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Stench of Terrorism

Apparently, there were about 200 of them. At first, the exact date is not known, they came quietly. Later, they were increasingly noticeable. They assaulted couples in parks, whipped women who were not wearing Islamic veils, divided killed Army BH soldiers into "true" shehids [martyrs fallen for Islam] and others, provided additional humanitarian assistance for those who practiced pure Islam... Are they, mujahedeen, really to be credited as our saviors? Or, is it closer to the truth to say that they are the cause of every bead of cold Izetbegovic's sweat prompted by the news about arrest of some terrorist somewhere far away from Bosnia? Because, maybe he himself gave a Bosnian passport to that terrorist? Or one of his collaborators? In any case, no one can now say that they are quiet. Echoes of explosions from all over the world are regularly making it all the way to Bosnia. Whether because of the bombs in the west or western officials in our neighborhood, the Bosniak leadership is currently increasingly eagerly distancing itself from those it equally eagerly supported in the past. There are already rumors that once upon the time glorious unit El Mujaheed was not a part of the Seventh Muslim Brigade, soon it will turn out that the "true path" fighters were not even a part of the Third Corps, and then... The remaining mujahedeen are for now keeping quiet, living, as they say, based on their rules and do not bother anyone. At least not in Bosnia. The story about a strange military formation, much more numerous than "ordinary" companies, is at the same time the story about the unclear ideological goal of the Bosniak leadership and its military commanders. Is the jihad over, or has it been only temporarily adjourned?

by Vildana SELIMBEGOVIC

Dani, Sarajevo, Federation Bosnia-Hercegovina, B-H, January 14, 2000

At this point, no one in this country listens to the news abroad without concern. Bosnia-Hercegovina has stepped into the 21st century branded as a homeland of terrorists. It almost goes without saying that in some corner of the globe an owner of significant amounts of explosives has a Bosnian passport. After five years of a bloody war, in which Sarajevo was synonymous with civilian deaths, the last this city could hope for was to become synonymous with terrorism. From the status of the biggest global victim we have reached the status of a legal shelter for mass murderers. At this moment Bosnian citizenship dealers can really be proud of their achievements. They have managed to utterly devalue all those values that meant a lot to the residents of Sarajevo during all those difficult years of the wartime siege and all the characteristics that distinguished the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina from other military formations that were active in the region. Besides, how can we today prove to someone that Asim Korcic founded the Seventh Muslim Brigade with honorable intentions and based on the true Bosnian patriotism? How can we explain to a disabled war veteran who fought in Sarajevo in Zuc, or on the Ozren Mountain that he and some airplane hijackers fought in the same war.

I personally try to believe that all of this is hitting the hardest exactly Alija Izetbegovic. Besides, he is the honorable commander of the Seventh Knightly Muslim Brigade, and all until the dissolution of the El Mujaheed he was a frequent and welcome guest in all of their camps, from Zenica to Vozuca. Furthermore, I want to believe that his feeling of nausea and fear when someone mentions the word bomb in the news is stronger than mine, when I start skimming through the list of the men decorated with the Golden Lilly in panic. Simply, it seems to me that there is hope as long as none of the 11 members of El Mujaheed decorated with this highest state decoration appears on the list of terrorists. Or am I only fooling myself?

Concentration of Problems

Today, neither the Army General and commander of the Federation Army Rasim Delic, nor the first commander of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina, retired brigade General Sefer Halilovic, have reliable information about the way in which mujahedeen ended up in Bosnia. Both of them agree about one thing. At the time they started showing up in central Bosnia, the Army desperately needed weapons and ammunition. Bosnian soldiers still went into battle without enough ammunition, and it was not uncommon that two of them used one rifle. Nevertheless, men arrived from Croatia, from where during that long and difficult winter of 1992/93 it was impossible to smuggle in a single bullet. They usually arrived in groups, sufficiently large to set up camps in several houses along at that time the only passable road between Travnik and Zenica, via Han Bila.

It is also not known how many of them arrived. The Army did not register more than 200 of them, but even the senior officials of this unit shyly estimated that there were not more than "a thousand". When they try to explain how El Mujaheed was formed, they only admit off the record that at that time they assessed that "it was better to gather all of them at one place then to allow them to cause trouble all over the country". It is known for sure that they violated the first order issued by general Delic upon assuming command. He publicly ordered soldiers of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina to protect religious buildings. This order was not violated in Kraljeva Sutjeska, specifically mentioned in the document, but was violated in Guca Gora, where the mujahedeen took over the local Catholic monastery.

