ISIS flag at Bosnian homes

By HAJRUDIN SOMUN

How satanic human forces of bloodshed and destruction gain ground faster than peaceful and mindful ones has been shown in only one year, on this very page, starting at the end of January 2014. I wrote about security concerns for European and especially balkan countries regarding young adventurers joining the “holy war” against the infidel Bashar al-Assad, and even greater concerns about those who survive and return home from Syria.

Now I have to admit that I was wrong in my appraisal of the extremist Islamist movement's strength and capability to establish its own state and extend its presence and influence while carrying out bloodthirsty atrocities in several Arab and Muslim countries. I can console myself that I was not alone in my astonishment at the announcement of an Islamic caliphate, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and its ability to conquer and plunder a city as big as Mosul.

It is, however, not important that we, the public, have not assessed well the final product of a violent movement that derives its ideological roots from Wahhabism or Salafism and has strong roots in al-Qaeda, which actually means "foundation" in Arabic. Major Middle Eastern countries and the US have not only underestimated al-Qaeda-affiliated forces but have also contributed to their growing power.

Iraq's Islamic caliphate of 2006

Americans have been fiercely fighting al-Qaeda cells in Iraq while at the same time opening up space for them by disbanding Saddam Hussein's army and putting the country's state structure into disorder. Osama bin Laden's followers had already proclaimed an Islamic caliphate in Iraq in 2006. Once the war in Syria worsened, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, together with the US, supplied radical Islamist rebel groups with weapons and other means -- more support than that given to secular opposition forces. Instead of throwing their full weight behind the Free Syrian Army (FSA), those countries supported Jabhat al-Nusra (the al-Nusra Front), ISIS and other militant groups that were linked to al-Qaeda.

It was in line with their common sectarian sympathies and with a wider regional geopolitical disposition in which Shiite Iran, as a common Sunni adversary, was the prime ally of Damascus' Alawite regime. Whoever was against Assad was welcomed by the US as well. Besides, even Israel joined the anti-Assad ultra-radical front out of its own interests. UN reports (see Al-Monitor, Jan. 14) detected contacts between Jabhat al-Nusra and the Israeli army across the Golan cease-fire line during severe clashes between the Syrian army and rebels in 2014.

The result of all that was that the Middle East, the Islamic world, the Christian world and everyone else last summer found themselves faced with a new, challenging menace with the frightening acronym of ISIS. In spite of internal divisions that produced the Taliban, Jabhat al-Nusra and other factions, al-Qaeda finally found a broad “base” to enforce its destructive philosophy.

The consequences of the creation of ISIS have been evaluated from different sides, but my main interest is in whether its influence and security threat might reach the Balkan region and my own country, whose population is primarily Muslim. A primitive map disseminated on some ISIS blogs indicates black areas designated as areas of future expansion. These black areas include -- in addition to the likes of Khorasan, Anatolia and the Maghreb -- the southeastern part of Europe, written in Arabic as Uruba.

It is true: The flags and symbols of ISIS were on display earlier this month at a few homes in the village of Gornja Maoca, northern Bosnia. At the same time, suspected ISIS recruiter Husein Bilal Bosnic's trial started in Sarajevo. He is believed to be the leader of the Islamic Wahhabi or Salafi movement in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Prosecutors have charged him with receiving "vast sums" of money from Arab countries to help fund ISIS fighters in Iraq and Syria and organizing terrorist groups preparing to go to those countries. In December 2014, Islamist extremists attacked the cleric Selvedin Beganovic in the small village of Trnovi in northwest Bosnia. In an open letter the imam expressed his opposition to the recruitment of young Muslims to fight in Syria and Iraq. While stabbing him in the chest, one of the attackers shouted, "Now I will slaughter you."

Since September, security agencies and police in Kosovo and Bosnia and Herzegovina have arrested around 50 alleged Islamist extremists, including several imams, suspected of being involved in terrorist activities. Some people from the Balkans have become part of the international web of support and recruitment on the Internet for ISIS.

