7th Muslim Brigade - Bosnian Mujahideen Confusion

Bosnian Mujahideen Confusion

During the Yugoslav wars, Bosnia-Herzegovina received humanitarian aid from Islamic countries as well as from the West, because of intensive and widespread killing, mass rapes, death camps, ethnic cleansing committed by Serb and, to a lesser extent, Croat forces. The main targets were Bosnian Muslim civilians. The International Court of Justice concluded that these crimes, committed during the 1992 -95 war, were crimes against humanity and genocide (dolus specialis) regarding Srebrenica region according to the Genocide Convention. Following such massacres, Arab volunteers came across Croatia into Bosnia to help the Bosnian Army protect the Bosnian Muslim civilian population. The number of the El-Mudžahid volunteers is still disputed, from around 300 to 1,500. These caused particular controversy: foreign fighters, styling themselves mujahiddin, turned up in Bosnia around 1993 with Croatian identity documents and passports. They quickly attracted heavy criticism, who considered their presence to be evidence of violent Islamic fundamentalism at the heart of Europe. However, the foreign volunteers became unpopular even with many of the Bosniak population, because the Army of Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina had thousands of troops and had no need for more soldiers, but for arms. Many Bosnian Army officers and intellectuals were suspicious regarding foreign volunteers arrival in central part of the country, because they came from Split and Zagreb in Croatia, and were passed through the self-proclaimed Croatian Community of Herzeg-Bosnia without problems unlike Bosnian Army soldiers who were regularly arrested by Croat forces. According to general Stjepan Šiber, the highest-ranking ethnic Croat in Bosnian Army, the key role in foreign volunteers arrival was played by Franjo Tuđman and Croatian counter-intelligence underground with the aim to justify involvement of Croatia in Bosnian War and mass crimes committed by Croat forces. Although Izetbegović regarded them as symbolically valuable as a sign of the Muslim world's support for Bosnia, they appear to have made little military difference and became a major political liability. According to Predrag Matvejević, a notable Italian and Croatian modern prosaist who analyzed the situation, the number of Arab volunteers who came to help the Bosnian Muslims, "was much smaller than the number presented by Serb and Croat propaganda".