The Balkans - a hub of worldwide terrorist network

Serbs in neighboring Kosovo – whose numbers, according to a diverse range of first-hand sources, included a small number of foreign mujahedin.



In Bosnia, meanwhile, thousands of mujahedin funded by Saudi charities and trained by Iranian intelligence were imported by the Muslim government for the 1992-95 war against Bosnia’s Serb Orthodox Christian population (the mujahedin, then and now, also targeted Croatian Catholics). The Clinton administration tacitly allowed the infiltration, enabled via a charity network spanning Europe, especially Austria and Germany, as an Islamist victory in Bosnia coincided with America’s short-term goal of defeating the Serbs. However, despite deceptive media coverage of a hard-pressed Bosnian government only reluctantly accepting the mujahedin, their arrival was directly facilitated by the Izetbegovic government, and was a crucial part of the late Bosnian leader’s goal of making Bosnia an Islamic state- a goal to which he had been devoted since the late 1930’s.



"Hundreds of foreign mujahedin were naturalized into the country, and were awarded their own enclaves ruled by Sharia law"The direct relation between Bosnia as a localized jihad and Bosnia as a springboard for Islamist attacks in the West became felt almost immediately. Hundreds of foreign mujahedin, treated as heroes and presented with Bosnian passports after the war, were naturalized into the country, and were awarded their own enclaves ruled by Sharia law. Veterans of the Bosnian war who had seen it as just another in a series of jihad operations proved reluctant to settle down into rural ‘retirement,’ however. Failed terrorist attacks against the 1996 G-7 Summit in Lille, France and Los Angeles International Airport in December 1999 both involved veterans of Bosnia. Indeed, “five years before the sophisticated terrorist assault on the U.S.,” the Los Angeles Times would conclude in October of 2001, “the French were starting to uncover loosely linked violent networks spreading into several countries, all tied together by a common thread: Bosnia.”



Most disturbingly, with the seminal attacks of September 11, 2001 in New York and Washington several individuals, including fundraisers, planners, and actual hijackers were associated with the Bosnian jihad. In addition, a tight-lipped CIA source also told the Washington Times on September 18, 2001 that there was a definite connection between the 9/11 plotters and Albania-based Islamic terrorists. Finally, a group of Albanian-American imams who had gleefully predicted the attacks the month before, and ...