This article was downloaded by: [Wayne State University]On: 26 November 2014, At: 11:27Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House,37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK

Studies in Conflict & TerrorismPublication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uter20

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina:Challenging Conventional AssumptionsMichael A. Innes aa Associate Fellow Center for Developing Area Studies , McGill University Montreal , Quebec,CanadaPublished online: 19 Aug 2006.

To cite this article: Michael A. Innes (2005) Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina: Challenging ConventionalAssumptions, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28:4, 295-305, DOI: 10.1080/10576100590950147

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10576100590950147

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) containedin the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make norepresentations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of theContent. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, andare not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon andshould be independently verified with primary sources of information. Taylor and Francis shall not be liable forany losses, actions, claims, proceedings, demands, costs, expenses, damages, and other liabilities whatsoeveror howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with, in relation to or arising out of the use ofthe Content.

This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematicreproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in anyform to anyone is expressly forbidden. Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions

295

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, 28:295–305, 2005Copyright Taylor & Francis Inc.ISSN: 1057-610X print / 1521-0731 onlineDOI: 10.1080/10576100590950147

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina:Challenging Conventional Assumptions

MICHAEL A. INNES

Associate FellowCenter for Developing Area StudiesMcGill UniversityMontreal, Quebec, Canada

This article argues that a model of terrorism and terrorist sanctuaries rooted inpost-9/11 strategic thought and the Global War on Terror is inadequate to the studyof terrorism in Bosnia and the Balkans. It addresses a series of conventional as-sumptions regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina’s status as a putative terrorist sanctuary,based on a reading of post-war ethnic politics and political architecture. This as-sessment turns on the basic notion that terrorism in Bosnia is a complex phenom-enon linked to multiple domestic and foreign communities, defined along competingnational trajectories and intersecting foreign interests, and subject to evolving po-litical circumstances and priorities.

At a House Armed Services Committee forum held in July 2004, Major General JamesDarden, Deputy Director for Plans and Policy, United States European Command, ad-dressed terrorism issues in Bosnia-Herzegovina1 under the Dayton Accords. “In general,”he noted, “the threat of terrorist influence in Bosnia is low as the operations of SFORand International Community continue to suppress extremist enclaves and terrorist sup-port activities.” Darden’s address, part of an initiative to define and justify America’scontinued military presence in the Balkans, highlighted the potential for slippage. Bosnia’spostwar reconstruction, he emphasized, was not yet sufficiently mature to pose a sus-tained and cohesive obstacle to terrorist activities. “Bosnia still lingers as a potential safehaven for transit, training, arms sales and financial support of terrorist activities,” Dardenstated, “due to porous borders, lax immigration control, and underdeveloped govern-mental and civil police and security organizations.”2

The subject of terrorist “safe havens” or “sanctuaries” in general has received wideattention since global counterterrorism efforts began focusing, among other things, ondenying terrorists their bases of operations. Afghanistan was not the first case of a dys-

Received 17 October 2004; accepted 8 November 2004.The findings and statements in this article are the author’s alone, and do not represent the

official interests, activities, or policies or NATO, SFOR, EUFOR, or any other agency of theinternational community in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Address correspondence to Michael A. Innes, 3715 Peel Street, Montreal, Quebec, Canada,H3A 1X1. E-mail: PolMilAnalyst@yahoo.com

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

296 M. A. Innes

functional state being targeted for its permissiveness toward foreign terrorists. Since 11September 2001, the subsequent U.S.-led war against its Taliban regime, and the morerecent war in Iraq, however, it has served as an intuitive model and polemic referent formilitary planners and policymakers interested in confronting terrorist actors abroad. Therehas been little scholarly attention to defining terrorist sanctuaries as such,3 or to theircontemporary implications for nation-building, regional security, and global counterterrorism.4

The potential for conceptual stretch and consequent policy misdirection is significant,particularly in a political environment as rife with propaganda and metaphor as the Balkans.5

For NATO and EU member states concerned with preserving the safe and secure envi-ronment, force protection, and rule of law in Bosnia, terrorists and the harbors in whichthey hide represent complex threats in need of analytical rigor and close attention tolocal detail.

This article expands on Darden’s assessment by exploring the answers to a simplequestion: Is Bosnia-Herzegovina a terrorist sanctuary? Drawing on official statements,independent studies, declassified reports, and local and international press coverage, itbegins with a brief survey of relevant arguments and defining criteria. Specifically, thisarticle argues that a model of terrorism and terrorist sanctuaries rooted in post-9/11strategic thought and the Global War on Terror (GWOT) is inadequate to the study ofterrorism in Bosnia and the Balkans. It identifies and addresses a series of conventionalassumptions regarding Bosnia-Herzegovina’s status as a putative terrorist sanctuary, basedon a reading of postwar ethnic politics and internationally mandated political architec-ture. This assessment turns on the basic notion that terrorism in Bosnia is a complexphenomenon linked to multiple domestic and foreign communities, defined along com-peting national trajectories and intersecting foreign interests, and subject to evolvingpolitical circumstances and priorities.6

