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34. The
Croatian War Machine
To make war
against wars is a just and rightful war. -- Pope John Paul II
OPUS DEI AND JOHN
PAUL II SHARE AN EXTRAORDINARY DEVOTION TO
the Virgin Mary. The Prelature has adopted the Pope's motto Totus
tuus ('All for you, Mary') as its own. Opus Dei members turn out at
all papal appearances waving Totus tuus banners. According to the
doctrine of the Virgin, she co-operated in man's redemption by
becoming the Mother .of God. Papa Wojtyla believes that she has a
major millennium role to play, and that Marian apparitions signify
her journey through space and time on a pilgrimage towards the
second coming, which marks 'the close of the age' - i.e., the end of
the world. But before the Parousia - the second coming - Christ
ordered that the Gospel must.be preached in ,all nations; 'and then
the end will come'.'
Mary also had special significance for Rwanda's Hutu rebels, a
number of ~hom were newly converted Muslims. Until the civil war
there, Rwanda was regarded as one of Africa's most Christianized
countries. Only 10 per cent of its population was Muslim. The Hutus
I Matthew 24:3 and 24:14.
THE CROATIAN WAR MACHINE
comprised more than 80 per cent of the population, but paradoxically
almost half of Rwanda's Catholic clergy was Tutsi.
'This was unbearable to Hutu extremists,' explained Father
Octave Ugiras, aTutsi priest who ran the Christus Centre in Kigali.
During the troubles, Hutu militiamen came to the centre and
slaughtered seventeen priests and nuns, believing them to have
supported the Tutsi-Ied Rwandan Patriotic Front, which later won
the civil war. 'The militiamen told us we had nothing to do with God.
They said the Virgin Mary was a Tutsi woman and she had to be
killed." The Hutus then riddled Mary's statue with bullets. During
the four weeks that the African Synod sat in Rome, more than
200,000 Rwandans - including the Archbishop of Kigali, two
bishops, 103 priests and 65 nuns - were slaughtered by the
extremists.
Thirteen years before the Rwandan massacres, the Virgin Mary
made her first appearance in the Bosnian Croat village of Medjugorje
with a plea for peace and reconciliation. Judging by the tragic events
that followed, the message was not understood, and yet Medjugorje
became the fourth most popular pilgrimage for Christians of all
faiths, attracting before the outbreak of war in the Balkans hundreds
of thousands of people each year.
In 1986 the Vatican began to show an interest in Medjugorje and
the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith was asked to investigate
the 'authenticity' of the apparitions. A rumour swept
Medjugorje that the Pope had secretly come to see for himself. When
asked in January 1987 by an Italian bishop how to react to the events
at Medjugorje, the Pope replied: 'Aren't you aware of the marvellous
fruits they are producing?'2
A few days later, the Virgin spoke through one of the local mediums
of her sadness about what was happening in the world. 'You
have allowed Satan to take the upper hand .. .' she is quoted as
having said. Four years later the region was inflamed in bitter
interreligious
conflict. With overwhelming superiority in arms, the Serbs
dominated the battlefield, carrying out medieval-style warfare that
threatened to reduce Sarajevo to cinders and spark the beginning of
l Edith M. Lederer, 'The Church and Rwanda', Associated Press. 23
January 1995.
1 Robert Faricy and Lucy Rooney, Med;ugor;e Journal - Mary Speaks to the
World,
McCrimmons. Great Wakering, Essex, 1987, p. 146.
THEIR KINGDOM COME
the Tenth Crusade. One-third of Croatia and nearly three-fourths
of Bosnia fell to the Serb aggressors.
The Serbs, it seemed, feared the 'Croat lobby' in Rome more than
the Croasian army. The Serb media branded Vatican policy as 'dishonest
and untrustworthy'. Belgrade was convinced that the
'obstinate and smart work' of the Holy See - guided by Opus Dei
and the newly appointed nuncio in Zagreb, Archbishop Giulio
Einaudi - enabled Croatia to dote its newly formed national army
with an impressive arsenal of modern weaponry. Indeed, Serb
sources alleged that Father Stanislav Crnica, the Opus Dei regional
vicar in Zagreb, had direct access to President Franjo Tudjman!s
office.'
Archbishop Einaudi took up his posting six weeks after the
Vatican - on 13 January 1992 - became the first foreign 'power' to
recognize Croatia's independence. He had previously been nuncio in
Chile where he had come under the spell of Opus Dei's former
regional vicar, Adolfo Rodriguez Vidal, who had been elevated to
Bishop of Los Angeles di Chile. During Einaudi's nunciature the
number of Opus Dei bishops in Chile rose to four. Einaudi was not
only a friend of the Prelature, he saw eye to eye with Regional Vicar
Crnica on all important issues.
