Republican Task Force Faces Backlash on Bosnia Report

By Greg Noakes

A report published last September by the Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, part of the taxpayer-funded House Republican Research Committee, has ignited a storm of controversy over the actions and scholarship of its authors, protests from Muslims, and the resignations of four of the task force's congressional members. The report, written by Task Force Chief of Staff Vaughn S. Forrest and Director Yossef Bodansky, was entitled "Iran's European Springboard?"

Among its controversial conclusions are charges that: Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic and his government are bent on creating an Islamic republic in the Balkans as part of an international Islamist conspiracy; Bosnian Muslim forces are killing their own people and foreigners in an attempt to provoke international intervention or provide an excuse for Muslim atrocities against Serbs; Iran is infiltrating Islamist terrorists into Bosnia to prepare for a general Muslim uprising in Western Europe; and this Islamic revolution will be the result of Muslims' innate hatred and distrust of the West and Islam's inherent incompatibility with liberal society.

Although the document contains numerous quotes, none are footnoted and many are not even attributed. Most of the allegations leveled against Bosnia, Iran and various Muslim populations are derived from a very limited range of material, while support for the report's highly unorthodox reading of the shariah, or Islamic law, is based on a selective interpretation of the Qur'an and non-Islamic cultural practices within Muslim societies. The document's use of terminology is often inflammatory. The word "terrorist" appears 27 times in the 14-page report. Finally, Forrest and Bodansky released the report without consulting with the group's congressional members and have allegedly refused to release their documentation and sources to task force members and their staffs.

Equally controversial are the report's findings themselves. According to Forrest and Bodansky, "At the center of the Iranian system in Europe is Bosnia-Herzegovina's President, Alija Izetbegovic, 'a fundamentalist Muslim and a member of the Fida'iyan-e Islam organization,' who is committed to the establishment of an Islamic Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina."

One of the strategies pursued by Izetbegovic's government, according to the report, is the intentional massacre of Bosnian Muslim civilians by "a special group of Bosnian Muslim forces, many of whom had served with Islamist terrorist organizations," in order "to win world sympathy and military intervention." The report alleges that Muslims were behind the shelling of British Foreign Minister Douglas Hurd's entourage last July and the killing of ABC television producer David Kaplan in August, citing "investigations by the U.N. and other military experts."

The document's terminology is often inflammatory.

With the West still paralyzed by indecision, Sarajevo allegedly turned to Iran for help. According to the report, hundreds of Islamist volunteers "arrived in Bosnia-Herzegovina in answer to Tehran's call to fight the Jihad. " These "highly trained and combat-proven volunteers" came from Iran, Afghanistan, Lebanon and a number of other Arab countries.

The task force argues that "the great threat caused by the continued carnage in Bosnia-Herzegovina comes from the foreign volunteers and the numerous local Muslims trained in the Middle East who are capable of carrying their avenging Jihad into the heart of Western Europe.

"Thus, there is in the making a formidable threat because, by a cautious estimate in mid-1991, about 3 to 6 percent of the over 8 million Muslim emigres in Western Europe were already actively involved in Islamist activities," which Forrest later defined as "support for conspiratorial actions and Islamist terrorism." The report argues that "The current crisis in former Yugoslavia may well become the catalyst that will push the Muslim communities of Western Europe into waging a terrorist campaign as an avenging Jihad." Such a campaign would be fueled by the inherent inability of Muslim communities to adapt to a European environment and the incompatibility of Islamic legal and cultural norms with Western liberal society, the report says.

A Heated Response

"Iran's European Springboard?" and its controversial findings have produced a heated response. In an Oct. 19 letter to the task force's congressional members, Executive Director Abdurahman Alamoudi wrote, "We at the American Muslim Council are horrified by your task force's unwarranted vilification of Muslims . . . We thought we knew the tenets of our faith until we read your report." Calling the report "a glaring example of Muslim-bashing," Alamoudi said it was "reminiscent of 'Yellow Peril' and McCarthyism." In a Jan. 25 reply to Vaughn Forrest's response, the AMC director wrote, "Your letter and report relegate us to either bitter isolationism or brewing terrorism. Please try to consider us as full-fledged citizens and partners in this country and the world over."

