Bosnian mujahideen

Bosnian mujahideen (also referred to as El Mujaheed or El Mujahid) refers to Muslim volunteers who fought on the Bosnian government's side during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. They were both foreigner and local Bosnian Muslims. Although figures are uncertain, it is estimated that the foreign volunteers numbered about 4,000 with the majority coming from countries such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Algeria and Saudi Arabia.

Bosnian War

Main article: Bosnian War

Foreign mujahideen arrived in central Bosnia in the second half of 1992 with the aim of helping their Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) coreligionists in the war against the Bosnian Serbs and Bosnian Croats. The foreign mujahideen actively recruited young local men, offering them military training, uniforms and weapons. As a result, some local Bosniaks joined the foreign mujahideen and in the process became local Mujahideen. They imitated the foreigners in both the way they dressed and behaved, to such an extent that it was sometimes, according to the ICTY documentation in subsequent war crimes trials, "difficult to distinguish between the two groups. For that reason, the ICTY has used the term "Mujahideen" (which they spell Mujahedin) to designate foreigners from Arab countries, but also local Muslims (ie Bosniaks) who joined the Mujahideen units.

Initially they were loosely orgnized around Islamic 'charities' and irregular military units. The first mujahideen training camp was located in Poljanice next to the village of Mehurici, in the Bila valley, in Travnik municipality. The mujahideen group established there included mujahideen from Arab countries as well as some Bosniaks. The Mujahideen from Poljanice camp were also established in the towns of Zenica and Travnik and, from the second half of 1993 onwards, in the village of Orasac, also located in the Bila valley.

On 13 August 1993, the Bosnian government officially organized the foreign mujahideen and local Bosniak volunteers into a formal unit known as the El Mudžahid.

The military effectiveness of the mujahideen is disputed. However, former US Balkans peace negotiator Richard Holbrooke said in an interview that "I think the Muslims wouldn't have survived without this" help. At the time a U.N. arms embargo diminished the Bosnian government's fighting capabilities. Holbrooke called the arrival of the mujahideen "a pact with the devil" from which Bosnia still is recovering.. Although their military effectiveness is likely to have been limited their existence were often used for political purposes by Bosnian Serb media, which often referred to "mujahideen" and "Green Berets".

Relationship to the Bosnian government army

The extent to which the mujahideen were controlled by the Bosnian government is contentious. According to the ICTY indictment of Rasim Delic, Commander of Main Staff of the Bosnian army (ABiH), after the formation of the 7th Muslim Mountain Brigade of the Bosnian Army 3rd Corps on 19 November 1992, the El Mujahid were subordinated within its structure. According to a UN communiqué of 1995, the El Mujahid battalion was "directly dependent on BiH staff for supplies" and for "directions" during combat with the Serb forces. The issue has formed part of two ICTY war crimes trials. In its judgement in the case of ICTY v. Enver Hadzihasanovic (commander of the 3rd Corps of the army of the Sarajevo-based government (ABiH), he was later made part of the joint command of the ABiH and was the Chief of the Supreme Command Staff) and Amir Kubura (commander of the 7th Muslim Brigade of the 3rd Corps of the ABiH) the Trial Chamber found that

"that the foreign Mujahedin established at Poljanice camp were not officially part of the 3rd Corps or the 7th Brigade of the ABiH. Accordingly, the Prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the foreign Mujahedin officially joined the ABiH and that they we de jure subordinated to the Accused Enver Hadzihasanovic and Amir Kubura.

It also found that

"there are significant indicia of a subordinate relationship between the Mujahedin and the Accused prior to 13 August 1993. Testimony heard by the Trial Chamber and, in the main, documents tendered into evidence demonstrate that the ABiH maintained a close relationship with the foreign Mujahedin as soon as these arrived in central Bosnia in 1992. Joint combat operations are one illustration of that. In Karaula and Visoko in 1992, at Mount Zmajevac around mid-April 1993 and in the Bila valley in June 1993, the Mujahedin fought alongside AbiH units against Bosnian Serb and Bosnian Croat forces."

However, the Appeals Chamber later noted that the relationship between the 3rd Corps of the Bosnian Army headed by Hadžihasanović and the El Mujahedin detachment was not one of subordination but was instead close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as if they were a distinct enemy force.

War crimes investigation

It is alleged that mujahideen participated in a few incidents considered to be war crimes according to the international law. However no indictment was issued by the ICTY against them, but a few Bosnian Army officers were indicted on the basis of superior criminal responsibility. Both Amir Kubura and Enver Hadzihasanovic were found not guilty on all counts related to the incidents involving mujahideen.

The judgements of Enver Hadzihasanovic and Amir Kabura concerned a number of events involving Mujahideen. On June 8, 1993, Bosnian Army attacked Croat forces in the area of Maline village as a reaction to the massacres committed by Croats in nearby villages of Velika Bukovica and Bandol on June 4. After the village of Maline was taken, a military police unit of the 306th Brigade of Bosnian Army arrived in Maline. These policemen were to evacuate and protect the civilians in the villages taken by the Bosnian Army. The wounded were left on-site and around 200 people, including civilians and Croat soldiers, were taken by the police officers towards Mehurici. The commander of the 306th Brigade authorised the wounded be put onto a truck and transported to Mehurici. Suddenly, a number of mujahideen stormed the village of Maline. Even though the commander of the Bosnian Army 306th Brigade forbade them to approach, they didn't submit. The 200 villagers who were being escorted to Mehurici by the 306th Brigade military police were intercepted by the mujahideen in Poljanice. They took 20 military-aged Croats and a young woman wearing a Red-Cross armband. The prisoners were taken to Bikoci, between Maline and Mehurici. 23 Croatian soldiers and one young woman were executed in Bikoci while they were being held prisoner.

