Book Review, Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network by Marko Attila Hoare at Democratiya

A Bosnian Muslim: The Arabs 'ask us to pray five times a day, but we prefer to have five drinks a day.


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Al-Qaida’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network
by Evan F. Kohlmann
Berg, Oxford and New York, 2004, 288 pp.

Book Review at Democratiya

Marko Attila Hoare

Excerpts:

"The so-called 'anti-war movement' against the intervention of the US and its allies in Iraq has involved the forging of some peculiar new alliances, none of which is more incongruous than the alliance of radical Islamists, right-wing libertarians and radical leftists that makes up the movement's more extremist wing. One of the ironies of this is that the same left-wing and right-wing militants who are now marching alongside their Islamist comrades in a common jihad against the US-led coalition, frequently claim that it is hypocritical for the US to be waging war against Islamic terrorism given the US record in the Balkans: the US, they claim, supported Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo against the Serbs. This, of course, begs the obvious response: if the US support for Islamists in Bosnia and Kosovo was objectionable, why are leading lights of the 'anti-war movement' themselves now supporting the Islamist 'resistance' in Iraq? Since the 'anti-war movement' is in reality an anti-American movement, it is hardly surprising that its celebrities support the right of Islamists to kill Americans, but object to their killing of Serbs who, in their eyes, were merely defending the principles of national sovereignty and/or revolutionary socialism from the evils of NATO, the US and the EU. 'Anti-war' activists condemn the alleged US-Islamist alliance in the Balkans not because they fundamentally dislike Islamists, but because they fundamentally dislike the US (or, in the case of the right-wing libertarians among them, the US's support for democracy abroad).

Nevertheless, and however hypocritical they may be, the accusations of the 'anti-war' people need to be answered. So far as the Kosovo Albanians and the KLA are concerned, accusations of Islamism seem particularly farcical: the Albanians are the world's most moderate Muslims; their national movement was historically founded by Catholics; and they are among the US's staunchest allies in the world today. Kosovo Albanians actually demonstrated in favour of US intervention in Iraq, perceiving, as they did, Saddam Hussein to be a tyrant similar to Slobodan Miloševic. In Bosnia, however, it is true that several thousand mujahedin from the Middle East, some of whom had fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan, did arrive to fight for the Muslims against Serb forces. The atrocities carried out by some of these mujahedin against Serb and Croat civilians have formed the basis for indictments by the Hague Tribunal for war-crimes against several senior Bosnian generals, including Rasim Delic, who commanded the Bosnian Army in the war years of 1993-95. The presence of these mujahedin formed a mainstay in Serb and Croat nationalist demonising of the Bosnian Muslims. Inevitably, after 11 September, various anti-Bosnian commentators such as Yossef Bodansky, Justin Raimondo and Srdja Trifkovic, have painted a lurid picture of the Bosnian regime of Alija Izetbegovic as a sort of European branch of Al-Qaida; the arrival of the mujahedin in Bosnia as part of a wider Islamist conspiracy coordinated by Izetbegovic and Osama bin Laden..."

When I first came across Evan F. Kohlmann's provocatively titled book, I feared it would be more of the same sort of nonsense. In fact, it is as eloquent a refutation as one could hope to read of the idea that Izetbegovic's Bosnian Muslims were in any way ideological fellow travellers of Al-Qaida, or its partners in terrorist activity. Written by a genuine expert in the subject - Kohlmann is an International Terrorism Consultant - this is a lucid and informed account of the involvement of the mujahedin in Bosnia, one that lays the myths to rest..."

Conclusion:

"This excellent book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the truth about an episode of the Bosnian war that is so frequently misrepresented by those with a political motive for doing so. The present author remains unconvinced by Kohlmann's insistence on the importance of Bosnia as a 'step in the ladder towards Western Europe' for Al-Qaida, given the apparent success which Islamist terrorists appear to have enjoyed in moving across European and American borders, in recruiting among the immigrant Muslim communities of Western Europe and in striking in various Western countries. Bosnia appears rather - from the perspective of this non-expert in international terrorism - to have been more of a detour and an irrelevance. Yet the implications of Kohlmann's conclusion is unavoidable: when the West colludes in oppression and injustice toward Muslim peoples, be they Bosnians, Kosovars, Chechens, Palestinians, Kurds or Kashmiris, we drive into the arms of our enemies those who would rather be our allies."

Please read the rest at Democratiya, Book Review by Marko Attila Hoare.

Marko Attila Hoare is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of History, University of Cambridge and author of How Bosnia Armed, a short history of the Bosnian Army, published by Saqi Books in 2004.