BALKANS: No Place for the ‘White Muslims’

By Vesna Peric Zimonjic Reprint | | Print |

Vesna Peric Zimonjic

SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina, May 18 2006 (IPS) - The Bosnian nationality of many non-European Muslims who came here during the 1992-95 war is being discreetly revoked.

The government of Bosnia-Herzegovina announced earlier this month that the state commission for review of citizenship will take up a further 61 cases “with the imminence of some citizenships being revoked.” Deportations will be considered, the Council said.

The number of people whose citizenship has been revoked has not been published so far. They are mostly Afro-Asian Muslims, Algerians, Syrians or Afghanis. The numbers are relatively small, but the issue is significant.

“This is something that has to be done carefully and cautiously as it touches some basic human rights,” Bosnian minister for security Borisa Colak told local media.

He confirmed that a total of 1,500 citizenships granted from April 6, 1992, when the war began, until January 1, 2006 will be under review. This will not include citizens of former Yugoslavia.

The urgent action now being undertaken by the commission established in February for a six-month term follows pressure from the international community.

The commission is taking on one of the most sensitive issues in the country – the presence of Muslim volunteers who fought against Christian Serbs and Croats on the side of the Sarajevo government, and opted to remain once the conflict ended. Most of them married local girls.

In the war, they formed the ‘Brigades of Mujahedeen’.

International warnings followed a 252-page confidential report compiled by the U.S. and Croatian intelligence services earlier this year on potentially dangerous Islamic groups in Bosnia. The report says these groups might have begun a recruitment drive for new groups of militants to operate abroad.

They are dubbed “the white Muslims”.

The report leaked to Bosnian media said that “they (international Islamic militants) judge that it’s high time their job on this territory should be taken over by new local forces; people who are born here and live here have an advantage which would make their job easier. By their appearance, they are less obvious.”

Bosnian Muslims, who make half of the 3.6 million population of Bosnia-Herzegovina, usually have fair skin and blue eyes, traces of their Slav origin. The only way to tell them apart from others is by their names.

Colak said there are no known cases of any “white Muslim” recruit from the Balkans being involved in any attacks, but that “the situation is being carefully followed.”

However, two Bosnian Muslims and a Turk are on trial in Sarajevo on charge of buying explosives and planning terrorist acts against European nations in their capitals or against their embassies in Sarajevo.

They were arrested in October last year in a shabby Sarajevo apartment. A videotape said to have been found by the police shows masked men explaining how a bomb is made, and begging Allah to forgive them for what they were about to do. “This weapon will be used against Europe, against those whose forces are in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the men said on tape.

Also, the government of Bosnia-Herzegovina handed over six terrorist suspects, the so- called “Algerian group” of naturalised citizens, to the United States four years ago. The six were later taken to Guantanamo Bay.

Bosnian officials are reluctant to speak about the “white Muslims” or any links of naturalised citizens with foreign militants. “The time is not ripe for that,” a well-placed source told IPS.

“Muslim fighters, volunteers, were welcomed here when Sarajevo was at war,” he said. “It’s impossible just to kick those people out. On the other hand, Bosnia-Herzegovina has now to cooperate in the international fight against terrorism, and it is not easy to balance the two things.”

But like many others in Sarajevo, he spoke of areas around the central town of Zenica and near Brcko in the north where many naturalised citizens live in closed “mujahedeen communities” by strict Islamic rules and with little connection to the world outside. They are under constant police surveillance.

Privately, many secular Muslims in Sarajevo admit they are under pressure to join different Islamic organisations. These exist in the capital in the form of Islamic cultural centres and charity organisations.

Widows are offered financial support and scholarships for their children abroad if they agree to respect Islamic rules such as wearing a head dress. These are traditions that many Bosniak Muslims do not observe.

“I was never very religious, did not know if we were Sunni or Shia in Bosnia,” a 54-year-old who gave only her initials as M.B. told IPS. “But when I lost my husband in war, I realised me and my three children could never survive without accepting the help offered by an Islamic organisation. My sons are now studying in Cairo and my daughter is attending a religious secondary school here (in Sarajevo), all for free.”

But M.B. does not believe that any young person could be attracted to extremism. “It’s not in our mindsets. When we hear that Muslims are oppressed and should unite in the world, it sounds so strange…our lives are completely different.”