Humanitarian Intervention and the 911 Paradigm

“In the wars of the post–Cold War period,” Adam Roberts noted in 1998, “there havebeen innovative attempts to create areas of special protection for victims and humanitar-ian bodies assisting them. Such areas have been variously called ‘corridors of tranquility,’‘humanitarian corridors,’ ‘neutral zones,’ ‘protected areas,’ ‘safe areas,’ ‘safe havens,’‘secure humanitarian areas,’ ‘security corridors,’ and ‘security zones.’ ”7 The interna-tional community has been vigorous, if not always successful, in its attempts to promoteand protect such areas. For Roberts, “[t]he variety of the terminology reflects the widerange of forms that such areas can assume and the absence of a standard legal con-cept.”8

Humanitarian and terrorist sanctuaries are qualitatively distinct phenomena, but theadaptable nomenclature used to designate such sites of refuge is remarkably similar—suggesting their ultimate meaning lies in the mind of the beholder. Indeed, politicalscientist Rex Brynen, who has looked closely at the issue of terrorist sanctuaries and thevarious forms they take, notes the care that needs to be taken in defining related securitythreats as such.9 Since 9/11, the semantics of safety have had much broader and infi-nitely more sinister implications for the security-conscious, potentially undermining theviability of troubled states such as Afghanistan, Bosnia, and Iraq, and raising the likeli-hood for collateral damage to misidentified host communities. As John J. Hamre andGordon R. Sullivan noted in a 2002 issue of Washington Quarterly, “One of the princi-pal lessons of the events of September 11 is that failed states matter—not just for hu-manitarian reasons but for national security as well.” Indeed, “If left untended, such

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina 297

states can become sanctuaries for terrorist networks with a global reach, not to mentioninternational organized crime and drug traffickers who also exploit the dysfunctionalenvironment.”10

Relatively little scholarly work has been done to identify the conceptual elements of“sanctuary” in terms that satisfy counterterrorist needs.11 The recently released report ofthe 9/11 Commission is thus a practical measure of current theoretical understandingand policy orientation. The report identifies broad-based criteria in the evolution of ter-rorist havens, and names specific states of concern—Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia,and Yemen, as well as a number of other regions and states. Bosnia-Herzegovina and itsWestern Balkan neighbors are not discussed,12 but the report serves as a useful reminderof a historical benchmark in this regard. Foreign military intervention in the formerYugoslav states was bisected and attenuated by 9/11 and its policy reverberations, pro-ducing a radical shift in mission priorities. What began in the early 1990s as humanitar-ian action against state-sponsored repression and as protection for non-combatants hassince evolved, as Darden’s July 2004 comments imply, into a mission heavily informedand shaped by global counterterrorist concerns.

For those involved in pre- and post-9/11 security operations in Bosnia and the Balkansthe distinction is at once striking and anodyne. For many, the “new wars” of the 1992–1995 period were lawless, savage conflagrations with little to distinguish them—at leastin a maximalist sense—from “terrorism.”13 How to distinguish, then, the illegal wartimeviolence that terrorized non-combatants from postwar acts of terror, and how to charac-terize the perpetrators responsible for both? The critical point here is that “extremist”and “terrorist” are fluid, politically loaded labels in Bosnia that are far too easily de-ployed in support of particularistic goals. They evolve along historical and territorialtrajectories, accruing conceptual baggage along the way, and ultimately make it ex-tremely difficult for the putative analyst to extract meaningful benchmarks of terroristbehavior and related phenomena. As the Organization for Security and Cooperation inEurope quite rightly noted in a 2002 report, terrorism in Bosnia “includes both the morepublicized international terrorist groups or supporters, as well as domestic terrorism—aimed at preventing returnees, for example.”14

The 9/11 Commission’s approach was to define mass-casualty terrorism, on a parwith the destruction of the World Trade Center Towers, as the primary terrorist threat toU.S. national interests and security. The Commission then identified the necessary pre-conditions for planning and implementing such operations. These included:

• Time and space to develop the ability to perform competent planning and toassemble the people, money, and resources needed for the terrorist act;

• a relatively undisturbed area to recruit and train those who will carry out theoperation;

• a logistics network;• access to materials needed to conduct a chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear

attack;• reliable communications; and• conditions in which the plan can be rehearsed and tested.15

“It is easiest,” the Commission noted, “for terrorists to carry out these activities in stateswith rugged terrain, weak governments, and low population density. In such places,terrorists can hide themselves, as well as their supplies and infrastructure. Thus, thesecharacteristics provide a recipe for a terrorist sanctuary or haven.” The Commission’sconsideration of distinct case studies and examples of potential refuges included tracts

