Balkan jihad

Interview | A new book shows that U.S. political and media leaders during the 1990s oversimplified a complex situation in Bosnia and ended up aiding and abetting Muslim extremists | Marvin Olasky

Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa'ida, and the Rise of Global Jihad (MBI Publishing, 2007) reappraises the 1992-1995 Bosnian war and the U.S. decision to come to the defense of Muslims in their conflict with Serbs.

Author John Schindler, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College and a former National Security Agency analyst, writes that most of his NSA work "was focused on the Balkans. What I learned there was far different from what I had learned inside the academy and from following the news. . . . I spent a lot of time in the Balkans and I participated in the culture, spoke the language and met many people. What I learned was that pretty much everything I thought I knew was either wrong or an even more dangerous half-truth."