Customer Reviews

Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad

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Recently several books came out shedding a different light on the Bosnian War of 1992-1995. Most authors are people with mentality and the perception of reality based on the morality of the modern Western society. It looks like they don't have an axe to grind and the only reason urged them to write the books running counter to the mass media presentation, the official political course and the widespread academic interpretation of the Bosnian War was objectivity built on the whole of the facts, not just on a "convenient" part of them. As a Latin maxim says - Non Nova, Sed Nove. I chose the book "Unholy Terror" to read first because of the phrase the author mentioned in Introduction namely, "...spend time in muddy boots in war zone" - what he just did. The second reason was that he is a researcher who was trained to be a spy. This means that the author has acquired and developed the strong ability to gather, analyze, classify facts establishing logical connections between them and deduce the corresponding conclusions. The third reason was the long list of sources he used which penmen range from Bosnian Christians and Muslims to Western writers. So the thorough unbiased research was conducted. And the last reason was that it seems the author doesn't have any Bosnian family roots and thus he is a neutral observer.

To my eye the book is the very comprehensive research on the subject encompassing the period of time from the Ottoman Empire to the modern era. The material is presented in a consistent and intelligible as for experts so for laypersons way and accompanied by numerous quotations and references to the sources. The author doesn't arbitrary pick some facts from the conflict. He begins his account from the 14th century when in fact the conflict originated alternating active phases with dormant spans. (Being a teenager I visited the Tito's Yugoslavia of 1970th many times and already then I learnt that the tranquil and prosperous life is nested in a seething volcano.) As a result due to the rigorously logic chain of historical causes and consequences constructed by the author the entire picture of the clash of the civilizations and religions over centuries is more than convincing.

Why did I decide to review the book? Honestly speaking as I understand it now I have been indirectly and involuntarily involved in this matter from my birth, because my father was a Bosnian Serb. Being 16 years old he joined the Tito's army during the 2nd World War and took part in several great battles including the liberation of Belgrade. Later he went through many controversial events of that turbulent epoch.

Now I am already aware that in our hi-tech times it still matters very much who are or were your parents implying their religion, race and ethnicity. I was born and raised in Russia, received my education in Russia and France. The only one thing I have been devoted to all my life is mathematics. I hold a PhD in it. And I naively thought that in our civilized society people are, first of all, judged by their personal and professional qualities. But it was a schoolboy blunder. If in our modern world, we are so proud of, some nation is defamed and you have any relation to it be sure that in the overwhelming number of cases this will reflect on your destiny negatively disregarding your personal and professional attributes. Embrace yourself at least for discrimination or even worse for dirty tricks and hounding. Unfortunately the contemporary social and political machine of our society works just this way despite all official statements. In reality this is neither more nor less but the smoke-and-mirrors world where we try to defend the human rights of individuals and trample on the ones of the entire nation at the same time. Watching movies on TV soaked through with violence, murders and graphic scenes I often wonder whether America is still capable of having such basic feelings as compassion, pity and understanding for the tears of other peoples or just guided by mere calculation and some primordial instincts.

In a conclusion I would like to thank the author for his excellent book and audacious act.

Having spend years in the Balkans, I strongly recommend this book for anyone interested in seeing the role that Bosnia played in the growth of the world wide Islamic extremist movement. Quite simply, this is a MUST read and takes its rightful place next to Evan F Kohlmann's book on this topic. This book tells the side of the story that CNN and the rest of the world's media never bothered to cover.

The U.S. attacks a sovereign nation, whose leaders are not threatening them, in an effort to export democracy to yet another foreign nation and protect its people from genocide. No, we're not talking about Iraq! This time we go after the Serbs. Specifically, Serbs living in the former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia referred to as 'Bosnian Serbs'. Surprisingly, there is no anti-war movement here in America. The 11 member NATO alliance lead by the U.S. mercilessly bombs the Bosnian Serbs into submission. Where are the war protesters that we hear so much of these days?