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

298 M. A. Innes

of unpoliced terrain in physically isolated regions of the world. It also acknowledged theinherent vulnerability of modernized, accessible liberal democratic societies to terroristexploitation. The “consensus view” of Commission members, however, was quite lim-ited: “in the twenty-first century the United States should focus on remote regions andfailed states” in its efforts to suppress terrorist sanctuaries.16

The major limitation of this formula is that it looks to the current global securitycrisis for its model of terrorist types, and establishes its basic analytical criteria of terror-ist sanctuaries from there. This is understandable and justifiable, but its roots in strategicU.S. thinking restrict its relevance to those actors and phenomena perceived to be threatsto U.S. national security. The implications for the Balkans are significant.17 In the wakeof 11 September 2001, heightened sensitivities to terrorist issues were conflated withwartime legacies to produce a shift in perceptions of local security. Accounts from theInstitute for War and Peace Reporting, for example, tell of a wave of hysteria—primarilyamong internationals—sweeping Sarajevo and other Bosnian cities over the presence offoreign Muslims.18 Hard-line nationalists manipulated and exploited public sentiment—paradoxically—to block internationally sponsored reforms and score points with the West.19

Intervention policy was reoriented to focus on residual Islamic fighters—always asubject of Western concern, but now more so—who had settled more or less perma-nently in BiH after the war. A public opinion survey conducted by an internationallysponsored Sarajevo think tank suggests that local anxiety was at most an elite fabricationor a fleeting response to events in New York and the subsequent war in Afghanistan. Itsresults demonstrate that “subjects from the FBiH and the RS are not differentiated byany statistical significance in the perceptions and evaluations that there is no seriousthreat from foreign terrorism in BiH, and that it is only possible to speak about internalterrorism towards returnees.” Among younger Bosnians, interestingly, a change in atti-tudes toward terrorism involved criticism of “the manner in which the US is leading theanti-terrorist campaign and the war against terrorism in Afghanistan.”20

What this suggests is that changed international priorities have, in part, helped toocclude public consideration of other forms of terrorism in the region, and frame thesafe haven issue in Bosnia as an either/or culturalist paradigm closely linked to GWOTstandards and expectations. Policymakers and counterterrorist planners run a correspondingrisk of playing into the hands of Serb and Croat propagandists, who are only too contentto exploit such opportunities. Indeed, since the events of 11 September 2001, they havedone just that, publicly committing themselves to Western counter terrorist policies andgoals, all the while defying local reform initiatives and avoiding postwar justice in thename of parochial nationalist ambitions. The danger in this lies in its potential to exacer-bate domestic issues in such a way that will actually increase terrorist activity ratherthan curb it.

Bosnia and the Balkans: Last Refuge of Scoundrels?

Although few would argue that Bosnia-Herzegovina is anything but a fragile state re-plete with countless stretches of remote, inaccessible terrain, there are a number of prac-tical reasons why the 9/11 Commission’s “consensus definition” is inadequate to a dis-cussion of terrorism in Bosnia and the Balkans. Recent scholarship on this is sparse, butnonetheless revealing. Florian Bieber, for example, sees domestic terrorism as one ofseveral forms of political violence in the Western Balkans, arguing “that contrary tofrequent pronouncements by political actors in the region, terrorism has only been amarginal phenomenon.”21 Nadia Alexandra-Arbatova looks to the Balkan implications of

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina 299

Islamic terrorism anchored in the “Greater Middle East,” arguing that the collapse ofCold War bipolarity and the Yugoslav state, the wartime creation of a regional terroristinfrastructure, and U.S. and European responses to 11 September 2001 and the war inIraq, highlight the “proliferation of non-viable states” in the post-Yugoslav space “witha risk of becoming grey zones of terrorism and instability.”22 Both Bieber and Alexandra-Arbatova speak to a critical feature of Bosnian security studies best articulated by SumantraBose in his outstanding book, Bosnia After Dayton: Nationalist Partition and Interna-tional Intervention: “Understanding Bosnia,” he writes, “necessarily involves an appre-ciation of complexity.”23

The most difficult issue in evaluating BiH’s status as a “grey zone” or sanctuary isthe lack of consistent standard against which extremist and terrorist behavior can bemeasured. In BiH, state-level legal and constitutional arrangements are still young andimmature, and subject to a great deal of internal and lateral exploitation by nationalistparallel structures. Indeed, the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP) estab-lished Bosnia’s postwar political architecture, but has since hardened, in some respects,into a legalistic obstacle to multi-ethnic consensus. Further, the interests of the interna-tional community in Bosnia are heterogeneous, and have shifted considerably over time.The legitimacy of the state of Bosnia-Herzegovina is thus a useful and necessary pointof departure for this discussion, but it is founded on temporary legal arrangements thatare, in effect, artificial measures of extremism and terrorism. Worse, the GFAP incorpo-rates parallel constitutional arrangements for its two Entities, the Federation and theRepublika Srpska, providing them with protections and entitlements equivalent to state-level prerogatives.24 Overall, this sliding scale of interests and standards is only as durableand relevant as the will of its signatories, and leaves ample political space for terroristexploitation.

