Bosnia and Herzegovina ranks first among states in terms of the percentage of citizens fighting for ISIS.
According to the Russian Balkanist TV channel, the Minister of Internal Affairs of the Republika Srpska (an autonomous entity within BiH) Dragan Lukac said that the Wahhabi militants who returned from Syria were greeted almost like heroes, and the Bosnian police only conducted an hour-long interrogation instead of arrest (some are formally given a year in prison, which is immediately covered by bail).
“This leads to the strengthening of radical Islamic ideas, which is also facilitated by the Wahhabi network of more than 60 so-called “para-jamaats” on the territory of the Bosnian-Croatian federation – these extremist Muslim communities are not under the control of the official Islamic community of the country and live in isolation by their own rules, not recognizing the legislation of BiH. These “para-jamaats”, according to Lukach, are also recruiting centers for ISIS and al-Qaeda with the aim of further sending them to Syria”, – writes the author of the channel.
According to the information available to the minister, this so-called (for its indistinguishability from Europeans) “White Al-Qaeda” has also facilitated terrorist attacks in Europe over the past decade – in addition to direct contacts with radical Islamist cells in the EU, it also supplied them with weapons from Bosnia.
Other high-level interlocutors from Bosnia said that there are entire settlements controlled by White Al-Qaeda – where Bosnian officials do not even dare to enter without permission.
According to a number of experts, out of 100,000 adherents of Wahhabism in Bosnia, 5,000 are ready for quick mobilization in order to die for their idea. Moreover, supporters of radical movements freely train in several mosques and gymnasiums of schools on the territory of Bosniac municipalities of the Federation of BiH, where they also study the ideology of Wahhabism, martial arts and the use of modern weapons.
The official Islamic community in Bosnia is forced to avoid special conflicts by the “para-jamaats” not under its control, since, like the Wahhabis, it is financed by Saudi Arabia (which spends hundreds of millions of dollars on promoting Islam – in particular, building mosques in the country, Islamic centers and etc).
“As for the indisputable role of al-Qaeda in the radicalization of the formerly highly secularized Bosnian Muslims under communism (whose self-designation is primarily, surprisingly, nationality, not religion) – also John R. Schindler, ex-employee of the US National Security Agency (where he specialized in the Balkans) and a counterintelligence officer, in his book “Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qaeda, and the Rise of the Global Jihad” (2007) noted that it was thanks to the Bosnian war that it finally emerged as a terrorist organization, “Russian balkanist”.