by Deirdre Dlugoleski
After a decade of war, genocide, and NATO military intervention, the conflicts in the Balkans and the communities involved in them drew worldwide attention. Many expressed concern from a purely humanitarian basis. Others, however, also expressed religious solidarity. While in Western Europe large Muslim communities are a relatively new and unprecedented phenomenon, the Balkans has had a strong Islamic presence for most of the last 1,000 years, and still does to this day. Over 50% of the population in Albania and Kosovo, and roughly 40% of the population of Bosnia, is Muslim, a legacy of Ottoman control of the region.
Turkey has taken by far the most decisive action to aid Muslim victims of the 1990’s conflicts, allowing thousands of Bosnian Muslims to flee to the Gazi Osman Pasha Camp – reportedly one of the best-run refugee camps in the world, with trees, a playground, and a mosque – during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War. Later, during the conflict in Kosovo from 1998-1999, Turkey allowed as many as 8,000 Kosovar Muslims to cross its borders and find refuge in the same camp. Turkey was also among the first to recognize Kosovo’s independence in February 2008; ethnic Albanians, of which there are over one million in Turkey, celebrated this support. Many in Turkey still feel a strong connection to the Balkan peninsula, from which Muslim immigrants have fled in steady waves since the 1878 Treaty of Berlin.
Although it openly accepted refugees, Turkey has never intervened beyond its own borders. The Balkans’ Islamic heritage, however, has produced more than just Turkish support – support that has had a direct impact within the Balkan states themselves. Many individuals and small interest groups (political parties, for example) from countries including Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Syria sent aid to Kosovars in the late ’90’s. During the earlier Bosnian War, some Muslims took a more drastic step – shipping off to Bosnia themselves to fight as mujahideen. From 1992 to 1995, as many as 4,000 volunteer soldiers, mostly from the Middle East, helped fight the Serbs. Although the units that they formed disbanded at the end of the War, many of them chose to stay in Bosnia.
These ex-mujahideen, who follow a much more conservative branch of Islam, present a dilemma to the Bosnian Muslim community, whose different practices of observance clash with theirs on points such as the consumption of alcohol. In 2007, the Bosnian government began re-examining hundreds of ex-mujahideen‘s citizenship status, leaving many of them facing deportation. According to Amnesty International, well over 600 have already lost their citizenship. The Bosnian government claims that this inspection concerns only the legality of their citizenship – many of the documents are based, according to the government, on false records from the army during the War. Others, however, suspect different motivations – cultural tensions, for example, or fear of Bosnia becoming a base for terrorism. The latter concern, shared by many Western governments, has no doubt manifested itself in pressure on Bosnia to continue expelling the former mujahideen. Some Bosnians claim that they never needed the mujahideen‘s help, and that their strict interpretations of Islam are unwelcome. The ex-mujahideen themselves, who arrived in a foreign country ready to die to protect their religion, feel, understandably, sold out.
While the conflicts and interventions of the 1990’s are currently forcing the Balkan states to evaluate their relationships with the international community, the attention and aid that they have received (in different capacities) on a religious basis will force them to define their place in the global community of Islam. War-torn and poverty stricken, any community in any Balkan state could use such support – but its potential ramifications give many pause for thought.