A second and related approach treats terrorist sanctuaries as static phenomena. War-time and post-conflict Bosnia has undergone staggering changes in its cartographic,demographic, and administrative makeup. Just as there is no consistent, domesticallyacceptable standard against which terrorists and their sanctuaries can be assessed, so toohas the real-world context of terrorism in Bosnia and the Balkans mutated. Provisions inthe GFAP for the repatriation of foreign fighters and post-9/11 sensitivities have ensureda proactive, albeit uneven, approach to domestic and foreign counterterrorism. There hasbeen an increased emphasis, too, on identifying and repairing the many administrativeand political deficiencies that permit terrorist actors and groups to occupy and transitstretches of Bosnian territory. The public pronouncements of Bosnian state officials andInternational Community spokespeople regularly identify organized crime, human traf-ficking, lax border controls, attendant document fraud, and rampant small arms proliferationas the counterterrorism priorities du jour, and although they are far from complete, therehave been some institutional successes in dealing with these problems. Terrorist motivesand opportunities have varied considerably over time, in other words, and require appro-priate periodization. In this context, identifying Bosnia as an unqualified terrorist sanctu-ary is inherently ahistorical and deeply problematic.

A third assumption posits that the state in question, whether it is healthy or decrepit,is essentially a monolith. Today’s Bosnia is a recent political creation, still adjusting topostwar reconstruction efforts, and rife with social and administrative dysfunctions. Itsconstitutional framework, imposed from without, cobbled together a patchwork of ethnicpolities and war profiteers contending for their shares of territorial and liquid assets.25

Weak central institutions are confronted with powerful local and regional lobbies, organizedcrime groups, and ethnic parallel structures.26 Their sole aim, other than the preservation

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

300 M. A. Innes

of ethnic partition or the private acquisition and extraction of public wealth, is to pre-serve the status quo that enables their illicit activities. The virtual and actual integrity ofcurrent borders between the former Yugoslav states are thus only notional barriers tofrontier penetration, whereas the internal fragmentation of Bosnia along irredentist linesis complicated by the interim structures of the GFAP. Together, these issues exert powerfuldestabilizing influences on the coherence and cohesion of the state. It is thus nearlyimpossible, at least under current conditions, to formulate a usable political architecture,featuring Bosnia as a distinct national polity and territorially defined construct, that sat-isfies everyone.

Fourth, the sanctuary concept so articulated exaggerates the importance of the cor-poreal characteristics of the state and the physical aspects of terrorism. Prolonged con-frontation with terrorist actors has taught valuable lessons on the role of charismaticauthority, virtual networking, and the adaptability of non-bureaucratic organizations facedwith consistent external challenges to their planning, training, and conduct of operations.Terrorist survival depends on combatants who are willing to operate outside of recog-nizable military roles against enemies of superior numbers, resources, and capabilities.Global counterterrorism has forced many such individuals and groups to adapt theirmodus operandi.27 In BiH in particular, the post-9/11 focus on residual and resurgentterrorist threats based within the Islamic community has most certainly driven some toevolve as circumstances dictate.28 Terrorist “training camps,” for example, are now lesslikely to look like barracks or tented garrisons, and more like hunting lodges, culturalcenters, Internet chat rooms, prisons, and other social incubators.29 Refuge from this setof mutable battlefield circumstances is not limited to a lateral or horizontal plane, orga-nized according to the spatial limitations of territoriality, transportation, and communi-cations. In an age of dispersed networks, virtual havens, and intercontinental cells, itincludes a vertical dimension as well, encompassing macro- and micro-level sponsorshipof terrorist operations and protection from counterterrorist activities.

Fifth, an overemphasis on Westphalian legitimacy as a basic condition of acceptablestatehood appears built into the concept of terrorist sanctuary. This ignores the contem-porary reality of pervasive ethnic, political, and commercial divisions within BiH. Morespecifically, it underestimates the role of crime and corruption in sustaining competitivecommercial networks and in providing illegal parallel structures with alternative accessto international finance and trade—and the corresponding legitimation that such accessimplies.30 The informal irredentist networks of the nationalists have demonstrated them-selves to be sufficiently malleable and opaque as to effectively obstruct officially mandatedreforms and evade international sanctions regimes.31 Bosnian-Croat separatists and Re-publika Srpska nationalists—ethnically linked to their counterparts in neighboringCroatia and Serbia—have been able to compete with the Bosnian state, siphoning offmaterial and financial resources, subverting centralizing reforms, and crippling state-building projects. This parochial, identity-based competition is supported more often byacts of bureaucratic intimidation and threats than by actual terrorist violence. Sporadicepisodes of targeted bloodletting have nonetheless occurred—witness the numerousunresolved postwar attacks—including killings—against displaced persons and refugees(DPREs),32 or high-level political assassinations, such as those of Deputy FederationMinister of Interior Jozo Leutar in 1999, and Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in2003.33 Understanding the terrorist element in all of this is complicated by extensiveoverlap between ethnic, political, commercial, and criminal interests in BiH, and theinconsistent standards used to evaluate terrorist acts and actors. In any event, the abilityof substate competitors to sustain parallel prerogatives through crime, corruption, and