Belgrade's suspicions of Vatican collusion seemed confirmed
when Serb intelligence purloined from the files of the Croatian
finance ministry a draft $2,000 million loan agreement which the
Vatican had purportedly arranged through the Sovereign Military
Order of the Knights of Malta. The loan was for 10 years and it carried
no interest. Even though the 12-page document was undated and
unsigned, the accompanying correspondence - between the Croatian
government and Monsignor Roberto Coppola, who described himself
as a Knights of Malta plenipotentiary minister and extraordinary
ambassador - was dated in early October 1990, eight months before
Croatia declared independence.
After receiving a copy of the loan agreement, the Serb newspaper
Politika charged that the Vatican was assisting the break-up of
Yugoslavia. Possibly from a partisan position, Politika reported that
I According to reports from Zagreb, one of President Tudjrnan's
daughters-in-law - he has
two, Ivana Morie, wife of Dr Miroslav Tudjman. and Snjezana, wife of
Stjepan Tudjman - is
an Opus Dei supernumerary.
THE CROATIAN WAR MACHINE
Cardinal Franjo Kuharic of Zagreb helped arrange the loan, which
had been negotiated on the Croatian side by prime minister Josip
Manolic, his deputy Mate Babic, finance minister Hrvoje Sarinic and
a councillor at the French finance ministry, Madame Mirjana
Zelen-Maksa.' But what the Serbs did not realize was that in
Zagreb's haste to finance the first arms purchases from abroad it had
fallen victim to a hoax.
No mention of 'Monsignor' Coppola appeared in the Vatican
yearbook and the Knights of Malta, embarrassed by the unwanted
publicity, maintained that the loan document was bogus, part of a
confidence trickster's attempt to harvest an up-front commission of
$200,000 from the Croatians. The fraud was uncovered in time and
the perpetrator - although he claimed immunity from prosecution
by virtue of holding diplomatic passports from several eastern
countries - was said to be in jail in Italy. In fact the Knights of
Malta's anti-fraud department, headed by Count Jose Antonio
Linati, possessed a lengthy file on Roberto Coppola, an enterprising
Neapolitan with a history of past misrepresentations dating back to
the 1970s, and had warned the Order's embassies abroad to be on the
lookout for the unworthy 'monsignor'.
Politika nonetheless noted that the Vatican financiers had also
backed the founding of an embargo-busting cargo airline that operated
between the Adriatic port of Split and Malta. It claimed that the
money for the airline had been transferred to the Croatians through
a Luxembourg bank that formerly had been used in some of the
United Trading transactions.
Politika's disclosures apart, the evidence suggests that the Opus
Dei network, in contravention of the UN arms embargo imposed in
1991, was instrumental in easing Croatia's task of forging a
well-armed, efficient war machine, first by improving Croatia's
image in the West so that it escaped international sanctions, and then
facilitating its contacts with the Clinton administration. The efforts
to arm Croatia began even before the Vatican's recognition of the
Tudjman republic.
When the federal Yugoslav forces abandoned their barracks
around Zagreb in 1992 they left behind two old Yugoslav Air Force
I Radivoje Petrovic, 'The Holy See is providing loans [Ii) help Croatia
and the break·up of
Yugoslavia', Politika. Belgrade, 2 February 1991.
405
THEIR KINGDOM COME
MiGs and a few disabled tanks. By September 1993, the Croats had
purchased twenty-eight MiG 21s from surplus stocks in the Czech
Republic. The MiGs were transported to Croatia in kit form by
truck through Hungary. Zagreb was·also successful in obtaining a
piece of the American foreign aid pie. Opus Dei's Washington netwQrk,
which by then extended from the papal nunciature on
Massachusetts Avenue to the White House, the FBI and the
Pentagon, provided the Croats with the right contacts so that they
knew exactly what to ask for and how to formulate their requests.!
The Serbs were hit with international sanctions, but the Croats,
perpetrators
of their own depredations in western Bosnia, successfully
avoided them.
