Bosnia and the Global Jihad Revisited

English: Kingdom of Bosnia in the XIV century.Category:Maps of the history of Principality of Zeta and Kingdom of Bosnia(XIV th-century) Category:Maps of the history of Bosnia (XIVth-century) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

August 23, 2014

Back in 2007, my book Unholy Terror ruffled quite a few feathers by pointing out the unpleasant truth that, in the 1990s, Bosnia-Hercegovina became a jihadist playground and a major venue for Al-Qa’ida, thanks to malign Saudi and Iranian influences. This was off-message, to put it mildly, to critics eager to defend failed Western (especially American) policies in the Balkans, as well as the usual coterie of jihad fellow-travelers and Useful Idiots, plus those eager, for personal reasons, not to have anyone look too deeply into where Saudi money goes in Europe.

However, my essential message — that Islamist extremism, though a largely imported phenomenon in Bosnia, has put down local roots and is likely to metastasize further due to that country’s intractable socio-economic problems — has been proven sadly accurate over the last seven years. For years, the debate over Islamism in Bosnia, and Southeastern Europe generally, was divided between security practitioners on one side and academics and journalists on the other, with the former group, which actually understood what was happening on the ground, being concerned about growing radicalism, while the latter bunch was generally happy to avert eyes from obvious signs of trouble, and to hurl accusations of bias and “Islamophobia” at those who pointed out what was happening.

ABA ROLI Releases Comparative Analysis of Criminal Defense Advocacy in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia

May 2014

Download the publication (PDF)

The Comparative Analysis of Criminal Defense Advocacy in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Serbia was released at the opening conference of the Balkans Regional Rule of Law Network (BRRLN) Conference today in Lake Ohrid, Macedonia. The report, which analyzes the profession of criminal defense advocacy in light of international law and standards, seeks to answer the question “What does a strong, independent, and effective criminal defense bar look like, and how can a regional network of defense lawyers help achieve this?”

War crimes and proconsulship in the Balkans

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Posted on March 8th, 2012 in the category Western Balkans by TransConflict

The logic of contemporary post-war intervention and proconsulship in both Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina is impossible to divorce from concepts of collective national guilt.

By Matthew Parish

Political liberalism is a tradition within international relations that finds its origins in the thinking of US president, Woodrow Wilson. An academic and an idealist, Wilson thought that relations between states could and should be based upon moral principles rather than the brutal and ever-shifting vaguaries of the balance of power that characterised European diplomacy in the nineteenth century.  This ideology has recurrently infected US politics, from the drive to promote decolonisation in the aftermath of World War II to the fight against communism in Indochina. It has also been a pervasive theme of western foreign policy in the Balkans since the end of the Cold War. As Yugoslavia disintegrated into bloody violence, US President Bill Clinton’s team of advisors determined that some sides were more responsible than others. The Serbs and to a lesser extent the Croats were brutal butchers, while Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians were for the most part victims of aggression inflicted by others.

This factual conclusion shaped the US administration’s moral vision of how post-war Balkan political geography ought to be configured. Bosnia’s Serbs and Croats must not be rewarded for their aggression. Bosnia must remain a unified, multi-ethnic country, notwithstanding the efforts of two of its three ethnic groups to tear the territory apart. By contrast Serbia must be dismembered, because Serbs cannot be trusted to treat their Albanian minority properly. This inference – from atrocity to moral outcome – would have suited Wilson’s reasoning admirably.

The premise of this argument – that Serbs in particular where disproportionately barbarous – is contested, but significant empirical evidence in its favour exists at least in the Bosnian case. Atrocities committed against Muslim civilians in Srebrenica, Brcko, Omarska, Zvornik and other places were broadcast around the world and shocked the conscience of the international community. The siege of Sarajevo is cited as another heinous war crime, and the arbitrary shelling of a city of half a million people for three and a half years was a shocking cruelty. Sieges usually are so. The majority of commentators accept that Serb forces were disproportionately responsible for the carnage of the Bosnian war. Whereas the population of Bosnia in 1991 was 44% Bosniak, 31% Serb and 17% Croat, the number of deaths in the Bosnian war were 66% Bosniaks, 25% Serbs and 8% Croats. Thus relative to population sizes, Bosniaks suffered disproportionately while Croats were disproportionately fortunate.

Serbia wants to join global counter-terrorism pact

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15. February 2012. | 08:46

Source: Tanjug

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Serbian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Interior Ivica Dacic stated Tuesday that Serbia wants to join the global counter-terrorism pact.

Dacic conveyed this position to the Australian Ambassador for Counter-Terrorism Bill Paterson in the Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Serbian Interior Ministry released in a statement.
Serbia would like to join the global counter-terrorism pact, in which it would assist the tracking down of criminals in cases such as the recent one relating to an Australian citizen born in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Dacic said.

Dacic kicked off Monday a visit to Australia by a meeting with Australian Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen on the possibilities of introducing visa facilitation for Serbian citizens.

Raids on Bosnian homes follow terror attack on U.S. embassy

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By ALMIR ALIC and AIDA CERKEZ Associated Press

GORNJA MAOCA, Bosnia-Herzegovina — Special police units raided homes Saturday in a Bosnian village linked to the gunman who fired an automatic weapon at the U.S. Embassy in Sarajevo in what authorities called a terrorist attack. The raids came as 17 suspected associates of the shooter, all said to be members of the ultraconservative Wahhabi Muslim sect, were briefly detained in Serbia.
A convoy of police vehicles entered the isolated northern village of Gornja Maoca, known to be inhabited by many Wahhabis, and officers wearing black masks and camouflage uniforms surrounded several houses, according to an Associated Press video. The reporter saw the security forces enter some homes before officers asked him to leave.
The gunman, identified by police as 23-year-old Mevlid Jasarevic, is accused of shooting at the embassy building in Sarajevo for at least 30 minutes Friday, wounding a policeman guarding the facility, before a police sniper immobilized him with a shot in his leg.
An amateur video obtained by the AP shows what appears to be Jasarevic roaming a deserted intersection, waving his gun and occasionally turning toward the embassy building, shooting at the fence and facade.
Another video caught him dropping on the ground after the sniper shot him.

Somalia Piracy Is Not A Water Borne Disease!

Author: Paul I. Adujie | July 02, 2009

Piracy in Somalia waters has finally gotten the world’s attention? What took so long? It was, and still is, a phenomenon on the African continent, to which the world is often content to look askance! I have come to believe, without exceptions, that issues affecting Africa are treated by the world, haphazardly, lopsidedly and near nonchalantly, despite protestations to the contrary.

There is this, which ought to be labeled as breaking news, the fact that in Somalia, piracy is not a water-borne disease. Some might want to treat the symptoms, but is most probably better to address the root.

There are root causes outside and distinct from the outward symptoms which now threatens the world’s commerce and sea-lanes for merchant ships and recreational vessels as well. Piracy on Somalia waters have been going on for quite a while, in fact, a Nigerian vessel, tugboat was held for about a year, and it has just be released as I write these words.

Why is the world concerned now? What took the world so long? The capture of American citizens I suppose. And Mr. Obama got his first chance to exercise America’s military armada, and Africans were Mr. Obama’s first kills, road kill? Mr. Obama would dialogue with North Korea and Iran, but not with those, water-borne-disease African pirates crime gangs?