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina 301

extremist behavior, suggests the salience of multiple substate and out-of-area sanctuariesfor terrorist actors.34

Sixth, sanctuaries so defined exaggerate terrorism as an exogenous phenomenon, asbasically alien, in substance and form, to the host state. This is not entirely irrelevant toBiH’s bewildering brew of domestic and foreign terrorists, domestic support to foreignterrorism, foreign support to domestic terrorism, and contending interpretations of whatactually constitutes “domestic,” “foreign,” and “legitimate.” It is especially true for membersof various Islamic terror groups, such as the North African Groupement Islamique Armé(GIA) and Al Gama ‘at Al-Islamiyya, thought to have arrived in BiH during the 1992–1995 period and remained active thereafter.35 It is also limiting, however, and requiresgreater empirical elaboration in order to address contemporary terrorism in BiH effec-tively and comprehensively. The key to this lies in how terrorists themselves view theirrelations to the Bosnian state, and how their actions are meant to support or subvertpublic life. For indigenous extremists, for example, the organization of the state is atissue. To Bosnian Croat supporters of the Third Entity movement, the Federation servesBosniac interests and the RS protects the Serbs. For Republika Srpska nationalists, astrengthened BiH would require significantly trimmed Entity authority—but the GFAPprotects Bosnian Serb interests, and any move to change current political boundaries isviewed as an existential threat. Bosniacs see a strengthened Bosnian state as the surestprotection against victimization at the hands of Serbs and Croats.

Seventh, effective sanctuary presumes (although it is not necessarily restricted to) asource of terrorism consistent with the interests of the state that harbors it. But Bosnia-Herzegovina is home to a complex mix of groups and interests, few of whom actuallyconsider it to be a legitimate political entity in its present condition. As the OSCE put it,there are multiple sources of actual and potential terrorism at work in BiH, sponsoredfrom abroad, tethered to domestic communities, and acting in the name of various eth-nic, religious, or political ideologies. For example, Serbs of the Cetnik RavnogorskiPokret (CRP), Gavrilo Princip, and Srpski Obraz groups, and Croats of the HrvatskaImigracija and Hrvatski Dom, boasting diaspora militants and paramilitary veterans amongtheir numbers, have been publicly committed to ethnic partition and territorial cleansing.They have employed inflammatory rhetoric, violently opposed refugee returns, obstructedreligious reconstruction, protected fugitive Persons Indicted For War Crimes (PIFWC),and safeguarded their own criminal activities from judicial interference. From the Mus-lim community, there is even greater variety. Members of the Aktivna Islamska Omladina(AIO, Active Islamic Youth) have been linked to attacks on ethnic Croats in CentralBosnia. Numerous Islamic nongovernmental organizations with branches operating inBosnia-Herzegovina have been linked to Bosniac nationalists and Islamic militants. Punditsand terrorists alike have acknowledged that war in Bosnia acted as an outlet for veteranjihadists of the earlier war in Afghanistan,36 and as a critical important base for terroristoperations in Europe and beyond.37 Terrorist pedigrees now include combat experiencein wartime Bosnia, and the Balkan links to Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and its affili-ates are by now well established.38

Eighth, the safe haven/sanctuary concept takes for granted that terrorist actors exertsome degree of influence or control over the host state. But if Bosnia-Herzegovina is nota monolith, and terrorism within its borders is composed of quite distinct—and quite likelycompeting or antagonistic—sources of terrorism, it is an awkward argument indeed thatposits state-level support to all of them. More, it suggests a total lack of capacity to resistthe sway of terrorist actors or the sympathetic pull of their ideologies. Central stateinstitutions and authority may be immature and weak, but when necessary they have also

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

302 M. A. Innes

been shored up by the General Framework Agreement for Peace that defines them, andby the International Community that enforces its provisions. Whatever its deficiencies, thestate of Bosnia-Herzegovina has not been politically willing or able to harbor terrorists.This is quite different from the argument that suggests BiH is not accessible to terrorists.It is also quite different from the wartime importation of Mujahedin, the subsequentreconfiguration of some of their number to terrorist methods and alliances, and the slug-gish Bosnian government response to altered political circumstances in the wake of 9/11.Substate administrative structures, local communities and institutions, deficient border anddocument controls, and essentially unmonitored tracts of difficult terrain, have virtuallyguaranteed access to the kinds of resources that facilitate domestic and internationalterrorists: funds, false papers, weapons, communications, community-based support, refugefrom police and judicial interference, and transshipment capabilities and opportunities.Only in a very narrow ideological realm is Bosnia-Herzegovina considered a perpetualterrorist sanctuary. For some Croat and Serb nationalists, the Islamic identity of theirBosnian brethren is an intrusion into the normal course and conduct of Balkan affairs, anda threat clearly linked to international terrorist activities. According to this logic of nation-alist confrontation, the Islamic state of Bosnia-Herzegovina amounts to a sanctuary forIslamic terrorists.39

