Most Helpful Customer Reviews
45 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Afghan Jihad and how it found its Way to the West, March 27, 2005
This review is from: Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (Paperback)
Still today, although slightly less, the crucial importance of Bosnia for Al-Qaida's Jihad in and against the West is underestimated. How was it possible that the holy warriors, after having fought for many years in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan, were able to establish save havens in Bosnia and spread terrorist cells throughout Europe, Canada and the United States?
This book offers a detailed approach to the genesis of Al-Qaida (above all in Europe) and enumerates a number of components that enabled it to spread globally. Starting with the holy war in Afghanistan and its infrastructure and fighters, the focus gradually moves to Bosnia (its Civil War) and, later on, to a global scale.
The book features various illustrations, extensive coverage of many individual destinies of the "mujahideen", references to a great variety of sources and is written in a very appealing way. Furthermore, it sheds light on the doubtful rôle of Alija Izetbegovic, on flawed Western intelligence, on the consequences of the hesitant intervention of the International Community, on the crucial impact of so-called Islamic "Charities" and finally offers lessons of the "Afghano-Bosniaks".
At the beginning, you might have to get used to the particular fashion of the book, however, after a few pages you will enjoy a very good read. To conclude, a few pieces of advice in order to get the most out of the book: have a map of Ex-Yugoslavia (especially Bosnia) within reach, write down the most important Arabic expressions you encounter with the corresponding translation and make a list of the most important Arabic names, as some are difficult to remember and prone to confusion.
Addendum:
In the first place, this book has no extensive historical pretensions - therefore, there is no need to enter into the historic details of Bosnia. Still, the more secular approach to Islam of the Bosnians appears clearly in the book (vid. their conflicts with the mujahideen, their different eating/drinking habits, etc.)
Rather, the book is aimed at showing how it was possible for Al-Qaeda to set its feet on European soil and to develop further activities, using Bosnia as a (temporal) safe haven.
The book is simply focused on exactly that phenomenon and does not have to deal neither with Christian fundamentalism nor the atrocities committed by the regular and irregular Serb armed forces during the civil war (which I am sure are denounced by Mr. Kohlmann). There is plenty of books which provide a more general perspective on this war, however, that is not the point Mr. Kohlmann wanted to make writing his book.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
26 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Michael Innes' book review in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, March 2005, September 16, 2005
This review is from: Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (Paperback)
This book is a pathbreaking piece of research into two underexplored aspects of contemporary terrorism. Author Evan F. Kohlmann outlines the trajectories of Arab-Afghan veterans of the anti-Soviet jihad and subsequent civil war in Afghanistan during the 1980s and early 1990s. He also looks to the origins and patterns of mujahedin activity during the 1992-1995 wars in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The result is a deeply disturbing illumination of late twentieth century Islamic militancy. Both troubled states attracted fighters from across the Greater Middle East and North Africa, and although many of the leading jihadists in wartime Bosnia made their reputations in the earlier Afghan conflict, Kohlmann portrays both states as roughly parallel forges of extremist sentiment. Al-Quaida's Jihad in Europe traces terrorist trajectories from the Peshawar-based Mujahedin Services Office, across the mountains of central and southwestern Bosnia, to London's infamous Finsbury Mosque and the metropoles of Western Europe and North America.
The weight of the book is on the Arab-Afghan migration to Bosnia-Herzegovina. As organized combatants, the contribution of mujahedin units to the Bosnian Muslim war effort was clear: their fearlessness under fire, and their consequent impact on military goals, was undisputed. Their lack of discipline and total disregard for the laws of war, on the other hand, were a liability to the government of Alija Izetbegovic. As religious colonizers, their promotion of conservative Islam also conflicted with the laissez-faire attitudes of Bosnian Muslims. Kohlmann addresses this ambiguity quite adroitly, exploring official reluctance to deal with the post-war settlement of foreign fighters who shed blood in defence of their admittedly obscure Bosnian Muslim brethren. Between 1995 and 2001, these contentious remnants of war became regional outposts for transnational terrorist networks. Numerous post-war terrorist incidents have been traced back to the Afghan-Bosnians, but intervention forces in the Western Balkans ensured that the security spotlight never wavered far. The Al Quaida attacks of 11 September 2001 precipitated a sudden shift in foreign policy attention to Bosnia, and in its own government's approach to domestic counter-terrorism. The country quickly became a second front in the war on terror, at a time when patience with the Balkan quagmire had worn thin.
