OSAMA'S BOSNIAN
LEGIONS
Kostunica's point was underscored rather dramatically,
not long afterward, when Bosnian Muslim terrorists associated
with Bin Laden's Al Qaeda organization targeted
US military and diplomatic facilities in that American protectorate.
Although the US is claiming that it has effectively dealt
a "crippling blow"
to the terrorist Al Qaeda organization in Bosnia with the
arrest of three and the detaining of dozens – mostly Egyptians
and Algerians – this is no doubt only a single tentacle of
the subterranean monster. The Serbs claim that thousands of
Muslim "internationalists" from Northern Africa,
Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan were recruited to the Bosnian
Muslim-KLA insurgency, and it is well-known that hundreds,
perhaps more, were granted Bosnian citizenship, and others
given asylum in Kosovo.
THE BOSNIAN-BIN
LADEN CONNECTION
Perhaps
the facility with which Bin Laden's terrorist operatives were
granted access to the Balkans had something to do with the
theft of some 100,000 blank Albanian passports during the
1997 anarchy that enveloped that nation. In any case, the
complicity of America's Bosnian Muslim protégés in making
the Balkans accessible to Bin Laden's terrorist network was
underscored by the arrest, in Turkey, of a Bin Ladenite agent,
one Mehrez Audonija, who held a Bosnian passport. Audonija
is said to be a top leader in Bin Laden's cabal.
Several
of the 9/11 hijackers are said to have held Bosnian passports.
The New York Times [June 26, 1997] reported that one
of the terrorists arrested in connection with the bombing
of US installation at Al Khobar, in Saudi Arabia, had been
a top commander of the Bosnian Mujahadeen, and had admitted
to having ties to Bin Laden. Bosnia
has long been a terrorist base. Long ignored by the US
in the interests of its pro-Muslim Balkan policy, the threat
is now so great that the American architects of Europe's first
Islamic state have been forced to acknowledge the consequences
of their own folly in a classified State Department report,
which was fortunately leaked to the Los Angeles Times.
COIN OF THE
REALM
Detailing
the extensive financial, ideological, and military ties that
linked Osama to the Bosnian government, the Times,
citing a former senior State Department official, also noted
that
"The
secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton administration,
warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia in numbers that
'shocked everyone,' he said. The White House leaned on Bosnia
and its then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, to do something
about the matter, 'but nothing happened,' the former official
said."
For an
international terrorist organization such as Al Qaeda, passports
are the coin of the realm, and Bosnia was apparently quite
generous with Bin Laden personally, issuing
him a special passport via the Bosnian embassy in Vienna,
in 1993. There is even a report that President
Izetbegovic personally met with Bin Laden when the latter
made a secret trip to Sarajevo in that same year. No doubt
the Assassin-in-chief of Al Qaeda was so grateful for the
Bosnian government's beneficence – and vice versa – that he
wanted to seal the alliance in person. Serbian sources were
reporting Bin Laden's presence in the Balkans in 1999, where
he came in the guise of a "Saudi businessman" eager to do
"charitable work" in the area. Perhaps
alone of all the Western media, the Canberra Times
[April 28, 2000] cited Tanjug, the Yugoslavian government
news agency, in reporting the following item:
"Islamic Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden, wanted
for terrorism by the United States, is in Kosovo. The official
Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said Bin Laden, whom it described
as a 'terrorist and Islamic fanatic,' arrived from Albania
after having formed a group of 500 Islamic fighters in the
eastern region around Korce and Pogradec to carry out 'terrorist
acts' in Kosovo.
"He
planned similar acts in the southern region of Serbia bordering
on Kosovo, including Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac, the
agency said."
TRUTH AND PROPAGANDA
But since
that source was deemed politically incorrect, and therefore
unreliable, the evidence was dismissed as Serbian "propaganda."
The extensive role of the "internationalist" Islamic network
presided over by Bin Laden and associates in dozens of countries
was extensively documented by Antiwar.com during the Kosovo
war, and not just from Serbian sources. No one listened, then
– but now they are forced to listen, even as the US official
offices in Bosnia and Kosovo go on high alert. Thanks to American
policymakers, our soldiers in Bosnia and throughout the region
are sitting ducks for Bin Ladenite sympathizers, who plastered
the walls of Bosnian and Croatian cities with posters hailing
Bin Laden in the wake of 9/11.
WHAT ABOUT
MACEDONIA?
The idea
that it is not permissible to talk about the absurdities of
US foreign policy in the context of the 9/11 atrocity, and
that this amounts to some sort of "moral equivalence," is
refuted by the revelation of the Bosnian-Bin Laden connection.
For here is evidence of US government complicity in the attacks
insofar as the US and its Bosnian ally shielded and nurtured
Bin Laden in the Balkans. The US is claiming to have "disrupted"
the Bin Laden network in Bosnia, but what about Macedonia?
The Washington Times [October 3, 2001] reports
that Bin Laden's personal representative in Macedonia has
so far contributed as much as $7 million to the "National
Liberation Army" of Albanian Islamofascists. Yet the US backs
the NLA to the hilt, diplomatically, as Washington continues
to exert pressure on the Macedonian government to cave in
to terrorism. So much for the "war on terrorism."