The time frame is the early to mid 90's. 9/11 has yet to assault our senses. Bill Clinton is president. Islamic Bosnia is hailed as a bastion of multiculturalism. Darlings of the western media mercilessly preyed upon by the evil ethnic-cleansing Serbs whose obvious motives of protecting their own in a country splintering itself from the Yugoslav Republic seems to go unnoticed. Did anyone question why the Serbs would've acted so heavy-handedly? Could there have been any provocation?

Schindler draws the picture thusly: Bosnian leader, Alija Izetbegovic, a man determined to bring an Islamic state into Balkan Bosnia, decides to secede from the Yugoslav Republic. He recruits Mujahidin fighters from Al-Qa'ida, fresh from the skirmish with the Russians in Afghanistan, and begins an ethnic cleansing of his own to drive out the infidel Serbs and create a 'pure Islamic culture'. We see the typical Muslim atrocities: executions, beheadings, munitions trafficking, corruption, using charitable organizations as fronts for financing the war. All the while, Izetbegovic maintains that he is fighting for a multi-cultural Bosnia. And just as the Serbs respond to these atrocities, here comes the western media. Just in time to get footage of the Serbs 'getting even'. The slaughter at Srebrenica, seen by many as proof of Serbia's culpability for war crimes, is presented as a 'set up'. Izetbegovic pulls his military protection from the city just as the Serbian response is anticipated. The Muslim citizens are set up for slaughter in order to justify a U.S. lead NATO response as promised by President Clinton.

Given the events that have transpired since then, Schindler's view is not hard to believe. In fact, it is difficult not to believe it these days with what we now know of Al-Qa'ida and their operations. Yes there will always be die-hard Clinton supporters who will continue to support the 'Bosnia-as-good-guys' view. But it is beginning to look more and more like we may have made a mistake in the Balkans. The Dayton accords, while partitioning Bosnia into Bosnian, Croat, and Serb zones, has given Izetbegovic what he wanted: An Islamic state. And Al-Qa'ida now has a base in the middle of Europe from which it can launch operations. I think you get the picture.

The author's material is well researched and not particularly anti-Muslim. Muslim citizens are often portrayed as much as victims as the Serbs in some cases. Islamic leaders often question and even oppose Izetbegovic's policies and his courting of Al-Qa'ida. He even occasionally debunks myth's about Muslim behavior at various points. All in all it is an interesting read though somewhat voluminous. Keeping track of the number of characters and organizations and such can be quite maddening. Still it is a worthwhile read: Four stars.

I am shocked at this sick justification of Serbian war efforts against the state of Bosnia. It pretty much hints that America should not have done anything and let the Serbs finish off Bosnia. Is the author aware that genocide was committed in Bosnia against the same people he portrays as terrorists? Disgusting! I understand people need to make money but not off the victims their must be some moral standard. Their were less than a thousand mujahdeins in Bosnia how can they even had any influence on the war and non the less on the development of a global terrorism that has hundreds of thousands of people involved? Please Mr. Schindler do your research because this book is irrelevant when it comes to terrorism or Bosnia because it simply lacks reality.

John R. Schindler has a background in scholarship and has the analytical background to weigh the credibility of various sources. This is exceedingly valuable in a conflict where the sides depend on the outside intervention based on those claims. The initial Western media arrived in the conflicting polities without a historical or anthropological understanding of the situation and did not have the capacity (much less the inclination) to weigh the claims of the Croatian CIC or the Bosnian Ministry of Information.

The value of the book is more than simply tracing the ideological influences upon the Bosnian Muslims (including the Young Muslims) but also in describing the support networks set up by Jihadists and the propaganda efforts by the Muslims and Croatians. The credibility the Croatian CIC had among Western journalists and diplomats is demonstrated to have been misplaced. That has serious implications for the vast body of policy and scholarship built upon the journalism the believed the CIC.

