HEADLINE: Bin Laden's Balkan connections: Al-Qaeda fighters have been quietly infiltrating the ranks of ethnic Albanian guerrilla forces in Macedonia Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo for years.
BYLINE: Scott Taylor
As the U.S. manhunt for Osama bin Laden and his followers intensifies in the wake of the Taliban's fall, the Americans will turn their attention to other countries suspected of harbouring terrorists -- Sudan, Libya, Syria, Somalia, and areas under Palestinian control.
Foremost among these trouble spots will be the Balkans, where al-Qaeda fighters have been quietly infiltrating the ranks of ethnic Albanian forces in Macedonia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo for years.
Macedonian intelligence officials say mujahedeen, or Islamic freedom fighters, especially Mr. bin Laden's followers, form the veteran core of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla army known as the National Liberation Army, or UCK, which has mounted a successful military offensive against Macedonian security forces from their base in Kosovo since last March: By the time a shaky peace was brokered in September, the UCK controlled nearly 30 per cent of Macedonian territory. Macedonian security forces attribute the success of the UCK, which was initially inexperienced and ill-equipped, to the support of as many as 120 mujahedeen among them.
On Nov. 20, when extremists from around the world were volunteering to join the ranks of the Taliban, Pakistani police apprehended five Muslim "fighters" carrying Macedonian passports at the Afghan border -- further proof, Macedonian authorities say, of Mr. bin Laden's Balkan connection.
Nikola, a senior director with Macedonian intelligence services, confirmed that, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, his agency "supplied a substantive dossier to the CIA," outlining the activities of Mr. bin Laden's followers in the Balkans. The information included accounts by Macedonian civilians who had been held hostage by mujahedeen, along with photos and videos captured from Albanian guerrillas.
Ljubo Boskovski, the Macedonian minister of interior, is anxious for his police forces to return to areas controlled by the Albanian guerrillas to uncover more evidence of mujahedeen involvement. Since Nov. 13, Macedonian security forces have been exhuming a mass grave outside the ethnic Albanian village of Trebos. To date, the police have unearthed the bodies of six Macedonians (in all, 21 civilians in the area disappeared following UCK attacks). Intelligence officer Nikola believes mujahedeen perpetrated the Trebos massacre "because of the manner in which the bodies were cut up and scattered."
He also suspects Islamic extremists were behind a brutal ambush of security forces last April, in which eight policemen were shot outside the village of Vejce, and their bodies dismembered to provide the victors with grisly trophies.
The Macedonian authorities are not the only ones who suspect the mujahedeen in the Vejce atrocities. During the summer offensive around Tetovo, Albanian guerrillas admitted they had gained combat experience in previous conflicts. Twenty-three-year-old Commander "Jimmy" claimed he was a veteran of Chechnya and Kosovo, while "Snake" Arifaq bragged of service in Bosnia and displayed a scar he had received during the fighting in Croatia. The two Albanians acknowledged "volunteers" from Afghanistan and other Arab countries had helped train members of the UCK. As for the Vejce incident, Commander Jimmy said such an atrocity could "only have been committed by the foreigners because Albanians do not cut up bodies."
When the Albanian insurrection began, the Macedonian government hastily acquired a fleet of six Ukrainian helicopter gunships. "Shortly after that, our pilots reported being tracked by sophisticated (U.S.-made) Stinger missiles" said Nikola, adding that, according to Macedonian Intelligence, "the UCK received these Stingers from their mujahedeen connections in Afghanistan."
Since Sept. 11 the Macedonians have noted a shift in U.S. foreign policy. "The CIA have been much more receptive to our reports about the al-Qaeda," said Nikola. "Particularly after they discovered that one of the suicide hijackers had been active in both Kosovo and Macedonia."
