Saudi Arabia and the Genocide of Muslims

in Bosnia-Hercegovina

Dr. Daryl Champion

Introduction :

From time to time, tragic events strike the Muslim world that elicit an immediate reaction from Muslim states. Perhaps the best known and one of the most sustained, if not the most urgent, Muslim calls for help in recent times has arisen from the plight of the Muslim population of Bosnia-Hercegovina. The Bosnian Muslims and their culture have been subject to aggression and atrocities to an extent that has been unknown in Europe since the Second World War; indeed, the extent of this aggression, which has spawned the term ‘ethnic cleansing’, has verged on the genocidal. This has occurred despite the fact that the Muslims are a majority in their country – a republic declared independent of Yugoslavia in early 1992 after a national referendum, and a republic formally recognized by the United Nations.¹

Although genocidal acts of aggression against the Bosnian Muslims received wide coverage throughout the world, the Western powers involved in the Balkans appeared powerless to prevent this aggression; similarly, aid to Bosnia appeared barely sufficient in the circumstances. However, in the Muslim world, sympathy for the Bosnians’ situation was immediate and unfettered; Muslim governments likewise responded with material and diplomatic support. Saudi Arabia has been deeply involved in Muslim aid to Bosnia; this aid has been forthcoming from the Saudi state, from the Saudi people, and personally from members of the Saudi royal family, and has amounted to more than US$100 million.

This chapter will first sketch the history and nature of the European attitudes to Islam that undoubtedly lie behind contemporary Western European states’ attitudes to the prospect of a Muslim Bosnian state today. This background will assist in arriving at an understanding of the moralistic posturing of the Western European powers over Bosnia, despite the fact that decisive protective action has not been forthcoming. This stance has effectively permitted the genocide of a nation and the destruction of a state. The inadequacy and, arguably, the hostility of the European response to the Bosnian crisis is thus outlined.

In contrast to the attitudes and inaction of European states has been the reaction of the Muslim world. Saudi Arabia has figured prominently as a friend of the Bosnian people and state; consequently, this chapter moves on from the general European position on Bosnia to the specific position of Saudi Arabia – an exercise in contrast that highlights the difference in attitudes between a European collectivity that has proved itself hostile to the formation of a new Muslim European state on the one hand and, on the other hand, a Middle Eastern state that looks upon Bosnia as part of the Muslim umma, and therefore deserving of support. This position is consistent both with Saudi Arabia’s status as the host of the holy places of Islam and with its projected role as the protector of Muslim causes worldwide. And thus the extent of Saudi Arabian aid to the republic of Bosnia-Hercegovina, and what this aid means both to Bosnia and to Saudi Arabia, will then be discussed; and, in particular, the following questions will be addressed:

§ What exactly is Saudi Arabia doing for Bosnia?

§ As perhaps the leading and most influential Arab power, is Saudi Arabia doing enough for Bosnia, and could Saudi Arabia be doing more for Bosnians?

In Brief: The Image of Muslims in Europe, and a History of Ethnic CleansingIt should first be noted that European attitudes to Islam have historically not been positive. The social, political and religious structure of Islamic society gave Muslims a high level of geographic and social mobility as well as personal and intellectual liberty; this liberty led to the establishment of a far-reaching Muslim civilization during Europe’s ‘Dark Ages’, and to European fear of that highly refined and comparatively advanced civilization. It was during the European ‘Dark Ages’ that Islam and Muslims began to be demonized in what has become known as ‘the West’.²

It should also be noted that ‘ethnic cleansing’ – although the term itself was first coined with respect to the Balkan conflicts of the 1990s, and most horrifically in relation to the Serb and Croat treatment of Bosnian Muslims – is not a phenomenon of the late twentieth century. In fact, the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in mainland Europe has a long history, and can be traced back to medieval Spain and the Spanish Reconquista, which, during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, saw increased and more systematic killing of Muslims accompanied by a more conscious desire to eliminate Muslims from the peninsula. Attempts to extinguish Islam and Muslim culture became progressively harsher, until the final expulsion of Muslims from Granada in February 1502.³

Put briefly, an anti-Islamic European intellectual heritage informs what has become the general perception of Islam in the West.⁴ Thus, from the time of al-Andalus (Andalusia: Muslim Spain, c.711–1492) to the present, European attitudes toward a Muslim presence in Europe have been unaccommodating. A long history of anti-Islamic fear and loathing has projected itself from the past into the present, and has been given a renewed poignancy and popularity by the Western media, and the case of Bosnia has been no exception. The bogey of Muslim fundamentalism has been raised in Bosnia by a Western world that has not yet come to terms with its own demons, which caused so much death and destruction during the Second World War. The fact that an independent Bosnia would be largely Muslim gave a great psychological advantage to Western power-brokers, and found its place in the public relations campaigns designed to cover inaction while the Bosnian Muslim population was subjected to unprovoked atrocities intended to bring about its capitulation. It is a tragic and lamentable irony that a Western world that had spent so much energy condemning the excesses of Nazi Germany and Stalinism should allow similar excesses, albeit on a smaller scale, to occur in modern Europe.

