Moreover, while it is true that Bosnia is not unique in having al-Qaida cells, what does make Bosnia unique is that it is the only country in Europe in which sympathizers, surrogates and collaborators of radical Islamism are in the highest levels of government.
In February 1996, plans to attack NATO installations in Bosnia were discovered at a terrorist training camp near Sarajevo staffed by Iranian instructors. The commandant of the camp was Alija Izetbegovic's personal intelligence chief. In October 2001, a plot to use aerial suicide bombers to attack US Camp Eagle Base in Bosnia was disrupted.
The airport planned for the operation was controlled by Izetbegovic's closest political confidant.
During the 1990s, the leading Islamic cleric in Bosnia, Mustafa Ceric, controlled a bank account with, among others, Fatih el Hassanein, a Sudanese national with close ties to Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, the convicted mastermind of the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.
Even today, the head of the security affairs committee in Izetbegovic's Islamist party is considered one of the main Iranian agents in Bosnia, despite the fact that he is on the US black list of individuals with ties to terrorist groups.
Along with the threat Islamist and Wahhabi radicals in the Balkans pose internationally, they are also having a severely negative effect on efforts to stabilize inter-ethnic and inter-religious relations in the region. Catholic nuns in Sarajevo report that they now only go out in pairs for fear of being attacked by Wahhabis, and that Wahhabi-run bakeries refuse to sell them bread - even when it is in plain sight.
Misogyny and anti-Semitism are of course the Islamists' and Wahhabis' other favorite pastimes. A few years ago, after Grand Mufti Ceric announced on television that Israeli actions in Gaza were "genocide," graffiti appeared around Bosnia equating the Star of David with a swastika.
As a correspondent from Der Spiegel reported when visiting the Saudi-funded King Fahd Mosque in Sarajevo run by one of Izetbegovic's wartime commanders, the obliteration of Israel is heralded in a torrent of words.
"Zionist terrorists," the imam thunders from the glass-enclosed pulpit at the end of the mosque. "Animals in human form" have transformed the Gaza Strip into a "concentration camp," and this marks "the beginning of the end" for the Jewish pseudo-state... .
Currently, the Bosnian security minister estimates there are 3,000 potential terrorists in Bosnia alone. Hundreds of others can be found in Kosovo, Macedonia and the Sandzak. The dangerous impact these individuals and groups are having should not be underestimated. In societies still struggling with the legacies of hatred left over from the wars of the 1990s and devastating economic problems, well-funded extremists are finding willing converts.
Western policymakers have ignored this problem for far too long, to the detriment of the Balkans, and Europe and the US as well. As was tragically seen last month, the Balkans have become another front in Israel's war against terrorists as well.