In a move that perplexed observers, Alvaro del Portillo spent
several weeks during the summer of 1993 at the Prelature's
Warwick House in Pittsburgh. Its director, numerary John Freeh,
was the brother of Louis J. Freeh, since 1993 Clinton's director of
the FBI.2 Officially Bishop Portillo was in Pittsburgh to address
prominent local Catholics. But unremarked was that Pittsburgh is
the headquarters of the Croatian Fraternal Union of America, a life
insurance association with assets of $150 million but also the
largest Croat emigrant organization in the world. The Union's
national president, Bernard M. Luketich, was so highly viewed by
Rome and Washington that he accompanied the official White
House delegation that greeted.John Paul II on his visit to the United
States in 1995.'
Opus Dei's operations in Pittsburgh were assisted in the 1980s by
an energetic young priest, Father Ron Gillis, who had been recruited
while a law student at Boston. Gillis had known the Founder in Rome
and witnessed some of his famous tantrums. On one occasion he
reported that Escriva de Balaguer started banging chairs about,
screaming that he needed more 'saints' - i.e., new vocations. Gillis
told a friend he never wanted to be a priest but the Father convinced
him he had a vocation as big as a house. Gillis confided that Opus ..
1 The nuncio in Washington, Archbishop Agostino Cacciavillan, began his
diplomatic career
in 1976 as the nuncio in Kenya, where he first came into contact with
Opus Dei's Corps
Mobile.
1 John Freeh resigned as a numerary and leh Warwick House in 1994 to
marry. Attempts to
reach him were unsuccessful and it is uncertain whether he remains an
Opus Dei member.
1 The Pittsburgh Post· Gazette, 1 October 1995.
THE CROAnAN WAR MACHINE
Dei was attempting to recruit inside the Pentagon and that he himself
regularly gave lectures there on 'military ethics'. Soon after, he left
Pittsburgh and by 1992, as the Balkans crisis hotted up, he was back
in Washington.
In the summer of 1993, plans to arm Croatia in spite of the UN
embargo took on greater urgency. According to the Stockholm
International Peace Research Institute, which monitors arms transfers
in the region, Croatia created its own armaments industry and
refurbished equipment left behind by the Yugoslav army. Other arms
were acquired from Ukraine, among them 200 T-55 battle tanks, 400
armoured personnel carriers, 150 heavy artillery pieces, 35 multiple
rocket launchers and 45 assault helicopters. But the Croatians
lacked basic battlefield management skills.
In January 1994 the Croatian Fraternal Union was instrumental
in founding the National Federation of Croatian Americans as a
registered lobby in Washington. Luketich had White House contacts
at the highest level, extending to Bill Clinton, Al Gore and
Anthony Lake, the National Security Adviser.' Lake, who describes
himself as a 'pragmatic liberal', had served in two previous
administrations
- Nixon's and Jimmy Catter's. A former political
science professor at Holyoke College in Massachusetts, he had
received his PhD from Princeton, where he could have encountered
Opus Dei's Father John McCloskey III, an assistant chaplain who
left the Princeton chaplaincy in 1990 after creating 'a firestorm by
advising students not to take courses which he deemed doctrinally
dangerous.
Two months after the Croatian lobby's formation, Zagreb's
defence minister, Gojko Susak, requested Washington's assistance
in educating the Croatian general staff 'in military-civilian
relations, programming and budgeting'. Susak's extreme Croat
nationalism - he was originally from the region of Mostar had
caused him to flee Yugoslavia in 1967, settling with two
brothers in Ottawa, where he worked in a Kentucky Fried Chicken
1 Zajednicar (Fraremalist), 'the official organ of the Croatian
Fraternal Union of America'.
reported in its 6 January and 3 February 1993 issues that Mr Luketich
was invited to a privare
dinner at the Old StateHouse Building in Little Rock with Hillary and
Bill Clinton and
AI Gore. See also, inter alia, Zajednicar, 7 April 1993, and 'Special
Report From Washington'
concerning an American-Croatian delegation headed by Me Luketich that
met at tbe White
House on 27 February 1995 with Anthony Lake and Alexander Vershbow, the
NSC's senior
adviser for European Affairs, Za;ednicar. 8 March 1995.
,..•
THEIR KINGDOM COME
franchise. Later he bought a pizza parlour and staffed it with
Lebanese while putting all his energies into organizing Canadian
Croats for the Croatian Fraternal Union of America. In 1991,
Brother Susak was listed as president of the board of trustees of the
Ottawa chapter, when he returned to Zagreb to beef up Croatia's
military punch.
Susak specifically asked the Clinton administration for permission
to employ a group of retired US army officers who
operated from offices in Alexandria, Virginia, under the name of
Military Professional Resources Incorporated.' The only problem
was the 1991 UN arms embargo imposed on all of Yugoslavia. But
this problem faded with John Paul II's visit to Zagreb in September
1994 to celebrate the ninth centenary of the See of Zagreb.
