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03/24/2004 Archived Entry: "In rebuilt Bosnia, no terror toehold"

Posted by steve @ 03:58 AM EST [Link]

I DON'T KNOW IF I'D BE THAT OPTIMISTIC: Interesting article in today's Christian Science Monitor arguing that it's unlikely that Islamic extremism will take hold in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

"If I were a terrorist group member I would think twice about coming to this country," says Senad Slatina, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, a conflict- resolution organization based in Brussels, noting the presence of 10,000 NATO peacekeepers in Bosnia. "On top of that, Bosnian Muslims are so European that the radical form of Islam has absolutely no chance of spreading here."

I have a personal stake in this because I have a lot of family in Bosnia -- my mother is from there and I lost a lot of people during the war -- but I'm not ready to declare that radical Islam won't spread there. As a recent report stated, Bosnian terror networks linked to al-Qaida and other groups continue their work.

That said, I am happy that Bosnia is well on its way to making a recovery. I visited there a couple of years before the civil wars. During the early 1990s I had the grim experience of watching on the news a hotel I had visited -- the Hotel Europa -- a few years before being blown to hell during the fighting. To this day I wonder what happened to the kind English speaking waiter that worked there the day I and my sister stopped in for ice cream on a hot day.

Read on.