Islamic Volunteers Rallying to Killing Fields of Bosnia

Most of the time, he is Mohammed, a young Saudi government employee who goes home each night to a wife, two children and a quiet meal.

But much of the time these days, he is Abu Ali, a volunteer in the killing fields outside Sarajevo where, to a new generation of young Muslims, Bosnia-Herzegovina has become the newest frontier in a holy war as old as Islam.

In Bosnia, he has taken a Yugoslav wife, “a good Muslim,” and is teaching her the sonorous Arabic of the Koran. He conducts classes in religion for a nation of European Muslims who have strayed from the rigorous path of Mecca. He documents the murders of Muslims to carry back to Saudi Arabia to encourage others to join. And he prepares to help the Muslims of Bosnia fight back.

Nayif, a 28-year-old Saudi who fought with the moujahedeen in Afghanistan, has traveled twice to Bosnia and is preparing to go once again, this time for war. “I and many young people like myself--our great hope is to die as martyrs, in defense of our religion and righteousness, regardless of where and how we face this destiny,” he said.

Hundreds of religious young Arabs, Asians and Iranians, many of them veterans of Afghanistan’s civil war, have flocked to Bosnia to join a distant war that has become a rallying point for radical young Muslims around the world, who see in its unchecked violence the treachery of the West and the powerlessness of their own leaders to do anything about it.

The parade of Muslim fundamentalists to Europe has prompted leaders of the Serbs, who are at war with Muslims and Croats in the ruins of Yugoslavia, to warn of an outbreak of Islamic revolution at Europe’s door. The influx has caused unease among Arab leaders as well, who have seen the young Afghan-trained veterans return to their homelands to join radical underground movements bent on unseating Arab governments accused of straying from Islam and coddling the West.

An estimated 10,000 young Arabs and Iranians learned the techniques of guerrilla warfare with the moujahedeen --Muslim holy warriors--in Afghanistan. Their flight to Bosnia has been aided by the policies of some governments, particularly Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia, which in the face of growing Islamic terrorist activities have imposed strict controls that make it difficult for Afghan war veterans to return home.

Now, many government officials fear that Bosnia is becoming a training ground for a new generation of Islamic guerrillas.

“Everybody who goes there is given a chance to participate, and training in arms also,” said Nayif, a young Saudi who spent several years in Pittsburgh before he returned home to Riyadh, grew a beard and joined the fighting first in Afghanistan and now in Bosnia.

“This is a good thing,” he said. “I believe whoever owns his weapon and knows how to use it owns his decision as well.”

Although there are no official figures, most Islamic sources say only about 300 to 500 Muslims from the Arab world, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan have joined the fighting in Bosnia. At least 22 Saudis have died in the conflict. And a cargo of 12 coffins secretly flown into Alexandria a few months ago is widely rumored to have carried the bodies of Egyptian fighters in Bosnia.

Public sentiment has been feverish in the Arab world, even among secularized Muslims, about the violence against Muslims in Bosnia and the international community’s failure to stop it. Television documentaries graphically depict the carnage in Sarajevo’s streets, and posters of mutilated bodies, weeping women and distraught children hang near mosques and public centers.

As a result, the Arab public has been clamoring, in the face of seeming international malaise, for action.

Islamic foreign ministers, convening an emergency session in Saudi Arabia earlier this month, demanded international military intervention and a halt to the arms embargo that the Islamic world believes is preventing the Muslims from defending themselves against the well-armed Serbs.

In Kuwait, authorities discovered dozens of machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, explosives and ammunition in what press reports called a cache collected by Islamic fundamentalists, bound for Bosnia.

Saudi authorities have not officially directed military assistance to Bosnia, but sources in the Islamic community said several Saudi millionaires are privately directing cash for underground arms purchases and aiding young Islamic militants to travel to Bosnia to join the fight.

Private Saudi financiers have also helped acquire thousands of uniforms and telecommunications equipment for the Bosnian military, according to these Islamic sources.

Public contributions to Bosnia have been dramatically less than expected, according to Abdullah Naseef, head of the Jidda-based Muslim World League, who said many young Muslims have volunteered to fight because they cannot afford to contribute.

“The Bosnian foreign minister told me the total that came from Muslim countries is not as much as what came from only one Western country. It’s very miserable,” Naseef said. “That’s why people want to go and fight. They say: ‘We cannot give money. Let us give our lives.’ ”

“They go mainly to help the morale of the Bosnian people, to make them feel they are not alone,” said an Islamic journalist in Jidda familiar with the activities of the new moujahedeen. “The Bosnians have been isolated from the Islamic world for many years, and they have lost touch. Some of them, for example, drink alcohol; some of them even eat pork. Many Muslims go over there to teach them the meaning of jihad (holy struggle) and the idea of fighting for the sake of Islam.”

“They are terrible Muslims,” one Bosnia veteran admitted with a smile. “Terrible Muslims! Eighty percent of the people do not pray. But it’s our fault. We forgot about them, and we have to pay.”

A member of the Saudi royal family who has contact with the moujahedeen said authorities have been largely powerless to stop the exodus to Bosnia.

“We tell them: ‘Try to concentrate on your own country. Be an example.’ But they don’t listen,” he said. “We don’t think they’re going to make a difference militarily, but some young men feel it’s the ultimate they can give. They think that in order to fulfill their Islamic commitment, they have to sacrifice, just like the Bosnians.”

Riadz Sherif, 42, a construction engineer from India, has watched the Bosnian slaughter on television for months and has now bought an airline ticket to Bosnia.

Sherif, a veteran of the Indian air force and the Afghan civil war, figures he may be better-suited for humanitarian assistance than for fighting. But he’s ready for both.

“I am just one of the Muslim moujahedeen ready to join the call of jihad,” he said. “To die in the path of religion, sacrificing a life in fighting for a cause which is loved by Allah--that is the reason I am going.”

Bosnian government officials have discouraged the influx of Islamic fighters, just as they tried to dampen enthusiasm at this month’s conference of Muslim nations for raising an Islamic army to help fight off the Serbs.

“We certainly don’t want any foreign force to come into our country and fight, because we are ready to fight for ourselves,” said Miles Ragnz, an adviser to Bosnia’s U.N. mission. “In Sarajevo alone, we have 200,000 ready and able men and only 3,000 rifles.”

Indeed, young Islamic radicals play down the military significance of the new moujahedeen.

“Believe me, these guys are not doing even 5% of what’s going on there,” said one Arab Sarajevo veteran, who spoke in a Riyadh coffee shop as he fingered a white Koran. “The Serbs are playing this up, because they want Europe to be afraid of Islam, of fundamentalism. But we are not looking for an Islamic state in Bosnia. You need, believe me, 50 years to have an Islamic state in Bosnia. What we want is for the Bosnians to live in their land. Safely, without any bothering. That’s it. As we are living, we want them to live.”

Still, he said, Muslims are not ready to forget that the rest of the world has failed to act decisively on behalf of Bosnia’s Muslims--as they have also, he said, failed to act on behalf of the Muslims of Kashmir and of the land the Arabs call Palestine.

“Every person, Muslim, Christian or Jewish, who watches that suffering in Bosnia and does nothing about it will pay,” he said. “Sooner or later, they will pay. The Muslims are keeping the accounts, and you can give that message to President Bush.”

Murphy, Times’ correspondent in Cairo, was recently in Riyadh.