Bosnia and Herzegovina has become a base of global terrorism and its main launchpad for operations in Europe and beyond, said terrorism expert Dževad Galijašević.
Galijašević noted that this is essentially the second track of national policy formulated in Sarajevo, emphasizing that it would be wrong to describe today’s terrorist incidents as isolated cases.
“These are not incidents but systemic actions that have been ongoing since the 1990s,” he said.
According to him, since 1990, Bosnia and Herzegovina has shown two defining features of global terrorism — both still functioning today as expressions of the pursuit of an “Islamic State” and part of the political agenda formed in Sarajevo.
“These two elements are the political program of radicalism and the extremist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Galijašević explained.
He added that this network operates through the organization ‘Young Muslims’, which is strongly embedded in state institutions, particularly within the judiciary, enabled by the political structures of the SDA and SDP parties, as well as through foreign mujahideen and various radical Islamist formations — not only the “El Mujahideen” detachment but also Algerian, Egyptian, French, and London-based extremist groups.
Citing Croatian security expert Miroslav Tuđman’s book “The Other Side of the Rubicon,” Galijašević recalled that as early as January 1992, more than 1,000 foreign fighters from Afghanistan were granted Bosnian citizenship by the authorities in Sarajevo.
Continuous activity of the Muslim Brotherhood
“These were not isolated events but part of the systematic activity of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has never stopped in Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Galijašević said.
He added that to justify their violent and extremist political goals, these groups adopted Wahhabi teachings and practices to give their ideology a divine religious legitimacy.
“In addition to false patriotism, they cloaked themselves in the aura of faith and Islam,” he said.
He warned that Wahhabi communities in some areas represent an alternative interpretation of Islam competing with traditional Bosnian Islamic practice, serving as bases of the Muslim Brotherhood for implementing its goals.
“From time to time, terrorist actions emerge from these bases — whenever it suits their objectives,” Galijašević warned.
Mujahideen from BiH involved in terrorist attacks worldwide
Galijašević reminded that radical Islamist fighters from Bosnia and Herzegovina have been involved in numerous terrorist attacks around the world.
“In Algeria, mujahideen slaughtered 27 Croatian construction workers from Hidrogradnja when the commander of the El Mujahideen unit was an Algerian known as Abu Mali,” he said.
He added that the terrorist attack on the U.S. military base in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, was organized by Abdelaziz Barbarossa, the first commander of the Bosnian mujahideen, and was followed by the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center, planned by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“This connection is also documented in the joint report of the U.S. Government, Congress, and Senate on the September 11 attacks — a report exceeding 500 pages,” Galijašević concluded.
Source: RTRS
