http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6209222.stm
Bosnia anti-terror team flexes muscles We are driven up a winding track to a secret location south of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. We stop at a clearing halfway up a hillside where a team of four armed policemen, dressed in black and wearing masks, emerge from the trees. They drop a smoke bomb and then break down the door to a derelict farm building. They drag a man outside and into a van. It drives off at speed, with the siren blaring. The exercise, completed in seconds, is a practical demonstration of the work of the Alpha unit. Trained by US SWAT (special weapons and tactics) teams, Alpha is a rapid reaction anti-terrorist unit. It was established a year ago and has so far arrested 32 people. The reason behind its foundation is the fear that the Bosnian state is too weak to deal with the threat posed by national and international terrorism. Vulnerable This has been highlighted during the first terrorism trial on Bosnian soil. A Swedish and Turkish national are accused of travelling to Sarajevo to blow up military targets in the country and possibly elsewhere in Europe in protest at events in Iraq and Afghanistan. The men are alleged to have acquired their weapons within days of arriving in the country. Some of them may have been stockpiled since the end of the Bosnian war over a decade ago. In fact many of Bosnia's vulnerabilities derive from that conflict. The country, which is divided along ethnic lines, has 16 different police forces with no single body to oversee them. To illustrate the problems this can cause, we were taken out on night patrol with Dragan Miokovic from the Sarajevo police. He showed us how a criminal can evade capture simply by crossing from the part of the city he polices to the side policed by the Serb forces of Republika Srpska. "It's very frustrating for all police officers," he said. The European Union, which still has 7,000 soldiers based in Bosnia, is pushing hard to reform policing and put the country on a firmer security footing. The head of the EU police mission, Brig Gen Vincenzo Coppolo, is confident about Bosnia's long-term stability, but on the terror threat he concedes: "We know that there is a problem". "It is difficult to assess how big this problem is in Bosnia, or if this problem is bigger in Bosnia than in other countries. The whole region is permeable to this kind of phenomenon." 'Witch-hunt' There is concern, too, about the presence in Bosnia of hundreds of Arabs who came to fight the Serbs during the war. Many stayed, settled and were granted citizenship. The US has put pressure on the Bosnian government to expel the men and there have been accusations that the communities could be a potential source of support for terrorism. We met Abu Hamza, a Syrian who fought in the war, who strongly denied the accusations. "When we came to Bosnia we came to help our brothers here, the Muslims here," he said. "And if anyone has any proof that we are a danger give me that proof that I am a danger." He believed he was the victim of an American-led witch-hunt. Back in the mountains, Alpha unit demonstrate a trap they laid recently to capture a suspect. A car is pulled over at a traffic checkpoint. The driver is asked to open the boot. Then armed officers burst out of the back of a white van, handcuff him, drag him into the van and speed off. It is an impressive demonstration of Bosnia's determination to meet the new security threats it faces. But its ability to deal with them will be partly defined by its past. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? 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