How Holbrooke Invited Iran Into Europe

US Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke is supposed to have had a brief, but “cordial” encounter with Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mahdi Akhunzadeh at the Afghanistan conference in The Hague last week. At least this is what Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said. The two men agreed to “stay in touch,” Clinton added. The Iranians see things differently, saying that no meeting occurred. But in a conversation with the New York Times, Holbrooke confirmed that he had had a “two-minute chat” with Akhunzadeh: supposedly “about Persian architecture.”

In any case, if the Iranians could be expected to have “cordial” interactions with any American official, it would surely be Richard Holbrooke. After all, they have already had what was undoubtedly for them a positive experience cooperating with Holbrook and an administration he represents in a crisis region – although perhaps the word “collusion” would be more fitting than “cooperation.” That was in Bosnia in the 1990s, during the Bosnian civil war. Today, Holbrooke and the Obama administration are eager to obtain Iran’s help for “reconstruction” and “development” efforts in Afghanistan. Back then, however, the objective was not reconstruction, but rather arms smuggling – and in brazen violation of a UN arms embargo no less. With the “green light” of the Clinton administration, an estimated fourteen thousand tons of Iranian weaponry were shipped via Croatia to the Bosnian Muslim government of President Alija Izetbegovic. The figure comes from Navy War College Professor John R. Schindler’s 2007 book Unholy Terror: Bosnia, Al-Qa’ida and the Rise of Global Jihad.

The Islamist connections of the Izetbegovic government was one of the great overlooked – or deliberately ignored – stories of the Bosnian War. Studies like that of Schindler are only now filling this lacuna. Although Bosnia also received crucial support from Saudi Arabia, on Schindler’s account, Izetbegovic and the cadres of his Party of Democratic Action (SDA) felt special affinities for the Islamic Revolution of Iran. “Izetbegovic’s inner circle made few efforts to seriously hide its pro-Tehran views,” Schindler writes (p. 141),

…and SDA leaders made public pronouncements about the glories of the Islamic Republic. One of the most notorious incidents came in early June 1993 when SDA representatives gathered at the Zagreb mosque, which was closely linked to Izetbegovic, for a fête to honor the Ayatollah Khomeini. The mosque was adorned with numerous posters of the late Iranian leader, including an oversized one with his saying, “Who is with almighty Allah has no fear of anyone but Allah.” …Salim Sabic, SDA vice president and Izetbegovic’s personal representative at the event, stated, “Bosnian Muslims are the best example of the imam’s prophetic words, that if they are not united, Muslims worldwide will be suffering under American and Zionist regimes.”

In his pompous and self-aggrandizing account of the Bosnia conflict To End a War, Holbrooke attempts to deflect criticism of the Clinton administration’s approval of the illegal Iranian arms shipments by pointing out that the shipments had already begun in 1992, when George H.W. Bush was still in office. This is true as far as it goes. But Schindler notes that the Bush I administration had in fact given a “red light” to Zagreb, in order to try to prevent Tehran from gaining influence in the region (p. 181). Moreover, despite generous kickbacks and a “transit tax” that permitted them to retain a significant chunk of the weaponry, the Croats would soon themselves cool on the arrangement. It was not only the Bosnian Serbs, after all, that were at war with the Bosnian government forces of Izetbegovic: the Bosnian Croats were too.

A cessation of the Croat-Muslim hostilities was thus a precondition for getting the Iranian arms flowing again. On 18 March 1994, representatives of the Bosnian Croats and the Izetbegovic government signed the so-called Washington Agreement bringing the Croat-Muslim war to an end. The agreement is commonly regarded as a masterstroke of the Clinton administration (although Germany in fact had much to do with its coming into being). Just one month later – “before the ink on the Washington Agreement was dry,” as Schindler puts it (p. 181) – the Clinton administration would give its “green light” to Croatia to permit the Iranian arms shipments to resume.

As Holbrooke also points out, the “green light” for the Iranian arms shipments was given while he was still the American ambassador to Germany. He would first become the official point man for American Bosnia policy five months later, after moving to the European desk in the State Department. But not only would the covert shipments continue during his tenure in the latter capacity, they were, in effect, the outcome of a policy that he had himself recommended to key Clinton advisors already in early January 1993 – before Clinton had even been sworn in! In To End a War, Holbrooke proudly cites a 13 January 1993 memorandum on Bosnia that he sent to incoming National Security Advisor Anthony Lake and incoming Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Displaying a kind of breezy contempt for international law, the memorandum is a masterpiece of equivocation. On the one hand, Holbrooke recommends that the Clinton administration “use” the Bosnia crisis “as an opportunity to strengthen the U.N. system” (p. 51). On the other hand, his chief practical recommendation is precisely to “allow covert arms supplies to the Bosnian Muslims”: a policy that he gingerly allows “does… carry the serious drawback of showing the United States evading a Security Council resolution” (p. 52).

Oddly enough, Holbrooke suggests that the policy of “allowing” covert arms shipments would somehow diminish the Bosnian government’s reliance upon support from Muslim nations. There is in fact evidence that other countries also made covert arms shipments to the Bosnian government. Schindler points, in particular, to German shipments disguised as humanitarian assistance (p. 178). There were also “black flights” directly into Bosnia, the origins of which remain unclarified. But the principal known partner of the Clinton administration’s efforts to get arms to the Bosnian government in defiance of the UN was none other than Iran.

As is generally acknowledged today by security experts, but little discussed in the major media, Iranian and Saudi support for the Bosnian cause would turn Bosnia into a European beachhead of international Jihadism. Thousands of foreign mujahedeen flocked to Bosnia to join the Bosnian “jihad.” Many of the latter would obtain Bosnian passports and remain in the country after the war. Several of the foreign veterans of the Bosnia War would be directly connected to the 9/11 attacks: including hijackers Khalid al-Mihdar and Nawaf al-Hazmi and the reputed “mastermind” of the attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed. In addition to his “work” on the 9/11 plot, Mohammed has also admitted to personally decapitating the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in Pakistan in 2002.

Given the remarkable forbearance that he and the Clinton administration showed to Iran in Bosnia, the chances are good that Richard Holbrooke will be able to find common ground with Iran also in his current capacity as the Obama administration’s “Af-Pak” envoy. It can well be doubted, however, whether America can afford another success in Afghanistan and Pakistan like the “success” once obtained by Richard Holbrooke in Bosnia.