This leads to an ninth and related difficulty in labeling BiH a terrorist sanctuary:sites of refuge can be imagined constructs, the security they provide based as much onperception and tradition as on the real world deficiencies that make some modern statesexploitable terrorist resources. This is true for internal sanctuaries, external refuges, vul-nerable macro-level systems, and personal micro havens.40 “The tradition of sanctuaries,”writes Paul Hockenos in Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars, “hasits own mystique.”41 Competing nationalist fantasies of ethnic identity and state limits,and the exclusionary borderlines that they imply, highlight how external émigré en-claves and internal pockets of sympathetic population can act as support bases and ref-uges from internal persecution and international conflict. The varieties and vagaries ofpolitical violence in the Balkans, and the attendant mobility forced on the historical andterritorial trajectories of survivors, points to their need to find what harbor they may.How these are portrayed and perceived is contingent on ethnic loyalties, arcane theo-logical and cultural arguments, political necessity, and evolving security priorities.

Conclusion: Framing the Security Jigsaw

Conventional assumptions of terrorist sanctuary in Bosnia need to be viewed with ajaundiced eye lest they be publicly aligned with extreme view points that do not dojustice to either the full range of political opinion in BiH or the realities of state dys-function. Interrogation of such narrow political portraits demonstrates quite effectivelythe spectrum of dissatisfaction with current partition and power-sharing arrangements,and the potential for related extremist and terrorist behavior. To make matters worse,criminals and terrorists of domestic and foreign extraction operate a step removed fromthe mainstream requirements and theatrics of public life, and actively exploit conditionscreated by them. Contemporary state deficiencies, and the nationalist, criminal, and in-terventionist status quo, remain serious challenges to progress in Bosnia-Herzegovinaand ensure would-be terrorists an enduring smorgasbord of opportunities.

Various official assessments of contemporary security in Bosnia and the Balkanssuggest a more complex web of problems than a Central Asian, Middle Eastern, orAfrican model of terrorist sanctuaries can explain.42 One former High Representative in

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina 303

BiH, Wolfgang Petritsch, for example, spoke of Bosnia’s “security jigsaw” in a 2002address to the North Atlantic Council.43 The variety of recent scholarship on crime andcorruption, security sector reform, and the continental impact of “soft security threats”in Southeastern Europe supports the notion that in the Western Balkans, much workremains to be done.44 It also reinforces the need for serious scholarship that moves pastpost-communist transitology,45 misguided criticism of foreign intervention,46 and decade-on retrospectives,47 and embraces Bosnian security studies as a legitimate and substantialfield of inquiry.

Notes

1. Also referred to in this article as BiH or Bosnia.2. “Military Official Says U.S. Deciding How to Stay Engaged in Bosnia—U.S. European

Command’s Darden Discusses Bosnia After SFOR,” State Department Press Releases and Docu-ments (Federal Information and News Dispatch, Inc.: 13 July 2004).

3. A notable exception is Rex Brynen’s Sanctuary and Survival: The PLO in Lebanon(Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990). For a more recent discussion, based heavily on Brynen’swork, see Brynjar Lia and Ashild Kjok, Islamic Insurgencies, Diasporic Support Networks, andTheir Host States: The Case of the Algerian GIA in Europe, 1993–2000 FFI/RAPPORT—2001/03789 (Kjeller, Norway: Forsvarets Forskningsinstitutt/Norwegian Defence Research Establish-ment, 2001).

4. See, for example, Nicholas Berry, “Eliminating Terrorist Sanctuaries: The Case of Iraq,Iran, Somalia, and Sudan,” CDI Terrorism Project (Centre for Defense Information, 10 December2001).

5. Not to mention political manipulation. Witness the move from counterterrorism in Af-ghanistan to counterproliferation in Iraq, a move that quite literally conflated different types ofterrorist threat from two very different types of state.

6. For a preliminary typology in this regard, see Florian Bieber, “Approaches to PoliticalViolence and Terrorism in Former Yugoslavia,” Journal of Southern Europe and the Balkans5(1) (2003), pp. 39–51.

7. Adam Roberts, “The Role of Humanitarian issues in international politics in the 1990s,”Evan Luard Lecture 1998. Oxford: United Nations Association, 10 November 1998.

8. Ibid.9. Rex Brynen, “Diaspora Populations and Security Issues in Host States,” paper presented

at the Metropolis Interconference Seminar on Immigrants and Homeland, Dubrovnik, Croatia, 11May 2002. Available at (www.international.metropolis.net/events/croatia/brynen.pdf, accessed 28September 2004).

