Bosnia tackles “foreign fighters”

Bosnia tackles “foreign fighters”

Bosnia's government says those involved came from Turkey, Egypt, Syria, Algeria, Tunisia, Sudan and Russia.

Hundreds of foreign volunteers came to Bosnia during the war of the early 1990s to assist government forces.

Many of these were Muslims who had fought in Afghanistan and saw the war in Bosnia as an attack on Islam that carried the tacit approval of the international community.

When the fighting ended, many stayed, married Bosnian women and settled down, often following a more devout form of Islam than was traditional in the Balkans.

This form of Islam has since spread, and with it tensions with both local Muslim communities and non-Muslims.

Other countries, notably the U.S., have also warned that this group could provide fertile ground for Islamic terrorism.

The response of the Bosnian government has been to examine how the fighters came to be granted Bosnian citizenship after the war ended in 1995.

The justice minister, Bariša Čolak, announced that citizenship was now being withdrawn in 367 cases where it had been illegally awarded.

In response, a former commander in the Bosnian army, Serif Patković, said the decision was political and would split men from wives and children.