SERBIAN ANALYST SAYS AL-QAEDA RECRUITING IN BALKANS

SERBIAN ANALYST SAYS AL-QA'IDAH USING BALKANS FOR RECRUITING TERRORISTS
BBC Monitoring International Reports - December 6, 2004

Excerpt from report by Z.D.-Z.J.: "Al-Qa'idah has camps in Balkans", published by Serbian newspaper Blic on 30 November - subheadings as published

Belgrade: The Al-Qa'idah terrorist organization uses the Balkans mostly as its recruitment centre and has no interest in carrying out any large-scale terrorist attacks there. The instability of the region does not stem from local governments' ties to terrorists but from their ties to organized crime, military analyst Aleksandar Radic has told Blic.

The AFP news agency has reported that European forces that are soon to take over from NATO (NATO-led Sfor) in Bosnia-Hercegovina (B-H) will be facing a new reality of preventing the spread of terrorism in Europe if the suspicion is confirmed that there is a terrorist network deployed on the ground.

Blue-eyed terrorist

"Islamic fundamentalism is at the moment creating a new type of 'blond terrorist' with blue eyes. There are terrorist training camps in the Zenica area (in central Bosnia), while cells of radical Islamist followers of Wahhabism have been reported in the Bihac and Maglaj areas," the news agency said, quoting intelligence services in Sarajevo.

According to this report, the risk of Al-Qa'idah's presence in Bosnia comes from former fighters from Islamic countries that have obtained Bosnian passports in the meantime. Nine Bosniak officials have recently been charged with corruption for helping 741 Arab fighters to obtain Bosnian citizenship illegally after the war.

(Passage omitted: US Defence and Foreign Affairs magazine quoted on leading Al-Qa'idah member Khalid Shaykh Muhammad getting Bosnian citizenship)

Radic maintains that the Balkan countries can be a recruitment centre for Al-Qa'idah primarily because of a rise in intolerance in Europe to foreigners and people that look different.

"The only Muslims that look like Europeans are Muslims in our region and it is possible that some of them may be used for operations in Europe," Radic explains.

However, he believes that Al-Qa'idah has no wish to launch large-scale terrorist attacks in the Balkan countries and that none of the local governments has an interest in supporting terrorists.

"Since the wars, the centre of operations has shifted from our region. The Balkans has become completely marginalized in respect of the world's main conflicts. Al-Qa'idah is trying to wage its terrorist campaign in other places and, apart from using Bosnia and Kosovo as recruitment centres, it has no need to launch any major operations here. If they estimate that they could achieve some significant result, terrorists might carry out an isolated operation, but not systematic attacks. The main factor that destabilizes the political situation in the Balkans is local governments' ties to organized crime," Radic stresses.

Network of 6,000 people

According to Radic, it is very difficult to estimate how many people are involved in the terrorist network in the Balkans.

"The number of terrorists need not be important. Even a single terrorist can produce considerable results against a well-chosen target," Radic says.

(Passage omitted: Western media quoted on Al-Qa'idah network in Balkans)

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