The Inadequacy of the European Response to Genocide in Bosnia⁵

Although Bosnia has enjoyed relative calm and firm steps toward reconstruction since the signing of the Elysée Treaty on 14 December 1995, the wounds of the recent past will take a long time to heal. An important question remains, however, and it relates to the adequacy of the Western response to the infliction of major humanitarian atrocities against a nation in Europe’s own backyard. The aggression against the Muslims of Bosnia consisted of ‘mass murder, rape, and vandalism …’.⁶ Perhaps the single most shocking transgression against humanity in Europe since the Second World War, and one that underlined the inadequacy of UN and Western European responses to the aggression against Bosnia, was the July 1995 massacre of approximately 7,000–8,000 Bosnians in the UN ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica.

On a par with the Srebrenica atrocity in a collective sense was the brutality of Serb- and Croat-operated concentration camps and rape camps, and the use of rape as a strategy of terror and psychological warfare: by late 1992, European Community authorities had estimated the number of rape victims in Bosnia-Hercegovina to be 20,000. The Sarajevo State Commission for the Investigation of War Crimes put the number at 50,000 as of October 1992. The Bosnian government also estimated that up to 35,000 Bosnian women had been ‘deliberately impregnated … held captive and released only after abortion [became] impossible’, by Serbs as a matter of organized political and military policy.⁷ Slavenka Drakulic⁸ states that: ‘women [were] raped everywhere and at all times, and victims are of all ages, including 4-year-old girls and 80-year-old grandmothers’.

In the case of Bosnia, Western policy appears to have been, and may still prove to be, one based on the proposition that prevention is better than cure – that is, it is better to prevent the establishment of a new Muslim state in Europe rather than to be faced, at some stage in the future, with a potentially recalcitrant Muslim government with an alternative world-view. Richard L. Rubenstein, a professor of religion at Florida State University, states explicitly that:

… both the United States and the European Community have apparently been willing to tolerate radical ethnic cleansing policies of the Bosnian Serbs, not excluding outright genocide, if that is what it takes to prevent the establishment of a Muslim political beachhead in Europe.⁹

And the New York Times columnist, Leslie H. Gelb, has hinted at the nature of Western Balkans policy as it was revealed to him by his establishment contacts – to ‘feed’ the Muslims ‘while prompting them to surrender’:

Let me be chillingly blunt about what Western officials told me regarding the Balkan crisis. They said that nothing they are doing or plan to do is at all likely to compel the Serbs to stop killing Muslims. … Western policy is merely to provide enough humanitarian relief for Bosnian Muslims to quiet Western public opinion.¹⁰

Any Bosnian plea for UN or EC help has, in fact, been fatally misplaced, according to many observers.¹¹ A particularly outrageous position that was taken officially by the UN command in Bosnia – one that was highlighted after the deliberate shelling of a Bosnian schoolroom killed a teacher and three young students in November 1993 – was that the Bosnian army was ‘as likely as the Serbs to fire shells at Bosnian children’.¹² The argument that Bosnian forces might target their own civilians had ‘an appealing ring to Western government ministers always ready for reasons not to get involved in Bosnia: if the Muslims are this conniving, they don’t deserve to be helped’.¹³ This perverted stance began with the May 1992 Sarajevo ‘bread-line massacre’, when the UN commander, Major-General Lewis MacKenzie, accepted Serb allegations that the killing of more than twenty civilians and the maiming of another hundred at a Sarajevo market was not the result of two well-aimed Serb mortar shells, but of a bomb planted by the Bosnians themselves:

There is strong but circumstantial evidence … that some really horrifying acts of cruelty attributed to the Serbs were actually orchestrated by the Muslims against their own people, for the benefit of an international audience.¹⁴

The myth that Muslims killed their own civilians for public relations effect soon became widespread, and began to take on the aura of fact – and every military attack against civilians was consequently reported with reserve in the Western media. For example, when three people were killed in the centre of Sarajevo in April 1995, responsibility for the atrocity was qualified by stating that ‘suspected Serbian mortar shells’ were the cause of death – that mortar fire was responsible there was no doubt, but the identity of those who fired the rounds was, apparently, in doubt.¹⁵ Indeed, this myth made the transition to accepted truth a number of times in respected mainstream publications; for example, in a Time magazine report on the February 1993 World Trade Center bombing – even before the cause of the explosion was officially announced to be a bomb – a sub-article assessing likely culprits stated, under the sub-heading ‘The Balkans factions’, that ‘The Bosnian Muslims too have reason to play a part in the Balkan blame game. They have been known to bomb their own people in Bosnia, hoping the Serbs and Croats would be held responsible and Western allies would intervene on their side’.¹⁶