Dr. Nedzib Sacirbey, Alija Izetbegovic's personal representative in Washington, was unequivocal in his denunciation of the task force report. "It is garbage. It is dirty lies," he told the Washington Report. "It is based on fiction, not on fact. " When asked about the report's impact on U.S. policy toward Bosnia, Sacirbey said he believed it was minimal. "I don't believe any congressman with a sound mind will consider this report worthy. Any honest and knowledgeable congressman will immediately separate himself from this report," he said.

Four congressional members of the task force have done exactly that since last September, resigning from the organization as a result of Forrest and Bodansky's report. The first was task force co-chair Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), who wrote Alamoudi that "the report emphasizes concerns which are exactly opposite of those I believe to be relevant." Peter Behrends, Rohrabacher's legislative assistant for foreign affairs, said, "It was the scholarship of the piece that was the problem. It just wasn't credible scholarship . . . We asked and we were never shown any documentation." Behrends said that he and Rohrabacher "consider [Forrest] to be a friend," but added, "It's hard to agree with somebody all the time, and people just couldn't be associated with that kind of analysis. "

Representatives James Sensenbrenner, Jr. (R-WI), Olympia Snowe (R-WA) and Christopher Cox (R-CA) later resigned from the task force, citing the report's poor scholarship and the staff's lack of coordination and consultation with the congressional membership. "The difficulty in associating one's name with a task force of this type is that the staff members can and do direct the work product and the result," Cox told the Washington Report. ''This is an example of a staff-driven organization.'' Cox said that the congressional members were presented with the finished report ''not only not having read it, but not even knowing it was coming out . . . We were all in the dark about this. "

As for the organization itself, Cox said, "The purpose of these Republican task forces is to attempt some measure of influence in an environment of Democrat controlled [congressional] committees. Ironically, this wasn't an effort by Republican congressmen to influence their Democratic colleagues but an effort by task force staff to influence Republican congressmen. "

Forrest, Bodansky and task force public affairs officer Scott Brenner, all of whom are on the paid staff of task force chairman Bill McCollum (R-FL), refused to discuss their findings and activities with the Washington Report. "The task force is getting way too much publicity," Brenner said, adding that the report was "blown way out of proportion.''

In earlier remarks to the Washington Jewish Week, however, Forrest and Bodansky defended "Iran's European Springboard?'' and its level of scholarship. "There's a page of footnotes for every page of text,'' Forrest said, claiming that documentation was not provided with the report for security and cost considerations. He added that complete footnotes were given to congressional members upon request, but staff members working for Rohrabacher and Snowe said such requests were in fact denied.

As for the American Muslim Council's objections to the report's portrayal of Islam and Muslims, Forrest told the Washington Jewish Week, "I've written nine or 10 letters to these people, and they say I don't understand the Koran. Match their actions with these words: they're killing us.'' The Israeli-born Bodansky said, ''I stand behind the accuracy of the report—each and every iota of it.''

The controversy swirling around the report seems to have made little impact on its co-authors. Bodansky, in fact, recently published a book with the sensationalist title, Target America: Terrorism in the USA Today. The task force, its congressional membership cut to eight because of resignations, retirements and one reelection defeat, released a 93-page report in February entitled ''The New Islamist International." The report, written by Forrest and Bodansky, reiterates the allegation that Bosnian Muslim troops are slaughtering their own people ''as a propaganda ploy.'' It also claims that "Tehran sees the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina as part of the contest between the New World Order and the Muslims' Destiny,'' and that lslamists will now embark on the quest for revenge against the West, that had failed them so much through terrorism in the name of Allah.''