Equal parts travelogue, journalistic exposé, think tank inquiry, and independent research, Kohlmann's work is part of a newly emerging strand of scholarship that explores some of the hidden micro-histories of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. Such authors as Cees Wiebes, Marko Attila Hoare, and Charles R. Schraeder have touched on this uncomfortable aspect of the conflict. Kohlmann addresses the issue in unprecedented detail, exploiting a wide variety of available sources to piece together a largely neglected segment of contemporary Bosnian history. Extensive North American and European media coverage, declassified intelligence documents, and legal case files form the backbone of the study, but interviews with radical clerics, and excerpts from jihadist internet and video propaganda, provide critical insights into terrorist preferences, motives, and interests. Kohlmann offers no overarching theoretical arguments. The book, instead, is descriptive and empirically rich: the author's main accomplishment is to document the many terrorist incidents the Afghan-Bosnians perpetrated in wartime Bosnia, and post-war cases of terrorist activity rooted in their far-reaching network.
This book is also useful for the light it sheds on two related issues that have taken on striking policy relevance since the global war on terror began: the nature of terrorist sanctuaries, and counter-terrorist approaches to stamping them out. NATO's intervention in Bosnia after 1996, interestingly, is given the feel of an early denial-of-sanctuary operation, of the sort more commonly associated with post-9/11 Bush Administration counter-terrorist doctrine. For the professional mujahedin of Afghanistan and Bosnia, constantly in search of violent outlets for their religious convictions, sanctuary has clearly not been the same thing as safety. Many of them were committed jihadists before they ever fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and the Serbs and Croats in the Balkans. They remain a mobile diaspora whose members have been unable to return to their countries of origin, and the sanctuaries they sought out have been a mix of combat zones, staging areas, logistical bases, planning centers, transit points, and ideological enclaves. This reader, for one, anxiously awaits further scholarship on sanctuary in terrorist thought and practice. The one major failing of Kohlmann's study is the poor quality of its editing: the text is full of the sort of typographical errors that should have been picked up in a thorough copyedit. A work of this importance deserves better treatment by its publishers, and one hopes that a second printing will see a more polished product.
Michael A. Innes
book review in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, March 2005
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The books covers exactly what it intended, July 14, 2007
This review is from: Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network (Paperback)
This book is the most comprehensive analysis of the foreign Mujahideens role in Bosnia. Concerning Larissa 1 star review of this book: I find it hard to believe she even read the book enough to realize the authors intentions in his writings. She complains that Kohlmann does not see the whole picture of the Balkins and is under the impression that the author was trying to give an overview of the entirety of the Balkins and its culture. She says, "Kohlmann should perhaps confine himself to the details of the terrorist groups and avoid writing about areas such as the Balkins." That is exactly what Kohlmann did in this book and which was the purpose of this book: to write about the Afghan Mujahideen and foreign Muslims in general who came to Bosnia to fight, and Kohlmanns analysis of the after effects these elements had. Larissa's critique is irrelevent. If you want a book that explains the Balkins, its culture, with emphasis on Yugoslavia (Croatia, Bosnia and Serbia) then yes, one should look elsewhere. If you want a book that covers the element of Islamic radicalism, then this book does exactly that, and Kohlmann was not attempting to do more than that! Infact, Kohlmann does not even bother to give a brief summary of what the war was about and its probably wise that a reader should do some basic research on the war before starting this book, as this book was written with the intention that the reader already understands the basic macro topics.
As for Srebrenica review of the book, I doubt this person even read much of the book. Srebrenica claims Kohlmaan could not see the secular trend of Bosnian muslims as opposed to extremist ones, when the book covered this topic in-depth throughout the chapters, even stating that Al Qaida's failure to setup a perminent base in Bosnia, similar to Afghanistan, was the result of incompatibilities with secular Bosnian Muslims who love to drink alcohal! This was a major aspect of Kohlmann's thesis covering the post-war stance of the Mujahideens in Bosnia.
Ignore these 1-star reviews, as they really are irrelevant to the data in this book as well as Kohlmann's objective in writing this book. The book is not about the Balkins and its many ethnicities. It is about the role of Mujahideen in Bosnia and the compatibilities of Islamic radicalism and Bosnia's secular Islam. If the book tried to be anything else, it would go off topic. This book deserves attention for covering a such topics that are overlooked in the world of Islamic resistance. My only complaint is that it would have been nice if this book had a map in it.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
|
|
Most Recent Customer Reviews
|
