Bosnia’s foreign fighters came from many parts of the Muslim world
By Nicholas Walton
BBC News
Bosnia-Hercegovina has stripped almost 400 people of citizenship as part of an investigation into foreign fighters who settled in the country after the war.
Bosnian media sees the investigation as a part of a drive against terrorism requested by the US.
Bosnia’s government says those involved came from Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Sudan and Russia.
Hundreds of foreign volunteers came to Bosnia during the war of the early 1990s to assist government forces.
Many of these were Muslims who had fought in Afghanistan and saw the war in Bosnia as an attack on Islam that carried the tacit approval of the international community.
When the fighting ended, many stayed, married Bosnian women and settled down, often following a more devout form of Islam than was traditional in the Balkans.This form of Islam has since spread, and with it tensions with both local Muslim communities and non-Muslims.
Other countries, notably the US, have also warned that this group could provide fertile ground for Islamic terrorism.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6547287.stm
The white Bosniaks, despite their religion, have a long history of progressive secularism. The fratricidal war of the 1990s was largely thrust upon them by fanatic Islamist leaders in league with “Western” neocons and their allies, and many Bosniaks fought alongside the Serbs to defend European values.