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The author argues that the transnational Islamic terrorist organization al-Qa[hamza ]ida set up its base in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the war there (1992-95) and afterward used it to infiltrate the Western world and carry out terrorist attacks. In Kohlmann's view, Bosnia was extremely important for al-Qa[hamza ]ida's activities in the West.
One can divide the book into two parts, which together make a coherent whole. In the first part (chapters 1-7), Kohlmann stresses that Bosnia provided (1) safe haven for the Arabs who in the 1980s had fought Soviet troops in Afghanistan and who later, as members of al-Qa[hamza ]ida, strove to overthrow "non-Islamic" regimes in their countries of origin and were consequently persecuted by those regimes; and (2) a place for military training and indoctrination of new recruits of al-Qa[hamza ]ida coming from Western Europe (Muslim immigrants and native converts to Islam), who were extremely irritated due to Serbian massacres of their Bosnian coreligionists and inaction of the West. Both groups of Muslims effectively fought on the Bosnian government's (predominantly Muslim) side.
In the second part (chapters 8 and 9), the author emphasizes that, after the war, al-Qa[hamza ]ida used Bosnia to bridge the land gap between the Middle East and the Western world and spread its sleeper-cell terrorist network across the latter. Finally, the author points out that, despite American warnings, for a long time...