Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe: The Afghan-Bosnian Network - Softcover

Superbly researched, this book tells the story of al-Qaida's birth in 1980s Afghanistan, and the subsequent training of militant Islamists for transportation to Bosnia: ostensibly to fight alongside their fellow Muslims against the Serbs and then Croats but really, as Kohlmann shows, to establish a permanent base for subsequent terrorist operations against European targets. There is an especially interesting chapter on the Saudi-funded charities that channelled money for arms into the conflict, some financing the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The Guardian (http://books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/roundupstory/0,,1312063,00.html) Saturday September 25, 2004 It is as eloquent a refutation as one could hope to read of the idea that Izetbegovic's Bosnian Muslims were in any way ideological fellow travellers of Al-Qaida, or its partners in terrorist activity. Written by a genuine expert in the subject - Kohlmann is an International Terrorism Consultant - this is a lucid and informed account of the involvement of the mujahedin in Bosnia, one that lays the myths to rest. This excellent book is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the truth about an episode of the Bosnia war that is so frequently misrepresented by those with a political motive for doing so. The Afghan-Bosnian Network This book is a pathbreaking piece of research into two underexplored aspects of contemporary terrorism. The book is descriptive and empirically rich: the author's main accomplishment is to document the many terrorist incidents the Afghan-Bosnians perpetrated in wartime Bosnia, and post-war cases of terrorist activity rooted in their far-reaching network. Michael Innes, Studies in Conflict and Terrorism

Why did so many of the September 11th hijackers spend time in Germany? How did terrorist sleeper cells plant themselves in cities such as London, Paris, Rome, and Hamburg? This is the first book to uncover the secret history of how Europe was systematically infiltrated by the ranks of the most dangerous terrorist organization on earth. Terrorist analyst Evan F. Kohlmann argues that the key to understanding Al-Qaida's European cells lies in the Bosnian war of the 1990s. Using the Bosnian war as their cover, Afghan-trained Islamic militants loyal to Usama Bin Laden convened in the Balkans in 1992 to establish a European domestic terrorist infrastructure in order to plot their violent strikes against the United States. As the West and the United Nations looked on with disapproval, the fanatic foreign mujahideen, or holy warriors, wreaked havoc across southern Europe, taking particular aim at UN peacekeepers and even openly fighting with Bosnian Muslims at times. Within a few months of the war's end, home-grown terrorist sleeper cells appeared on the streets of Europe's cities. Al-Qaida's Jihad in Europe unveils a new angle to the deadly international terrorist organization and includes recently declassified American and European intelligence reports, secret Al-Qaida records and internal documents, and interviews with notorious figures such as London-based Bin Laden sympathizer Abu Hamza Al-Masri.