STORM WARNINGS
There were
plenty of early warnings of the Bin Ladenite threat we were
nurturing in the heart of Europe, and a full catalogue would
prove endless and rather dreary, so I'll just point out a
few highlights (and thanks to Jared Israel for compiling and
posting a file
of old press clippings that neatly illustrate my point).
The Charleston Gazette [November 30, 1998 – Page 2A]
notes that "the man accused of orchestrating the U.S. Embassy
bombings in Africa operates a terrorist network
out of Albania." Fatos Klosi, the head of the Albanian
intelligence service, was cited as saying Bin Laden sent units
to fight at NATO's side in Kosovo.
"Bin Laden,"
reports the Gazette, "is believed to have established
an Albanian operation in 1994 after telling the government
he headed a wealthy Saudi humanitarian agency wanting to help
Albania." Even if the CIA is reduced to an army of researchers,
endlessly compiling, filing, and presumably reading available
press clippings, certainly the Bin Laden connection to their
own Balkan adventure could not have escaped them. That the
Clinton administration turned a blind eye to this connection
is among its greatest crimes, in retrospect, far more serious
than presidential perjury and Oval Office trysts.
THE CLINTON-BIN
LADEN AXIS
As newspaper
editorialists from coast to coast rail against Bin Laden,
the "evildoer," remember it wasn't always so. On May 28, 1999,
when the Daily Oklahoman published a remarkably prescient
editorial, it was far from fashionable to bring up the matter
of Islamic radicalism, much less Osama Bin Laden's links to
our Balkan "allies" in Bosnia, Albania, and the KLA. "As US
Sen. Jim Inhofe long has predicted," the Oklahoma paper averred,
"When
American troops go into Kosovo against the Serbs, they'll
be fighting alongside a terrorist organization known to finance
its operations with drug sales – including some to the United States.
"By
joining hands with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which
intelligence sources say bankrolls itself by selling heroin
and cocaine, the United States also would become partners
of a sort with Osama Bin Laden, the international terrorist
behind last year's bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania,
the Washington Times reports. . . . Such an ally is
the result of Bill Clinton choosing sides in a centuries-old
civil war."
THE AMERICAN
PARADOX
Citing the
testimony of a top law enforcement official – "They were
terrorists in 1998 and now, because of politics, they're freedom
fighters" – the editorial went on to declare that "in Bill
Clinton's war, where bombing has been turned into a humanitarian
application, such a paradox fits right in." This paradox is
central to understanding what happened on 9/11. It is the
paradox of an American foreign policy that dictated a de facto
alliance with Bin Laden at one point – and not just in Afghanistan
in the war against the Russians, but as recently as 1999.
This is "blowback," as the brilliant Chalmers Johnson put
it in his
excellent book of that name, with a vengeance.
WAKE ME WHEN
THEY BOMB SARAJEVO
If it is
"blame America first" thinking to point out that the US government
has been stung by its own nettle, then so be it. Until the
US government demands the extradition of the 300-plus "Mujahadeen"
organized and funded by Bin Laden, and granted Bosnian citizenship,
I'll continue to take the "war on terrorism" less seriously
than my warmongering friends.
Why is
the US threatening to bomb Iraq, fer chrissakes, when
the real target of their ire should properly be Bosnia? It
was the government in Sarajevo, after all, not the one in
Baghdad, which handed out passports to terrorists like party
favors. Bosnia harbors more known Islamic terrorists than
any other country outside of Afghanistan – and that in a
region guarded and "protected" by US soldiers, thousands of
them, dug in since the early nineties. When somebody explains
how and why this is possible, I'll take seriously George W.
Bush's declaration of war on terrorism. They're bombing Kabul,
but what about Sarajevo? Of course, they don't want to hit
their own soldiers – and doesn't this dramatize the
paradox of American policy and the prelude to 9/11 in all
its tragic absurdity?
FRANKEN-TERRORISM
We create
our own monsters. The US is confronted, here, with Franken-terrorism,
and not just in the sense that our foreign policy had certain
inadvertent consequences. The history of how the Clintonian
foreign policy of intervention in the Balkans intersected
with Al Qaeda needs to be thoroughly investigated by Congress.
But that is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The extensive
international support system for the Kosovo Liberation Army,
and the Macedonian "National Liberation Army," has raised
millions, much of it in this country. The KLA, in addition,
is financed by the European heroin trade – and no doubt supplied
by Bin Laden, and the Taliban, who rely on opium, Afghanistan's
chief export, for a good chunk of their income.
I CALL THE
TIP LINE
In following
up the KLA connection, law enforcement will discover a network
that reaches throughout Europe and into the US, particularly
on the East coast, and New York. Bin Ladenite operatives in
the US would, no doubt, be in touch with their Bosnian Muslim
and Kosovar brothers and allies. This in one connection that
the FBI would do well to follow up on. As hard as it was for
me to believe that the Pentagon had actually issued
a call to citizens to submit their own ideas on how to
fight terrorism – are they really that clueless and
bewildered? – I thought I might as well have a stab at it.
Since they asked, I would say: look, you guys, check into
the Bin Laden-Albanian-KLA connection, and the pro-KLA network
in the US – you might find more than even I imagine.
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