Tudjman was said to be ecstatic. He told a press conference that the
first papal visit to the Balkans since 1117 signified Vatican backing
for Croatia's bid to regain its Serb-held territory 'by war if
necessary.'
'The Holy Father is coming as an apostle of peace, the preacher
of co-operation and friendship among nations,' he said. 'His arrival
... signifies moral support from the supreme international moral
authoriry for Croatia's demand that it has the right to establish its
legal system over its entire territory.' To show Croatia's 'everlasting
gratitude' for the Holy See's protection two bootlegged MiG 21
fighters escorted the papal airliner into Croatian airspace and when
it landed on Croatian soil church bells pealed throughout the
country.
In 1519, Leo X had bestowed on the Croats the title of
Antemurale Christianitatis - the Bulwark of Christianity - for their
defence of Europe against endless hordes from the East. Almost
480 years later, John Paul II was again exhorting the Croats to
stand firm for Christendom. Within days of the papal visit, Military
Professional Resources (MPRI) received the green light from the US
State Department to sign a consulting agreement with the Croatian
defence ministry. Clinton, after conferring with his national security
adviser, approved the decision. MPRI was no fly-by-night
organization. It employed 140 persons and reported an annual
I David B. Ottaway, 'US General Plays Down Bosnia Role - "Non-Lethal
Advice" Is All He's
Giving', The Washington Post, 28 July 1995.
THE CROATIAN WAR MACHINE
turnover in excess of $7.S million. Among those working on the
Croatian contract - nondescriptly referred to as the 'Democratic
Transition Assistance Programme' - were former US Army chief of
staff General Carl Vuono, former US Army Europe commander
General Crosbie 'Butch' Saint, and former Defence Intelligence
Agency chief Lieutenant General Ed Soyster.
'The mission was to convert the eastern·style army they had ...
to a western·style army based on democratic principles,' Soyster
said. 'We are talking about totally changing a system, converting
their eastern·style military to a western one with democratic values
and methods.' MPRI's assistance 'has no correlation to anything
happening on the battlefield today,' he added.' Otherwise stated,
MPRI was assisting Croatia to train a professional officers corps.
Leading the Croatian programme on the ground was retired Major
General Richard B. Griffitts. His IS-strong group was staffed by
former Pentagon colonels. The Croats were accorded State
Department clearance to attend special courses at US bases and
schools.
Under a separate arrangement, retired Major General John
Sewall, former deputy director of strategic planning for the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, spearheaded a State Department effort to improve
military co·ordination between the Bosnian and Croatian governments
and the Bosnian Croat militia - in other words, to make the
three forces more combat efficient. Sewall took over the job of special
adviser to the Bosnian and Croatian militaries from General
John Rogers Galvin, the former Supreme Allied Commander in
Europe.
Although the Americans denied it, French and British intelligence
sources claimed that the Croatians were receiving advanced US
computer technology and fire-control systems designed to give them
battlefield superiority. This know·how, however, was not passed
on to the Bosnians. It seems that by then Lake had counselled
Clinton to silently assent to a Tudjman proposal - put forward in
the spring of 1994 - to allow Iranian arms for Bosnia to transit
Croatia.2 It has since been alleged that by turning a blind eye to the
I Sean D. Naylor, 'Retired Army General Helps Balkan Militaries to Shape
Up', Army Times,
Washington, 12 June 1995.
2 James Risen and Doyle McManus, 'Despite his public opposition to
lifting embargo, Clinton
reportedly let shipments go through', Los Angeles Times, 5 April 1996.
409
THEIR KINGDOM COME
Iranian arms shipments to Bosnia, the Americans permitted Tehran
to expand its foothold in the Balkans. But the evidence suggests
otherwise. The Iranians already had their foothold. They had been
shipping their arms through the Croatian ports of Split and Rijeka
since 1993, with Zagreb routinely exacting a 'transit tax' on the 30to
50-truck convoys before they left the ports for destinations
inside Bosnia. Opus Dei's strategists seem to have realized that if
Bosnia did not receive a minimum of military aid to defend itself,
without permitting Sarajevo an offensive capabiliry that might
threaten Croatia - a proposition that the Bush administration had
refused - Islamic guerrillas would soon be present in the Balkans in
uncontrollable numbers and Bosnia would fully become an Iranian
client state. At least this way Croatia could exert some control over
the weapons flow, thereby guaranteeing Zagreb's military superiority
over its beleaguered neighbour.
