Sarajevo/Zagreb (dpa) – The bearded Islamic fighters are rushing to the barricades. In street blockades and protest demonstrations the community of what is left of the mujahedin (holy warriors) in Bosnia-Herzegovina is fighting possibly its last battle.
Five years after the end of the war, the men who had come from Arab countries to bolster the Bosnian Moslem side in the conflict, are now supposed to turn over the town of Bocinja in central Bosnia which they had illegally taken over.
“This is not a political question. This has to do with respecting the laws and rights of ownership,” says Alan Roberts, spokesman for the United Nations mission in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
War and expulsions of people have not changed the ownership, he adds. About 200 Serbian families want to return, and if they do they could set in motion the machinery of people returning to their former domiciles.
“If they come, then this would make possible for 2,000 Bosnian Moslems to return to the Doboj region,” says Mehmed Bradaric, the mayor of Maglaj.
But protests against the Serbs’ return have come from various sides. Just the announcement that the mujahedin are to be expelled from the apartments triggered a street blockade staged by Bosnian- Moslem refugees.
They fear that what might follow will be that all the houses belonging to the Serbs will have to be vacated. In the weeks ahead, about 150 members of mujahedin families are supposed to vacate the Serb houses which they moved into in 1995.
At that time, a number of the Islamic fighters had settled down in Bosnia, gained citizenship, and started families with Bosnian women.
The mujahedin took over Bocinja in the fall of 1995 after the Bosnian army got control of the nearby Ozren mountain and the Serbs had fled.
Most of the mujahedin originate from such countries as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan. The sections of town which they took over soon changed in manner, and passages from the Koran were read out over the loudspeakers.
To this day, Bosnian laws do not count for much in Bocinja. Even entering the village first requires permission from the local leader who goes by the name Abu Hamza.
There have been repeated demands, above all from the United States, for the Islamic fighters to leave. For one, this is set down in the Dayton accords, but a further aspect is that this would also get at the roots of possible religious-motivated extremism.
Now the city of Maglaj, ruled by the opposition Bosnian Social Democrats (SDP), sent the first directives calling for the Serb houses to be vacated in order to restore the basic property rights.
Dzevdad Galijasevic, chairman of the city assembly, is demanding support for the directives from the government in the capital Sarajevo, where the Moslem party SDA is in power.
“The state authorities are responsible for these people having settled here,” Galijasevic said. “Now they should help us to solve the problem.”
