Muslim Fighters in Bosnia Said to Threaten U.S. Lives

As hundreds of Americans flood Bosnia to observe this weekend’s national elections, the U.S. Embassy warned Thursday of a group of suspected moujahedeen--Muslim fighters--that has threatened to kill Americans.

U.S. citizens will be advised to stay away from an area of central Bosnia-Herzegovina where the presence of Islamic fundamentalists is strongest and where confrontations between those individuals and NATO-led troops have escalated, Western officials said.

U.S. officials formally protested to the government of Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic on Thursday and demanded the expulsion of the men. Under terms of the U.S.-brokered peace accord that ended Bosnia’s war, he promised to eject hundreds of foreign fighters, many from Iran, who trained and fought alongside the Muslim-led Bosnian government army.

The Clinton administration had to certify that foreign fighters were out of Bosnia to trigger a multimillion-dollar “equip-and-train” program to arm Bosnia’s army. The first shipment of weapons arrived in Sarajevo, the capital, last month, after that certification.

A continued moujahedeen presence “is very serious,” said a Western official. “It continues to represent a real threat to [NATO]. . . . The threats have become more and more intense recently.”

Besides the 16,000-strong U.S. contingent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization peacekeeping force in Bosnia, there will be several hundred Americans serving as election monitors.

They will include individuals traveling to Bosnia as observers, as well as nongovernmental agency workers already here who are being recruited for the task. A total of 1,200 monitors from many countries will work under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, while independent American delegations, including one headed by former U.S. envoy and peace architect Richard C. Holbrooke, will also participate.

On Saturday, Bosnia will hold its first postwar election amid persistent ethnic tension, the threat of violence and a lack of basic freedoms. Going as far back as April, American and Polish patrols to the south of the central Bosnian town of Maglaj have been harassed by groups of up to 15 men whose beards and attire seem to put them in the category of Islamic fundamentalists, Western officials said.

The threats have been oral and no exchange of gunfire has been reported. But in recent weeks, the men specifically threatened to “kill any Americans who come into town,” a senior Western official said.

To make their point, the men dragged a finger across their necks, imitating the slitting of someone’s throat, the Western officials said.

The men, who were in the village of Boncinja Donja, were not armed during the most recent incidents. But NATO-led troops have confiscated weapons before, the Western officials said.

In its protest to Izetbegovic, the U.S. government demanded the removal from Bosnia of the men involved. It was not immediately clear if they were foreign-born or Bosnians who have been trained by foreign Islamic fundamentalists.

Up to 2,000 moujahedeen are believed to have been working in Bosnia during the war, and many left after the signing of the peace accord in December. But a large number are believed to have been reissued Bosnian passports or to have married into Bosnian families as a way to skirt the requirements of the peace plan and remain in the country.

“Many of these have been told [by the Bosnian government] that if they led peaceful lives and re-integrated, they can stay,” said one Western official who monitors the presence of foreign forces.

In its Thursday protest, the U.S. Embassy “made it clear that these people are out. [The U.S.] wants immediate action from Izetbegovic.”

Although there have been previous incidents, Thursday’s protest to Izetbegovic was the first on this issue, the officials said.

There was no immediate comment from the Bosnian government, which has pledged cooperation before but not always followed through. Several phone calls to government spokesman Mirza Hajric were not returned.

Iranian and other Islamic fundamentalists have been battling with Washington for the cultural and military soul of Bosnia for some time. While the U.S. government expands its political and military influence, fundamentalists have made significant inroads, through weapons from Iran and vast amounts of humanitarian aid from Saudi Arabia. Izetbegovic’s political party is increasingly dominated by a militant wing that espouses hard-line Muslim nationalism.

Of most concern to NATO was the discovery in February of what officials described as an Iranian-run terrorist camp, located near Sarajevo, that was training Bosnians in intelligence, assassinations and bomb-making. A government secret police service was also implicated, which has since been active in repression of political opposition during the electoral campaign.

As U.S. Embassy officials met to discuss the Bosnian government’s response to the American protest, a few hundred yards away, the ruling Muslim nationalist party, the Party of Democratic Action, staged its final campaign rally. Thousands of former soldiers, young people, refugees and professionals packed a stadium used to open the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. Some waved huge green flags with inscriptions in Arabic, or wore green headbands with similar writing, and many shouted the Arabic phrase “Allahu akbar!” [God is great!].