The plan worked well enough, although it was rendered more
complicated than expected by the fact that American military gear
was soon being spotted in the battle zone. How did it get there?
That mystery remains unsolved. Possibly the Iranians, having some
left-over American equipment from the time of the Shah, introduced
it in an effort to s01.l'i relations betWeen the US and its
European allies. The subterfuge almost succeeded, because the
French and British governments became unhappy about the apparent
violation of the UN embargo. Their peacekeeping contingents
reported seeing Bosnian Croat and Muslim soldiers dressed in
American battle fatigues and carrying M-16 rifles. UN officials
were in fact convinced that the US used NATO patrols enforcing
the 'no-fly zone' over Bosnia to shield private contractors sending
contraband arms cargoes into Bosnian-held Tuzla airport. They
claimed that the deliveries were made at night using just-off-theground
airdrops, a technique developed when Butch Saint was
commander of the US Army in Europe and Sewall was the army's
deputy chief of planning.
In spite of allegations that the US was breaking the arms embargo,
there was no FBI investigation, even though the British and French
brought their embargo-busting evidence to the attention of US Joint
Chiefs of Staff chairman General John Shalikashvili and Richard
Holbrooke, the assistant secretary of state for European affairs. It
perhaps should be pointed out that FBI director Louis Freeh,
THE CROATIAN WAR MACHINE
appointed by Clinton in July 1993, and his wife Marilyn have been
named as supernumerary members and that their two eldest children
attended The Heights, Opus Dei's school in Washington.'
By July 1995, when John Paul II officially invoked the Just War
doctrine to defend Bosnia, it was clear to the Vatican that the Serb
aggression risked transforming what had been the world's most
secularized Islamic community - a model for future relations
between Christians and Muslims - into a radical theocracy, not far
distant from Rome. If Bosnia turned radically Muslim, the very
existence of the Catholic Church in that part of the Balkans would
be threatened. Tudjman, therefore, was primed to follow the
Vatican's lead. His advisers proposed the opening of peace talks
with the Serbs of Krajina, which were predestined to fail, thereby
qualifying for application of the Just War doctrine. Meanwhile, the
commander of the Croatian armed forces, General Janko Bobetko,
and his American advisers put the final touches on Operation
Storm. The Serbs helped at the end of July 1995 by overplaying
their hand, seizing control of Srebrenica, a UN 'safe zone' in eastern
Bosnia, once again turning international opinion against them.
In quick succession the UN abandoned Zepa, another Muslim 'safe
area', and Sarajevo came under intensified bombardment. Serb
General Ratko Mladic then moved his troops against the Muslim
enclave of Bihac, where 180,000 Muslims were encircled, in the
west of Bosnia.
Four years after the Serbs had set up on Croatian territory the
autonomous Republika Srpska Krajina, one supposed that they were
solidly dug in and ready for a fight. As part of Greater Serbia, the
Krajina Serbs believed they enjoyed the solid backing of Belgrade.
The joint attack on Bihac by Bosnian Serbs and those of Krajina provided
the pretext for General Bobetko to begin Operation Storm. His
streamlined, Americanized army launched a lightning attack against
Krajina. Within eighty-four hours Krajina's capital of Knin had
fallen and the siege of Bihac was lifted.
As the Croatian war machine started rolling through Krajina, a
mortar attack - supposedly carried out by Serbs - against Sarajevo
1 The Inspector in Charge of the FBI's Office of Public and
Congressional Affairs, John E.
Collingwood. stated in reply to the author's queries to the director:
'While 1 cannot answer
your specific questions, I do note that you have been "informed"
incorrectly by whomever
your sources might be.'
411
THEIR KINGDOM COME
killed thirty-seven civilians, bringing almost instant NATO retaliation:
in two weeks 3,500 bombing sorties (two-thirds of them
by American warplanes) destroyed over 100 strategic targets in
Serb-held territory. The Serbs were unable to counter-attack. Within
days they had lost more than 3,000 square kilometres of terrain and
their routes were clogged with 60,000 new refugees. Bobetko's
troops were within shelling distance of Banja Luka when they
announced a unilateral ceasefire. Belgrade never budged.
The coincidence of a Croatian blitzkrieg and the NATO bombing
forced the Serbs to admit defeat. The Vatican newspaper
L'Osservatore Romano portrayed the NATO air raids as a warning
to the psychopaths of Pale, intended to 'restore hope to the martyred
people' of Bosnia. The bombings were not an act of war, the Vatican
paper said, but demonstrated 'a determination to protect the rights
of those populations, the unfortunate Bosnians - Croats, Serbs and
Muslims - and all the other ethnic groups dragged into the madness
of a lengthy and ferocious war.'