The more obscure elements of the war (on the Muslim side) are described such as the Muslim "Larks" who sniped in Sarajevo. The organization and internal politics of the Bosnian Army is described as well. Sadly, as the book focuses on the Al-Qaida efforts in Bosnia, the actual conduct of the war (admittedly a difficult subject due to massive information) is only mentioned in passing save where the context in vital. Jihadists are demonstrated to have played a significant political role (the military value is debatable) both during and after the war.

The NATO political and military role after the war could have used more detail but that would have required even more depth and page length. The book is an excellent resource by one who has both academic and intelligence experience. Sadly, as is the habit of spooks who go into academic writing, the endnotes are only sometimes linked to publicly available sources and so need the author's commentary.

The author agrees with John E, Sray (former officer at Sarakevo G-2) regarding the lack of credibility of the Bosnian government and his claims agree with other sources. Schindler's claims gain credibility by being both logically coherent and matching up with well analyzed sources like peacekeepers on the ground instead of UN diplomats or other involved parties such as the US embassy.

The book is not a critique of the propaganda around the war but a work on the ideological shifts in the Bosnian Muslim society and government. As a research work, it is an excellent primary source. For a read on the full conduct of the war without the inadvertent bias and mistakes the creep into so much writing on the subject, it is one of the few accounts with detail on the matter but lacks a full narrative.

A well reasoned and researched book that illuminates an unknown aspect of the West's blind support of one actor in a complicated civil war. Balkan Muslim communities have escaped scrutiny based on the US policies in Bosnia and Kosovo... but the Ft Dix Plot (Kosovo Muslim Albanians), the recent arrests in NYC and North Carolina, Salt Lake City mall shootings illuminate the ties (limited albeit) between Balkan Muslim disporas in the US with global terror. Worth the read, especially since Bosnian authorities are still dealing with radicals... the latest arrests were on 5 Nov 09 in Sarajevo....

Unholy Terror, Review by Peter Staric, PhD, Ljubljana, Slovenia

Important Advice! In Order to avoid any confusion in quotation of names with specific diacritical fonts, this review should be open with Times New Roman CE Fonts, where æ (e.g. Izetbegoviæ) is pronounced in English as tj;, è (e.g. Èengiæ) as ch; dj or ð (e.g. Karadjiæ or Karaðiæ) as j, and z (e.g. zivalj) as zh. For doing otherwise, let me quote only a single very confusing example: Gojko Šusak was the former Croatian defense minister. In the book his name is written as Susak, which is actually the name of an island in northern Adriatic. If some would guess Susak, this is the part of the Port Rijeka (just some 100 km north from the island Susak), while Šusak means nothing. The consistent misspelling of the names in the book caused much confusion even for us, the former citizens of Yugoslavia, in cases when less known names were being quoted. Since the book is extremely important to understand the recent history of (former) Yugoslavia, these misspellings should be corrected in the second printing.

So far almost the whole world is convinced that in the Bosnian conflict of 1992-1995 the Serbs were bad guys, while the Bosnians were the good ones. Even we, the citizens of Slovenia - who were living in the common State Yugoslavia before 1991 - being close enough, share this opinion, which was created by the world press and told by numerous Bosnian refugees, who received asylum in Slovenia

