ISLAMIC AFFAIRS ANALYST
July, 1992
By private subscription only

Editor: Joseph de Courcy

MUSLIM FUNDAMENTALISM IN BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA

For fair use only
Published under the provision of
U.S. Code, Title 17, section 107.

An Islamic Affairs Analyst special correspondent writes:
(The text is given in its entirety) QUOTE:

There is a great reluctance in the West to recognize that the fighting in Bosnia is a resurgence of the conflict between Islam and Christendom which shaped five centuries of Balkan history.

Disbelief in the West regarding Muslim fundamentalism in Bosnia stems from several causes, among which there is a pervasive, compulsive, complacency which holds that things can never be as bad as they seem, hence European officialdom refused to believe that Hitler meant what he wrote in Mein Kampf.

President Alija Izetbegovic's Islamic Declaration, first published in 1970 when it earned him a prison sentence, demanded a fully-fundamentalist Muslim state in Bosnia without scope for non-Muslim institutions or any division between religion, politics, and economics. The book was republished in 1990 in Sarajevo (by Mala Muslimanska Biblioteka). It scathingly attacks Attaturk's reforms and holds up Pakistan as a model to be followed.

Traditionally, Bosnians were among the most militant in the Muslim world. A ruling minority, they were proud of being the spearhead of the jihad into Europe, part of the two-pronged drive along Sava and Danube with Rome as its final objective. Occupation by the Habsburgs in 1878 caused some of them to emigrate, but others waited for fate to redeem them. In post-Versailles Yugoslavia, a few became free-thinkers, Communists or 'South Slav of Muslim faith', but most remained waiting in their closed world.

The German role

The Germans and their Croat Ustasha allies inspired Muslim hopes of a separate policy in 1941. Then Tito raised their status from religion to nationality in the 1960s and made many political concessions to them, in order to win the support of the Muslim world for his so-called non-aligned movement.

The Germans have again played a major part in the chain of events which created an independent Bosnia with the Muslims as its largest grouping. They ensured them Croatian support against the Serbs in return for tacit agreement to Croatian de facto annexation of Western Herzegovina and areas adjacent to Slavonia.

For the third time this century, the Germans are fuelling the drive against the Serbs, but on this occasion with British support. The change in the British policy over recent months does not appear to reflect an evolution inside the Foreign Office departments concerned. Rather, it reflects the pressures from above to support Germany for the sake of the European common policy and as a quid pro quo from John Major to Cancellor Kohl for having helped make the Maastricht agreement verbally more acceptable to Tory MPs.

So Croatia was recognized without the safeguards for minorities originally demanded by the EC and Bosnia was hurriedly recognized in spite of warnings that this would lead to bloodshed, because, in British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd's words, the Germans would have gone ahead anyway.

The EC-inspired embargo against Serbia - which even if all the accusations against it were true would rank low on the list of international criminals - can only be understood in the context of the interaction between Germany's growing hegemony inside the EC, its Drang Nach Osten, realpolitik, the increased weight of oil-rich Muslim states in world affairs, and the decreased influence of Russia.

Wider implications

All this has implications for the rest of the Balkans, in particular - now that the Muslim world is flexing its muscles - for Albania's conflict with Serbia, Macedonia and Greece: and it has implications for Danubia in general.

Hungary is already embroiled with Yugoslavia and Romania over its minorities. Without Prague's restraining hand, the lot of the large, compact, Hungarian minority in Slovakia will give added cause for friction. The condition of the Hungarian minority in Cis-Carpathian Ukraine, which historically enjoyed Moskow's solicitude and ruled the Ukrainian peasantry for centuries, will also exercise Budapest.

Hungary will consider seeking German support, while Romania, Serbia and Greece will huddle together - and in turn seek outside help.

ISLAMIC AFFAIR ANALYST is an independent publication produced by Intelligence International Ltd., 17 Rodney Road, Cheltenham, Glos GLS0 1HX, UK. IAA is published 45 times a year, annual subscription US $80. Edited by J.deCourcy. Intelligence International has been publishing independent intelligence reports for business and government since 1938.

Joe de Courcy, the chief executive of Courcy’s Intelligence Service, has been constantly involved in identifying and assessing economic and political risk in global markets since graduating from Oxford in 1977. For 10 years he was the editor Intelligence Digest, now owned by the Jane's Information Group, and for six years he was president of the influential Jane's Intelligence Club.

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