Cardinal Kuharic of Zagreb proclaimed Operation Storm 'a legitimate
action of Croatia to liberate her own territory'. When he
pointed out that the rebel occupation of Krajina had been illegal, that
Knin had rejected Tudjman's offer to negotiate, making military
action a necessary last resort, and that the international community
was unable to protect the victims of Serb aggression, he was reciting
the four prerequisites for receiving a Just War label.
More importantly, Operation Storm had momentarily shortcircuited
radical Islam's call for total jihad, issued after the fall of
Srebrenica. Iran's foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati had pledged at
a private meeting to give the Bosnian Muslims all the military
assistance
they needed, forcing more moderate nations like Turkey, Egypt,
Malaysia and Jordan, whose troops participated in the UN humanitarian
force, to back the Bosnian government openly rather than
leave the Iranians to hold Islam's high moral ground.
Backed by its new military might, Croatia was determined to exert
a moderating influence over its neighbour and made it clear that
imported Islamic extremism would not be tolerated. By then a couple
of brigades of non-Bosnian Muslims, numbering about 4,000 fighters
qualified by US officers as 'hard-core terrorists', were operating
within and sometimes in parallel to the Bosnian government forces.
Although the Dayton peace agreement that followed the Serb
412
THE CROATIAN WAR MACHINE
defeat called for all foreign fighters to leave Bosnia, defence
officials
acknowledged there was little hope of persuading them to depart,
even in spite of Bosnian affirmations that they would be out of the
country within thirty days. 'These guys are mean. They've got to be
controlled,' an American adviser to the Bosnian government said.'
According to a Sarajevo newspaper, a handful of the volunteers
left for Chechnya, where war with the Russians had broken out
again. But many simply faded into the snow-covered Hercegovina
mountains to prepare for the next round of fighting. They were only
too aware that the 1995 Dayton agreement had brought about the
de facto partition of Bosnia, and this was not acceptable to them.
They called it a betrayal.
Instructors at a 'Marryrs Detachment' training camp in central
Bosnia, according to an intercepted report to their headquarters in
Tehran, told European recruits that they were engaged 'in a jihad to
defend Islam and its sacred principles against a crazed, spiteful
Occidental Crusade.' For members of the 'Seekers of Marryrdom'
battalion, then, the Tenth Crusade had already begun. A Croatian
flag flew over western Bosnia, where the Croatian kuna and not the
Bosnian dinar was in use, and those inhabitants who remained considered
that part of the country to be solidly Croatian. As further
proof, Medjugorje was under the control of the apparently Opus
Dei-assisted and Catholic-led Croatian Army.
Zagreb demonstrated its determination to bar imported Islamic
extremism from the region when in September 1995 it arrested
Sheikh Tala'at Fouad Qassem, a leader in exile of the Gama'a
al-lslamiya terrorist organization. Sheikh Tala'at had been foolish
enough to cross Croatia on his way to Sarajevo to offer the Bosnian
army more mujahedin volunteers. The Croatian authorities claimed
they had expelled him, but he and his bodyguard disappeared and
were presumed dead.
Days later Gama'a exploded a car bomb in Rijeka, killing the
bomber and injuring twenry-nine. A statement faxed to the Reuters
news agency announced that Gama'a al-Islamiya had carried out its
first terrorist attack against Croatian interests. 'This historic
operation
is to assure the Croats that the fate of Tala'at Fouad Qassem
I Dana Priest, 'Foreign Muslims Fighting in Bosnia Considered «Threat"
to US Troops" The
Washington Post, 30 November 1995 (emphasis added).
THEIR KINGDOM COME
will not pass without floods of blood running through internal and
external Croatian interests,' Gama'a said.
A month later the Croatians answered Gama'a's threat by intercepting
and killing the 'Emir of the Mujahedin', Sheikh Anwar
Shaaban, and four other Muslim volunteers serving with the Bosnian
Third Army Corps. The ongoing hatred and fear prompted one Serb
observer to remark that even with 60,000 NATO troops acting as
guardians of the Dayton agreement, 'there will be no real peace in
Bosnia for a long time to come.' Nevertheless the lull before the next
round of fighting enabled the Pope's secret warriors to focus their
attention elsewhere along the Spiritual Curtain.
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