MacKenzie’s acceptance of the Serb position amounts to a situation of collusion with war criminals on the part of the UN commander, which should not be surprising, since it had become ‘evident that a genuine partnership … developed between the nations of Western Europe and the Bosnian Serbs’.¹⁷ It should be noted that later UN commanders, such as General Sir Michael Rose, followed MacKenzie’s lead in providing excuses for Serb transgressions.¹⁸ The justification for this position was alleged to be the UN’s ‘neutrality’ – a ‘diplomatic deodorant’ according to one commentator.¹⁹ In the words of another analyst, the UN had ‘elevated “impartiality” to the status of a principle, when in reality it was the disguise for a lack of principle’.²⁰ At least one UN liaison officer in Sarajevo resigned in protest over what he saw as his superiors’ appeasement of the Serbs.²¹ This appeasement was a practice that was carried on after ‘peacekeeping’ forces were transferred from UN to NATO control, and was still in evidence after the Elysée Treaty, even when it was clear that Serb aggression was responsible for the death of innocent civilians.²² NATO also issued a statement in January 1996 to the effect that the Western military alliance would not provide security for teams investigating war crimes and inspecting massacre sites and mass graves in Bosnia.²³

United Nations personnel in Bosnia during the worst years of genocide were, of course, drawn from Western countries.²⁴ Rubenstein has written:

UN officials in Bosnia were not independent agents. Although they served under the United Nations flag, they nevertheless carried out the policies of their respective governments or they would not have been there …

The European powers that have dispatched troops to serve with the UN ‘peacekeeping’ forces in Bosnia may adopt a posture of neutrality, but their actions have consistently fostered the dismemberment of Bosnia-Hercegovina as a viable political entity.²⁵

Consistent inaction and even cover-ups support a cynical interpretation of Western policy in Bosnia. For example: when Serb forces fired missiles at UN ‘peacekeepers’ in 1994, killing a Bangladeshi UN soldier, a request by the Bangladeshis for NATO air support was denied by UN officials in Sarajevo;²⁶ UN knowledge of Serb atrocities committed against the civilian population of Bosnia at the beginning of the war was effectively concealed for three months in 1992;²⁷ and, possibly most damning of all, a BBC television journalist claimed that UN officials destroyed documentary film depicting UN ‘peacekeepers’ standing by as Serbs organized the massacre of men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995.²⁸ These and other transgressions, such as the Serb assault against another UN ‘safe haven’ – that in Gorazde, in April 1994 – occurred in the full light of day, while the lack of Western resolve to take firm action to prevent such atrocities was cravenly presented as ‘helplessness’ on the part of ‘the international community’.²⁹ Atrocities such as the Merkale marketplace massacre of 5 February 1994 were also presented on Western television reports with ‘the colouring of a natural disaster’.³⁰

The former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, however, advocated early in the war the opposite Western reaction to the policy of appeasement. But her reasoning for military intervention on the Bosnians’ behalf reflected not a concern for humanitarianism and justice, but clichéd stereotypes of fanatical Muslim terrorists. Thatcher declared:

…keeping the Muslims in a united Bosnia would discourage their radicalization, which would be inevitable if the Muslims were to be dispersed under alien rule. A desperate Muslim diaspora… could then turn to terrorism. Europe would have created an Islamic time bomb.³¹

Moreover, though the Western world has been reluctant to defend Bosnia from aggression while at the same time effectively denying Bosnia the right to defend itself through a Balkans-wide arms embargo, concern has been expressed over military aid given to the Bosnian army by other Muslim countries. A number of Bosnian army training camps have been described as ‘terrorist depots’,³² and a greater commitment to Islam in the Bosnian army has been regarded with suspicion and concern.³³ With such reports, the clichés of Muslim terrorism running rampant in Europe have been elevated to an officially acknowledged fear. Needless to say, Muslims throughout the Islamic world feel differently.