In order to fully understand and believe the narrative of John R. Schindler, Professor of U.S. naval War College, we must reach back in time from 1945-1991, when Yugoslavia was still the common state of Slovenes, Croats, Serbs, Macedonians, Bosnians (calling themselves Muslims) plus two strong national minorities of Vojvodina (a Hungarian minority) and Kosovars (speaking the Albanian language). Since the Serbs were the relative majority, they kept enforcing the arrangement, which would be optimum for them, while all other nations wanted a compromise. E.g. similar to Switzerland, where German, French and Italian nations have equal rights. Already after 1920, when the state, named "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes" (where the Serb Alexander Karadjordjeviæ was the King) had been established, the Serbs were considering a common state (which was renamed Yugoslavia after 1929) as an extended Serbia. Their attitude did not change after WWII, where the communist Yugoslavia was created. The foreign correspondents and diplomats, who prefer their cozy stay in Belgrade, were not aware of the strains, which were simmering for increasing Serbian attempts to rule the State as some sort of "Serboslavia". Since they were listening only to the Serbian version of the story, they needed much time to recognize the proper reason why Yugoslavia started falling apart. Thus the precious time, to prevent the large scale carnage was lost before UN, NATO and EU had resorted to more powerful actions.

When the Bosnian conflict started in April 1992 the population of (the former Yugoslav Republic) Bosnia was composed by 47.3% Muslims (1,905,829) vs. 31,4 % Orthodox Serbs (1,369,258), 17,3% Catholic Croats (775,892) and 5,5% of Yugoslavs (238,854, meaning citizens often the offspring of mixed marriages, who refused to identify with a particular ethno-religious group). Similar to the Serbs in the former Yugoslavia, the Musmlims in Bosnia wanted to create a state to be optimal for them, overruling the Catholic Croats and Orthodox Serbs, who both were expecting a secular arrangement. The ultimate objective for the Bosnian President Alija Izetbegoviæ was to establish a strict sharia Muslim State according to the Iranian or Saudi Arabia model, from where he got substantial aid in arms, money and fighters. (The Croats got their arms and aid from Croatia and the Serbs from Serbia in order to carry on the war, which had already started.) On the domestic front Izetbegovi's backbone was the Party of Democratic Action (Stranka demokratske akcije, SDA), which was by far the strongest. Since a strict Islamic State in the middle of Europe was something the western diplomats would not accept, Izetbegoviæ had shown his innocent and secular face to the West while at the same time working hard to achieve his religious objectives. The West failed to see the ample evidence of Izetbegoviæ's double game. This was more clearly shown in the country than in the besieged Sarajevo, where most foreign correspondent were being accommodated. They were not eager to report from abroad, where shooting was frequent and the terrain was planted by numerous land mines...

In short, the Bosnian war, which could be avoided, had begun mainly (but not only) for this Muslim-Catholic-Orthodox incompatibility. After three years of war, full of small and some large scale atrocities, committed by all sides - many of them well described and documented in Schindler's book - the (Croatian) president Tudjman,(Bosnian) Izetbegoviæ and (Serbian) Miloseviæ were ultimately forced to sign the Dayton agreement in December 1995. The guns ceased shooting, but the hatred, deepened by numerous atrocities, which happened during the war, has remained. People, who sometimes lived together in peace, had moved to their Serbian, Muslim and Croatian enclaves, mourning and burying their victims which exceeded 100,000, not to mention many times more refugees. After Dayton the former mixed parts of Bosnia became almost mono-ethnic. Those refugees who dared to return to their homes had found their houses either destroyed or inhabited by members of another nationality, who refused to withdraw.

On top of all this, Central Bosnia became a hotbed and training center for Mujahideen warriors, who were imported en masse during the war, from Iran, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and from other Islamic States. Many of them had married local women. Since these Muslims can not return to the countries of their origin, they spread their "art of killing the unbelievers" through Europe and beyond, while their terrorist training centers remained active in Bosnia. Evidence for this was that way too many captured or dead Muslim terrorists had Bosnian passports.