10. John J. Hamre and Gordon R. Sullivan, “Toward Postconflict Reconstruction,” Wash-ington Quarterly 25(4) (August 2002), p. 85.

11. The Council on Foreign Relations terrorism resource website, for example, provides alist of states that function as terrorist safe havens, and includes detailed explanations of relevant,country-specific details. It does not establish an overall conceptual framework for understandingsanctuaries qua sanctuaries. The approach of this article is essentially the same.

12. A more recent study released by the Congressional Research Service summarizes andexpands on the findings of the 9/11 Commission, including brief mention of Bosnia-Herzegovinaand the Western Balkan states. See Francis T. Miko, Removing Terrorist Sanctuaries: The 9/11Commission Recommendations and U.S. Policy, Congressional Research Service Report for Con-gress (Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 10 August 2004), pp. 19–20.

13. There is extensive media reporting on this, and a significant body of scholarly literature.See especially Mary Kaldor, New and Old Wars: Organized Violence in a Globalized Era (Cam-bridge, UK: Polity Press, 1999).

14. Alfred C. Lugert, Gayle Munro, and Will Stephens, Preventing and Combating Terrorism

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

304 M. A. Innes

in Bosnia (Vienna: National Defence University/Institute for Peace Support and Conflict Manage-ment/Organization For Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2002), p. 12.

15. Christopher A. Kojm and Susan Ginsburg, Prepared Statement of Deputy ExecutiveDirector Christopher A. Kojm and Team Leader Susan Ginsburg, National Commission on Ter-rorist Attacks Upon the United States before the House International Relations Committee, 19August 2004.

16. Ibid.17. Nadia Alexandra-Arbatova, “European Security and International Terrorism: The Balkan

Connection,” Southeast European and Black Sea Studies, 4(3) (September 2004), pp. 361–378.18. Sead Numanovic, “Mujahedin Revival Fears,” Institute for War and Peace Reporting:

Balkan Crisis Report No. 286 (5 October 2001); Janez Kovac, “Sarajevo Hit by Bin Laden Panic,”IWPR: BCR No. 289 (18 October 2001); For related coverage on Kosovo, see Nehat Islami, “BinLaden Propaganda War,” IWPR: BCR No. 292 (31 October 2001); Adriatik Kelmendi, “KosovarsRefute Islamic Terror Claims,” IWPR: BCR No. 295 (11 November 2001).

19. Zeljko Cvijanovic, “Belgrade Exploits War on Terror,” IWPR: BCR No. 285 (3 October2001); Janez Kovac and Gordana Katana, “Hardliners Regroup,” IWPR: BCR No. 292 (31 October2001).

20. See Bisera Turkovic, Vladimir Obradovic,, and Sanja Ljubic,ic,, Perceptions and Atti-tudes of the Citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina towards Terrorism and the Role of InternationalSecurity Organisations (Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina: Center for Security Studies, 17 July 2002).

21. Bieber, “Approaches To Political Violence and Terrorism in Former Yugoslavia,” p. 40.22. Alexandra-Arbatova, “European Security and International Terrorism,” p. 361.23. Sumantra Bose, Bosnia After Dayton: Nationalist Partition and International Interven-

tion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 10.24. For more on interim transitional authority in BiH see Richard Kaplan, “International

Authority and State Building: The Case of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” Global Governance 10(1)(January–March 2004), pp. 53–66.

25. Tim Donais, “The Politics of Privatization in Post-Dayton Bosnia,” Southeast EuropeanPolitics 3(1) (June 2002), pp. 3–19.

26. Christopher A. Corpora, “The Untouchables: Former Yugoslavia’s Clandestine PoliticalEconomy,” Problems of Post-Communism 51(3) (May/June 2004), pp. 61–68.

27. Jessica Stern, “The Protean Enemy,” Foreign Affairs 82(4) (July/August 2003), pp. 27–40.28. Ena Latin, “Agent to Stand Trial,” IWPR: BCR No 362 (28 August 2002).29. Anes Anic and Jen Tracy, “Training for an Islamic Bosnia” (Balkan Reconstruction

Report, 26 April 2002); Ena Latin, “Sarajevo Trial May Lift Lid on Assassinations,” IWPR: BCRNo 338 (22 May 2002).

30. See especially Michael Pugh, “Rubbing Salt into War Wounds Shadow Economies andPeacebuilding in Bosnia and Kosovo,” Problems of Post-Communism 51(3) (May–June 2004),pp. 53–60; and William Reno, “Shadow States and the Political Economy of Civil Wars,” inGreed and Grievance: Economic Agendas in Civil Wars, Mats Berdal and David M. Malone, eds.(Boulder and London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2000), pp. 43–68.