Another secretive aspect of their activities is the support that mujahedeen received from almost all levels of the Party or Democratic Action (SDA).

It turned out that that support was directly proportional to the support of the party cadre to the idea of ethnically clean chunk of Bosnia. And probably that is the key of the secret of all problems that are now backfiring at border crossings all over the world, transformed into suspicion with respect to bearers of Bosnian passports. Today, citizens of Bosnia-Hercegovina are humiliated with the same intensity with which the Seventh Muslim Brigade was privileged with respect to all the other brigades of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina. Half way between these two extremes there is the infamous truth. By hypocritically distributing personal identification documents and passports to a handful of fanatics who did not refrain from purchasing Bosnian girls, by presenting them with passports for their achievements in the struggle against the aggressor, the local and other SDA officials presented Bosnia with the image of a homeland of terrorists. In parallel (or precisely in support of these activities) there was another process. The full establishment of parallel state and military institutions by the SDA, based on the loyalty to the party, rather than professional capability of individuals, and making of secret decisions for the people in the know and public decisions for everyone else.

Every tolerance of whipping of indecently dressed Bosniak women, every failure to react to insane attacks on insolent couples who kiss in the park, every aversion of eyes from the fact that those who follow the rules of pure Islam were getting extra humanitarian assistance, every tolerance of the practice that humanitarian assistance was distributed only to those children of shehids whose wives wore traditional Islamic cover (ignoring for the moment the fact that those women were humiliated twice! First by being forced to cover themselves and beg in front of the door of the benefactor who took upon himself the obligations of the state and secondly by dealing with the division of the fallen fighters to those who died fighting for Allah and those who only fought for Bosnia-Hercegovina), every acceptance of the manipulation of the term shehid, is an additional puzzle piece in the mosaic of the current problem.

Distancing of Bosnian Muslims

Besides, could a formation smaller than a battalion do everything on its own? No one, truly, today intends to deny anyone's contribution to the Bosnian struggle, but isn't it time to loudly say what the officers of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina have been whispering for a while: can anyone really believe that two hundred individuals liberated Vozuca? Or, who decided to expel alcohol from cafes by bullets and smash up their inventory in celebration of the big Army parade at which mujahedeen were promoted in Zenica? Sakib Mahmuljin is silent today. His comrades say that as a leader of the Third Corps he was much more interested in the religious than military education of his subordinates. During his tenure he had the reputation as the only officer of the Army of Bosnia-Hercegovina who was authorized to establish contacts with El Mujaheed, and he also credited with the decision to assign several battalions of Bosniaks to El Mujaheed, Bosniaks who went through ideological and military training. Mahmuljin is today the deputy Defense Minister in the Federation, which is supposedly trying to establish a single army based on the Washington agreement?!

Of course, it would be totally pretentious to claim that Mahmuljin is to be blamed for everything and that he is more responsible than those who gave him the green light to convert central Bosnia into a green state, a Muslim oasis in Europe, and all those who helped him in that task. It has been hidden from the public for a while that the commander of the Fourth Muslim Brigade, Nezir Halilovic Muderis very clearly confronted inappropriate behavior of soldiers under his command. Consequently, this brigade, even though it had all the insignia and followed the religious practice of other Muslim brigades, was not an object of significant interest by the imported mujahedeen. Or, the very same Asim Korcic, who founded the Seventh Muslim Brigade and who established the principles that that unit is proud of, at the time of merger of El Mujaheed with this unit quietly withdrew to somewhat earlier founded Seventh Corps and there established the 37th Muslim Brigade?!

Exactly because of that it seems that it is time for a general cleaning of our recent history and a thorough analysis of the mujahedeen influence on it, not so much for the sake of the truth as for the sake of all those who with their lives and bodies defended this country and it never even occurred to them that God's will authorizes looting, that somebody else's children should pay with their lives for the freedom of terrorist leaders, that anyone has the right to blow up buildings and cars... They fought exactly against looting, explosions and death.

If the promoters of mujahedeen and their supporters during the war tried to ameliorate the wartime recipe during peace by locating the green warriors in the former Serb village of Bocinja, today they probably realize that that was not enough. Nevertheless, the hope that the problem will start being resolved where it should have been initially addressed, in the Parliament of Bosnia-Hercegovina, seems absolutely unrealistic. Because, the moment it is established to whom and how dealers of Bosnian-Hercegovinian citizenship presented passports, it will become clear who and why did that.

Translated on August 20, 2001