Besides a short description of Bosnian history since the Otomans started intruding the Balkans in Midle Ages, plus the war if 1992-1995, the writer has devoted the core of his narrative to the Bosnian nest of international "holy war", from which the warriors are now spread the world around. The fact that the majority of author's quoted sources are in the Serbo-Crotatian language, gives the impression that he knows this language, which is an important pre-requisite for unbiased reporting. However, by using the original material, the author's narrative was occasionally based either on a single source, or on only circumstantial evidence, whih might be based on propaganda rather than on true events. To quote a single ecample: On page 155 a long paragraph is devoted to smuggling of arms via Slovenia, where the Bosnian Hasan Èengiæ and - then the Defense Minister, now the Premier of Slovenia - Janez Jansa were involved by cashing substantial amounts of money. The writer quotes three newspaper's article as the evidence: Naprijed (Zagreb), 13 August 2002, Globus (Zagreb), 22 May 2003 and Kurier (Vienna), 26. November 1996. Apart from the fact that Jansa himself had discovered the hidden arms at the Maribor Airport, mothballed and stocked there to be transported from Sudan, via Slovenia to Bosnia (why he would incriminate himself by doing so?), the documents charging him for profiting money by this transaction, were recently proven to be a fake. Since such arms deals were paid by hard cash, where hefty commissions are usual, the real profiteers in Maribor affair have not (yet) been discovered.

The author displayed that not only the Serbs, but also the Bosnians and Croats were bad guys, who caused numerous war crimes during the Bosnian conflict. One of the proofs for this is that the culprits of all three nations must defend themselves at the International Hague Tribunal.

This book displays the Bosnian conflict in an entirely new light, which shows that the whole region is unstable in the same way as the multi-national Yugoslavia was a makeshift construction after the Versailles Treaty in 1920. It is just a question of time when today's Bosnia, which was hastily patched together in Dayton, just to stop the war, will start falling apart. Due to horrible atrocities which happened in Kosovo, there is no glue to attach this State back to Serbia again. Why should the forecast for Bosnia be any different?

P.S. In spite of my meticulous effort to write in Times New Roman CE fonts, the special Serbo-Croat diacritical fonts appeared different in my freview. Would the amazon.com editors spent the necessary effort and correct the mistakes?

It is an extraordinary book that honestly presents preceding events, without the usual propaganda and lies.

Dr. Eng. Sc. Michael Savic

-- to the '90s propaganda barrage over the Bosnian war. I knew at the time there was more than met the eye in the US/European reportage coming out of this war. Why a multinational, multi-cultural Bosnia had to be defended, while a multi-national Yugoslavia had to be broken up, was a question the "liberal" media and academia studiously avoided. This book documents what I suspected all along: multi-culti Bosnia was largely a myth cultivated by an interventionist Western establishment, its defense a pretext for geopolitical goals that had little-to-nothing to do with human rights and self-determination.

The author's contention that Bosnia was a "major training ground" for al-Qaeda may be debatable; by his own sources the foreign jihadists contributed little on the battlefield. The book's importance is its focus on the tribalist nature of the Izetbegovic regime, no different in kind from its opponents. Its real strength was of course its opposition to the hated Serbs, and its canniness in exploiting Western human rights rhetoric in drawing Western intervention. A trick as old as WW I and spiked Belgian babies, and it works every time. And, of course, once the war had been settled to the West's satisfaction, the country was partitioned exactly as it would have been at Lisbon. A warning to the public of the future: whenever the mainstream press is in a fit of moral rabies over far-away atrocities, you may be sure military-industrial stock value is about to rise.

I can definitely see why people with no knowledge of the war will think the Bosnians are rabid terrorists because of this 'tell-all expose.' It not only relies on selective information and presents things out of context, but is, in many places, misleading. In fact, so many that I won't even go into it.

I don't disrespect the author for his experience, time, and research, which is why I gave him two stars instead of one. But the book is inflammatory, as it is clearly meant to be.

Do some broader reading if you intend for it to be useful, and start with another respected expert in his field. Read Norman Cigar's "Genocide in Bosnia: The Policy of Ethnic Cleansing." Cigar is a professor of National Security Studies at Quantico, who has also written books on terrorism.

Another excellent book, which addresses the focus of this one, is "How Bosnia Armed" by Yale PhD Marko Atilla Hoare.