31. See citations for Andreas, Corpora, Donais, and Pugh.32. Lugert, Munro, and Stephens, Preventing and Combating Terrorism in Bosnia, pp. 43–

45, 79, 87, 143.33. Eric Gordy, “Serbia After Djindjic: War Crimes, Organized Crime, and Trust in Public

Institutions,” Problems of Post-Communism 51(3) (May–June 2004), pp. 10–17.34. Lia and Kjok, The Case of the Algerian GIA in Europe, p. 23.35. See Evan F. Kohlmann, Al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Connection

(Oxford, UK: Berg Publishers, 2004), especially Chapter 9, “Blowback: The North African SleeperCell Network,” pp. 185–216.

36. Rohan Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda: Global Network of Terror (New York: BerkeleyBooks, 2002), p. 175.

37. Alexandra-Arbatova, “European Security and International Terrorism,” pp. 363, 377;Kohlmann, Al-Qaeda’s Jihad in Europe, p. 230.

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14

Terrorist Sanctuaries and Bosnia-Herzegovina 305

38. Gunaratna, Inside Al Qaeda, pp. 175–178; Lugert, Preventing and Combating Terror-ism in Bosnia, pp. 66–99; and International Crisis Group, Bin Laden and the Balkans: The Poli-tics of Anti-Terrorism, Balkans Report No. 119 (Brussels/Sarajevo: International Crisis Group, 9November 2001).

39. For an in-depth discussion of this, see David Bruce MacDonald, Balkan Holocausts?Serbian and Croatian Victim-Centred Propaganda and the War in Yugoslavia (New York andManchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), especially Chapter 8, “‘Greater Serbia and ‘GreaterCroatia’: The Moslem Question in Bosnia-Hercegovina,” pp. 220–250.

40. The reference to these two types—internal and external havens—is based on Brynen’sanalytical framework articulated in Brynen, Sanctuary and Survival, especially Chapter 1.

41. Paul Hockenos, Homeland Calling: Exile Patriotism and the Balkan Wars (Ithaca: CornellUniversity Press, 2003), p. 3.

42. For example, the OSCE’s 2002 report on terrorism in Bosnia notes that “Weak or failedstates, where absence of rule of law creates areas outside any sovereignty or control in whichorganized crime develops, are true havens for terrorist networks.” See Lugert, Munro, and Stephens,Preventing and Combating Terrorism in Bosnia, p. 14. The U.S. State Department’s Patterns ofGlobal Terrorism 2003 offers a more detailed taxonomy in its overview of the Balkans. “Despitelimited resources,” the report notes, “the countries of southeast Europe have actively supportedthe international Coalition against terrorism.” The focus of regional efforts, it emphasized, hasbeen in addressing nontraditional threats to the state and correcting systemic deficiencies thatfacilitate terrorist activity: “Albania, Serbia-Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, andBulgaria cooperated to combat organized crime and various forms of trafficking, enhance bordersecurity, and improve training for border security personnel.” See United States Department ofState, Patterns of Global Terrorism 2003 (April 2004), p. 42. Full text available at (http://www.state.gov/s/ct/rls/pgtrpt/2003/) (accessed 28 August 2004).

43. Speech by the High Representative to the North Atlantic Council, 16 January 2002.OHR Press Office. Available at (www.ohr.int).

44. See, for example, Peter Andreas, “The Clandestine Political Economy of War and Peacein Bosnia,” International Studies Quarterly 48(1) (2004), pp. 29–51; Fotios Moustakis, ”SoftSecurity Threats in the New Europe: The Case of the Balkan Region,” European Security 13(1–2) (Spring 2004), pp. 139–156; and Susan Woodward, “In Whose Interest is Security SectorReform? Lessons From the Balkans,” in Governing Insecurity: Democratic Control Of MilitaryAnd Security Establishments In Transitional Democracies, Gavin Cawthra and Robin Luckham,eds. (London, UK: Zed Books, 2003), pp. 276–302.

45. Carl-Ulrik Schierup, ed., Scramble for the Balkans: Nationalism, Globalism and thePolitical Economy of Reconstruction (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Hall Gardner, ed.,Central and Southeastern Europe in Transition: Perspectives on Success and Failure Since 1989(London, UK and Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2001); Dzemal Sokolovic and Florian Bieber,eds., Reconstructing Multiethnic Societies: The Case of Bosnia-Herzegovina (Aldershot, UK: AshgatePublishing, 2001).

46. For example, Gerald Knaus and Felix Martin, “Travails of the European Raj,” Journalof Democracy 14(3) (July 2003), pp. 60–74; David Chandler, Bosnia: Faking Democracy AfterDayton, 2nd ed. (London: UK: Pluto Press, 2000).

47. Such as Jeffrey S. Morton, Paul Forage, Stefano Bianchini, and Craig Nation, eds.,Reflections on the Balkan Wars: Ten Years After the Break-Up of Yugoslavia (New York: PalgraveMacmillan, 2004); David Chandler, ed., Protecting the Bosnian Peace: Lessons from a Decade ofNation Building (Abingdon, UK: Routlege, 2004).

Dow

nloa

ded

by [

Way

ne S

tate

Uni

vers

ity]

at 1

1:27

26

Nov

embe

r 20

14