The ICTY indictment of Rasim Delic, also treats incidents related to mujahideen during the summer of 1995, such as the murder of two Serb soldiers on July 21, 1995 as part of Operation Miracle, the murder of a Serb POW at the Kamenica prison camp on July 24, 1995, and events related to 60 Serb soldiers captured during the Vozuća battle that are missing and presumed to have been killed by foreign volunteers.

After the war

The foreign mujahideen units were supposed to be disbanded and required to leave the Balkans under the terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord, but many stayed. Although the US State Department report suggested that the number could be higher, a senior SFOR official said allied military intelligence estimated that no more than 200 foreign-born militants actually live in Bosnia, of which closer to 30 represent a hard-core group with direct links to terrorism. In September 2007, 50 of these individuals had their citizenship status revoked. Since then 100 more individuals have been prevented from claiming citizenship rights. 250 more were under investigation, while the body which is charged to reconsider the citizenship status of the foreign volunteers in the Bosnian war, including Christian fighters from Russia and Western Europe, states that 1,500 cases will eventually be examined.

Terrorism allegation

Following the end of the Bosnian War and, especially, after the 11 September attacks on the World Trade Center, the links between the Mujahideen, Al Qaeda and the radicalization of some European Muslims has become more widely discussed. In an interview with US journalist Jim Lehrer former US peace envoy to Bosnia Richard Holbrooke states:

There were over 1,000 people in the country who belonged to what we then called Mujahideen freedom fighters. We now know that that was al-Qaida. I'd never heard the word before, but we knew who they were. And if you look at the 9/11 hijackers, several of those hijackers were trained or fought in Bosnia. We cleaned them out, and they had to move much further east into Afghanistan. So if it hadn't been for Dayton, we would have been fighting the terrorists deep in the ravines and caves of Central Bosnia in the heart of Europe.

London's The Spectator has noted, "If Western intervention in Afghanistan created the mujahedin, Western intervention in Bosnia appears to have globalised it." Several current and former top al-Qaeda militants and financiers reportedly participated in the Bosnian civil war with the full support of the United States. It was for the Bosnian jihad that the 9/11 'paymaster', Omar Sheikh, was reportedly recruited to fight by the CIA and MI6. Al-Qada, in addition to his reported financing of the Bosnian jihad, has been identified as one of Osama bin Laden's "chief money launderers". In his paper on the connection between Bosnian mujahideen and 'home grown' terrorists in Europe, terrorism expert Evan F. Kohlmann writes that:

Some of the most important factors behind the contemporary radicalization of European Muslim youth can be found in Bosnia-Herzegovina, where the cream of the Arab mujahideen from Afghanistan tested their battle skills in the post-Soviet era and mobilized a new generation of pan-Islamic revolutionaries.

He also notes that Serbian and Croatian sources about the subject are pure propaganda based on their historical hatred for Bosniaks as Muslim aliens in the heart of Christian lands.

According to the Radio Free Europe research Al-Qaeda In Bosnia-Herzegovina: Myth Or Present Danger, Bosnia is nothing more related to the potential terrorism than any other European country.

Juan Carlos Antúnez in his comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of Wahhabism in Bosnia, written in 2007 has noted that:

Different articles appearing in local and international mass media have commented about the role of Bosnia-Herzegovina in different issues related with international terrorist networks. Most of this information is unconfirmed. The substance of follow-on media coverage is variously both true and false. Terrorist cells are no less likely to be present in Bosnia-Herzegovina than in any other state. Bosnian Serb and Serbian media outlets regularly misappropriate such reporting, and the information is generalized to the point of suggest that Bosnia-Herzegovina is a significant threat to ethno-national security because it allegedly harbours foreign Islamic terrorists. This is nationalist propaganda that deliberately obscures the facts in two areas: first, the symptoms of global security threats are confused with the causes of Bosnian state weakness; and second, deliberate state-level support to terrorism rather than the weak state’s inability to police itself. The terrorist phenomenon in B-H is no more developed, and the risk of a terrorist attack is not higher than in other parts of the world.

Further reading

• Radio Free Europe - Al-Qaeda In Bosnia-Herzegovina: Myth Or Present Danger, Vlado Azinovic's research about the alleged presence of Al-Qaeda in Bosnia and the role of Arab fighters in the Bosnian War
• The Afghan-Bosnian Mujahideen Network in Europe, by, Evan F. Kohlmann. The paper was presented at a conference held by the Swedish National Defence College's Center for Asymmetric Threat Studies (CATS) in Stockholm in May 2006 at the request of Dr. Magnus Ranstorp - former director of the St. Andrews University Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence - and now Chief Scientist at CATS). It is also the title of a book by the same author.

See also

• Bosnian War
• Mujahideen
• Alija Izetbegovic
• Revolutionary Guards
• Jihad
• 7th Muslim Brigade
• Al Qaeda

External links

• ICTY - FINAL JUDGMENT FOR HADZIHASANOVIC AND KUBURA
• SENSE Tribunal - ICTY trials
• ICTY indictment against Rasim Delic
• Radio Free Europe - Al-Qaeda In Bosnia-Herzegovina: Myth Or Present Danger Template:Bs icon
• Radio Free Europe - Bosnia-Herzegovina: New Book Investigates Presence Of Al-Qaeda
• Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN), CTY: BiH Army Knew About Mujahedin Crimes, 8 September 2007
• Trial, profile of Rasim Delic, former Chief of Staff of the Army of Bosnian Muslims responsible for the Bosnian Mujahideen