Saudi Arabia

The general approach of Western security organizations to conflict in the Balkans has recently been illustrated in a cartoon in the Riyadh Daily³⁴ with respect to the latest conflict in Kosovo, which, despite Western European assurances to the contrary, has followed a similar pattern to Bosnia. That is, rhetoric declaring a firm stand against Serbian aggression has not been backed up with action, and, while lofty statements of moral resolve are issued in quick succession from Western capitals, Serbian military forces pursue unhindered their suppression and persecution of the Muslims of Kosovo. The cartoon, which shows NATO as a turtle slowly lumbering toward a burning Kosovo, reflects the general Muslim feeling of frustration over the policies of the Western European powers in the Balkans. At the height of the Bosnian crisis, after the massacres in Srebrenica, calls for more direct action in Bosnia could be heard throughout the Muslim world.

In Saudi Arabia specifically, the Mufti, Sheikh ‘Abd al-‘Aziz bin Baz, called on ‘all Muslims to join Bosnian ranks and support them with arms, money and prayers’.³⁵ The Mufti’s call followed King Fahd’s petition to Britain, France, Russia, the United States and China in their capacity as the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, to ‘end the deteriorating situation’ in Bosnia.³⁶ However, the European powers in particular, for reasons already outlined in this chapter, chose to disregard such appeals: the affairs of Europe should remain in European hands, despite the fact that little was being done to avert genocide. Turkey, staunchly pro-European and a member of NATO, offered planes and aid as a contribution to a US humanitarian air-drop operation relatively early in the war: the offer was refused,³⁷ despite the fact that the European countries who had been asked to participate had actually already declined. Quite simply, the role that Muslim countries could play to prevent the genocide of a unique, European Muslim entity was limited by the politics of Europe and the policies of the European states, NATO and the UN.³⁸

Political, financial and non-sensitive humanitarian aid were the only options available to Muslim states wishing to alleviate the unfolding catastrophe in Bosnia.³⁹ Working within this reality, the Saudi High Commission for the Relief of Bosnia-Hercegovina was founded by Royal Order in 1992. The Commission is headed by the Governor of Riyadh Province, Prince Salman bin ‘Abd al-‘Aziz. The objectives of the Commission have been stated as follows:⁴⁰

§ to realize the principles of equality and co-operation among Muslims;

§ to provide help and support to those in need in Bosnia-Hercegovina; and to rebuild families that were divided and/or expelled from their homes as a result of the war.

To realize these goals, the Commission, which began operations in 1993, established a headquarters in Riyadh, with branch offices in Sarajevo, Mostar, Tuzla, Bihac, Zenica, Split, Zagreb and Vienna.⁴¹ The main regional office is the one in Sarajevo, where the Commission occupies an entire floor of a large building close to the centre of the city. The Commission works independently of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), but has co-operated with Bosnian Islamic organizations. The Commission is particularly known for its involvement in religious education programmes and, in Sarajevo, for its financial aid during the winter of 1994–5 and for its support for orphans; in other regions of Bosnia the Commission has concentrated on providing material aid (BiH Ministry of Foreign Trade & Economic Relations, pers. comm., 18 June 1998).

The Commission has publicized the Bosnian cause and has been involved in extensive fund-raising campaigns in Saudi Arabia. As of March 1998, the Commission had raised approximately US$40.6 million. King Fahd’s personal donations to the Bosnian cause are reported to total US$13 million.⁴² Total relief supplies provided to Bosnia-Hercegovina stood at 102,000 tons as of March 1998.⁴³ The following supplies and services, listed under broad categories along with the approximate total cost in US dollars, have been provided to Bosnia.⁴⁴

Social/general (US$12.95 million):

§ family sponsorship

§ the operation of 18 refugee camps

§ sponsorship of orphans

§ educational support

§ Arabic-language scholarships (in Jordan)

§ glass for school windows

Construction/reconstruction projects (US$19.3 million):

§ restoration of 115 mosques

§ construction of a new central mosque in Tuzla

§ furnishing of 330 mosques

§ construction of an Islamic school in Mostar

§ construction of an Islamic college in Bihac

§ construction of a Saudi cultural centre in Mostar

§ restoration of schools

§ construction of a mosque and Islamic centre in Sarajevo

§ reconstruction of 600 houses for Muslims in Brcko

§ construction of 159km of railway from the Croatian port of Ploce to Sarajevo

Health (US$2 million):

§ support for health services

Food (no accurate costing):

§ 58,000 tons of various foodstuffs

§ 1 million litres of milk (donated by the Saudi al-Safi company)

§ vegetable seeds (US$430,000)

Heating (US$3.8 million):

§ the supply of wood, coal, oil and diesel fuels

Power (US$243,000):

§ installing gas and electricity services in Sarajevo

Refugee repatriation (US$675,000):

§ the repatriation of more than 8,500 Bosnians

Drinking water (no accurate costing):

§ the supply of 800 litres of petrol per day for water-pump generators