, and Abu Abdalla Libi, whose nickname was the mountain lion and who was known as the best fighter against the Russians in Afghanistan, as well as many other Al-Qa'idah officers who arrived in 1992 and whose bodies remain in B-H cemeteries to this day.

Source: Vecernji list (Bosnia-Hercegovina edition), Zagreb, in Croatian 21 Jan 09
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