Macedonian police have been working closely with their Yugoslavian counterparts to neutralize the Albanian terrorists. More importantly, as part of the U.S.-led global initiative to combat terror, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia has been reinstated in Interpol -- after a 10-year banishment. Intelligence officers from the Yugoslavian Army have supplied a wealth of information outlining mujahedeen activity in both Bosnia and Kosovo. Yugoslav intelligence officers believe at least 50 of the 150 mujahedeen who fought in Kosovo remain active members of the UCK.
Even before they got the information from Yugoslavia, Interpol had been tracking al-Qaeda's activities in the Balkans. On Oct. 23 this year, the agency released a report outlining Mr. bin Laden's personal links to the Albanian Mafia. Interpol alleges that a senior al-Qaeda lieutenant had been the commander of an elite UCK unit in Kosovo during the fighting in 1999, when NATO intervened to support the ethnic Albanians, largely at the urging of the U.S.
The CIA was aware of Mr. bin Laden's Albanian connections well before NATO's commitment in Kosovo, numerous media reports clearly show.
On Jan. 17, 1999, an alleged massacre of 45 Albanian Kosovars in the village of Racak made headlines around the world. Pointing to this incident (later proved by UN pathologists to have been an Albanian hoax), former U.S. president Bill Clinton proclaimed the West could no longer overlook "Serbian atrocities," setting the wheels in motion for NATO's confrontation with Yugoslavia.
That same day, Greek media outlets revealed that Taliban members were pouring into Albania, at the invitation of ex-president Sali Berisa and former head of intelligence Bashkim Gazidede. According to The Tribune, an Athens daily paper, Albanian security official Fatos Klozi confirmed that "bin Laden was one of those who had organized and sent groups to fight in Kosovo. There were Egyptians, Saudis, Algerians, Tunisians, Sudanese and Kuwaitis from different organizations among the (UCK) mercenaries."
Ten days later, on Jan. 27, 1999, the Arab-language news service Al Hayat reported that an Albanian commander in Kosovo, code-named Monia, was directly connected to Osama bin Laden. The piece also reported that "at least 100 Muslim mujahedeen" were serving with Monia's force in Kosovo.
In August 1998, the Washington Post reported that the CIA was not only aware of Mr. bin Laden's association with the Albanian regime, but that U.S. operatives had been "prominent" in the arrest of four al-Qaeda agents in Tirana. At the time, U.S. State Department officials even speculated that the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania might have been Mr. bin Laden's revenge for the Tirana arrests.
The al-Qaeda suspects detained by the CIA in Albania had been operating the Islamic Revival Foundation, "a charitable organization that official sources say provided a useful cover for the (suspects') efforts on behalf of bin Laden," the Washington Post reported.
In February 1998, the U.S. State Department had removed the UCK from their list of terrorist organizations. However later that same year, the CIA and their Albanian SHIK intelligence counterparts successfully shut down an Islamic terrorist cell operating with the help of Albanians in Kosovo.
Some of the most revealing links between Albanian fighters and Mr. bin Laden surfaced in December 1998, when al-Qaeda agent Claude Sheik Abdel-Kader was arrested in Tirana for the murder of his Albanian translator. During his trial, Mr. Abdel-Kader confessed to being a senior commander in Mr. bin Laden's network, and claimed he had recruited a force of some 300 mujahedeen to fight in Kosovo.
European media covering the trial reported his revelation that Osama bin Laden -- although a wanted terrorist -- had travelled freely to Tirana in 1994 and 1998 to meet with senior Albanian officials. Mr. Abdel-Kader also confessed that when the Albanian regime of Sali Berisa collapsed into anarchy in 1997, state armouries and government offices were looted. According to Mr. Abdel-Kader, many of the 10,000 heavy weapons and 100,000 passports that went missing fell into the hands of al-Qaeda members.
Osama bin Laden -- stripped of his Saudi citizenship in 1994 -- is alleged to have retained the Bosnian passport he was issued in Vienna in 1993. According to a Sept. 1999 report in Dani, a Bosnian Muslim weekly paper, Alija Izetbegovic, then president of Bosnia, granted Mr. bin Laden a passport in recognition of his followers' contributions to Mr. Izetbegovic's quest to create a "fundamentalist Islamic republic" in the Balkans.