The US District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri charged six Bosnians, including a woman, who immigrated to the US and conspired to provide material aid and resources to ISIS. A group called the “Balkan spinners," mainly consisting of Albanians from Albania and Kosovo operating in Italy, recruit young jihadists and send them to Syria. An Albanian woman who recently migrated to Italy with her family abandoned her husband and two girls and joined ISIS with her young son. In the meantime, news on new shahids (Muslim martyrs) killed in Syria and Iraq reaches Albania, Kosovo, Bosnia and the Serbian province of Sandzak.

Signs before ISIS

There were certain worrying signs of religious radicalism among Balkan Muslims even before the appearance of ISIS. Several hundred young people going to fight for ISIS also pose a certain security threat to their own countries, particularly when they return home. Trained terrorists can encourage and recruit new jihadists and target individual politicians, critical journalists or brave anti-terrorist imams. In that regard, several regional countries have adopted or are going to adopt legal measures declaring terrorist activities and involvement in foreign wars a criminal offense. Bilal Bosnic's trial is the first launched in Bosnia under such a law, which was adopted last year and sets jail terms at up to 10 years.

There is, however, a good deal of exaggeration in various alarms warning of significant threats stemming from radical and “jihadist” Islam in the Balkans, especially in Bosnia. The International CrISIS Group (ICG) has called Islamism and nationalism in Bosnia "a dangerous tango," and a Serbian blog stressed, “This is what the US created here, a terrorist state in progress."

The returnees from ISIS fronts are a bigger problem for Western Europe than for the southeast. The Balkans has remained relatively free of religiously motivated terrorism, except for the attempt of a lone Sandzak-born Mevlid Jasarevic to shoot up the US Embassy in Sarajevo in 2011. According to Balkan Inside Editor Marcus Tanner, “[This] crazy attack certainly put the wind up Bosnia's complacent political and religious establishment, but it was a ludicrously amateur episode compared to the slickly conducted (January) mass murder in Paris."

We Bosnians remember particularly well how Serbian nationalist leader Slobodan Milosevic, later followed by the Croatian Franjo Tudjman, at the beginning of the 1990s vindicated their decision to carve up Bosnia by convincing the West that Bosnian Muslims intended to establish a fundamentalist Islamic state on European soil. And what happened? The war against Bosnia ended, the division was thwarted, Bosnians -- mostly Muslims -- defended the country, but there was no Islamic state. Although in different circumstances and terms, a similar thing happened in Kosovo.

The same scenario of warning the world of the Balkan “jihadist ghosts” has continued for a quarter of a century. It is not that there were no efforts during that whole period to introduce into Balkan Muslim communities the strict Wahhabi or Salafi doctrine. Except in a few cases, preachers of that doctrine have not resorted to violence toward other communities. Their main targets were “moderate Muslims," as they were labeled by other Europeans. They tried to capture some mosques by force.

The Balkan Muslims -- a majority of whom call themselves Bosniaks (one exception being the Albanians) -- reject conservative and retrograde interpretations of the Quran. The Islam they believe in and practice is a combination of the Ottoman Hanafi heritage and tradition of living together for five centuries with Orthodox and Catholic Christians, as well as with Jews, as one nation. Besides, except Jews, they are all of Slavic origin, speak the same language and follow similar traditions and customs.

Whether we call it secularism or a European Islam, most Balkan Muslims don't accept the preaching of Nusret Imamovic, who, according to Radio Free Liberty / Radio Europe, told a crowd of his followers last year in the Bosnian town of Tuzla, "Unlike secularism and democracy, we say there is only one truth: the law of Allah and Shariah." He was joined by Bilal Bosnic, who also criticized democracy with harsh words. Later, Imamovic went to Syria and Bosnic succeeded him as the unofficial leader of the Bosnian Wahhabi or Salafi community.

Yes, the ISIS flag was on display at some houses in Gornja Maoca. Alerted by TV news, the police went there, but none were found. They had most probably been removed by the Wahhabi inhabitants of the village, wary of imprisonment. However, it is easier to recruit a few hundred fighters for ISIS than to strike at the roots of the Bosnian and Balkan way of being a Muslim.

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