Dani also reported that al-Qaeda terrorist Mehrez Aodouni had been arrested in Istanbul while carrying a Bosnian passport. Like Mr. bin Laden, his citizenship had been granted "because he was a member of the Bosnia-Herzegovina army."
Canadian soldiers serving with the United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR) were among the first to report the presence of mujahedeen among the Bosnian Muslims as early as 1992.
The Asian edition of the Wall Street Journal reported that, in 1993, Mr. bin Laden had appointed Sheik Ayman Al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda's second-in-command, to direct his operations in the Balkans.
While no exact numbers exist, it is estimated that between 1,500 and 3,500 Arab volunteers participated in the Bosnian civil war. Their main area of operation was the region of Zenica, with most serving in a brigade under Gen. Sakib Mahmuljin, nicknamed "the Guerrillas." Identified by red and green "Rambo" bandannas emblazoned with a crest that read, "our road is Jihad," this unit quickly gained a reputation for brutality.
On June 27, 1993, the Sunday Times reported that even Bosnian Muslim officers had reservations about the mujahedeen volunteers. Col. Stjepan Siber, then deputy commander of the Bosnia-Herzegovina army, admitted to the Times that "It was a mistake to let (the mujahedeen) in here. They commit most of the atrocities and work against the interests of the Muslim people. They have been killing, looting and stealing."
According to reports, it was the mujahedeen who committed some of the worst atrocities of the war, under Gen. Nasir Oric in the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica. Beheadings of Serbian civilians were commonplace, and in some villages the mujahedeen would dynamite homes with the inhabitants trapped inside.
No attempt was made to hide such atrocities. In fact, Gen. Oric would often address the media at the site of the massacres. On one such occasion, while standing in front of mujahedeen displaying decapitated human heads as trophies, Gen. Oric pointed to a smouldering building in ruins and proudly announced to reporters, "We blew those Serbs to the moon."
Alija Izetbegovic was also proud to display the fighting prowess of his mujahedeen volunteers. Following a successful attack against Serbian positions around Vozuce on Sept. 10, 1995, the Bosnian president held a televised medal presentation. Mujahedeen warriors had served as the vanguard of the assault force, and were awarded 11 decorations for valour, including the Golden Crescent, Bosnia's highest honour.
Yugoslav intelligence estimates that citizenship was granted to more than 1,500 mujahedeen, including al-Qaeda members, following the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995. Most of those soldiers are believed to have settled in the Zenica region.
According to Miroslav Lazanski, author of the new book, Osama bin Laden Against America, al-Qaeda members still maintain two bases in Bosnia, one of them reserved for top fighters.
Following the Sept. 11 attacks, FBI and CIA agents uncovered evidence that two of the suicide hijackers had originated from this Bosnian camp. The commander of the camp, an Algerian named Abu Mali, was subsequently arrested while travelling in Istanbul on a Bosnian passport.
The U.S. military has taken a keen interest in mujahedeen activities in the Balkans since Sept. 11. Late last month, U.S. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers visited NATO troops in Bosnia to warn them against a possible al-Qaeda retaliation attack. And on Dec. 4, the White House added two Albanian terrorist groups operating in Macedonia and Kosovo to its list of outlawed organizations.
And so, Mr. Clinton's dubious decisions in the Balkan conflagration two years ago have come back to haunt the U.S.
GRAPHIC: Photo: Scott Taylor, The Ottawa Citizen ;, Twenty-three-year-old Commander 'Jimmy,' one of an estimated 120, mujahedeen, or Islamic freedom fighters, that form the veteran core, of the ethnic Albanian guerrilla army known as the National, Liberation Army, claims he's a veteran of Chechnya and Kosovo.;, Photo: (Osama bin Laden) -- Yoshie
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