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Facebook page urging Bosniaks to join an ‘Army of Sandzak’ to defend local Muslims.

The recent appearance of Facebook pages urging Bosniaks in the south-western Sandzak region to join a Mujahideen ‘army’ to defend Muslims against an alleged threat of violence from Serb nationalists have caused alarm and threatened the ethnic stability of the region, analysts have warned.

“Bosniak brothers, an army to protect the safety of Bosniaks and of the Sandzak territory must urgently be formed, the Chetniks [Serb nationalists] are preparing to attack [the region’s main town] Novi Pazar and are publicly urging this!” the administrator and founder of one of the Facebook pages declared earlier this month.

“We call on all people and groups to arm themselves as much as they can,” he added.

Both the administrators of one of the pages had pictures of armed Mujahideen fighters as their cover photos on their Facebook profiles. One of them also added a jihadist caption under their photo: “To die with a pure heart, without a single sin. This is the wish of a mujahid, a soldier of Allah.”

The pages are believed to have been set up after a Serb nationalist posted a comment on Facebook saying that Chetnik fighters were on their way to Novi Pazar.

But the nationalist comment was itself a reaction to a recent parade in Novi Pazar by young men wearing green uniforms, backed by the Islamic Community in Serbia, one of the two major organisations representing Muslims in the country, marking the 70th anniversary of what they allege were the deaths of over 2,000 Bosniaks during World War II.

The marchers were wearing uniforms resembling the ones worn by Acif-efendija, the wartime mayor of Novi Pazar, a collaborator with the occupying Nazi forces. Official Serbian history insists that the Bosniaks were shot dead because they collaborated with the occupying forces, but the Islamic Community in Serbia describes the killings as genocide.

After the dispute erupted, Serbian Deputy Prime Minister Rasim Ljajic expressed concerns that the region could return to a dark period in its recent history – even though the calls to start an Islamic army were never likely to be heeded.

“Marching in green uniforms, various extremist and nationalist statements, repeated talk about Sandzak’s autonomy and everything else that was seen and heard in the past 20 days takes us back to the 1990s and causes great damage,” Ljajic told a party meeting in Novi Pazar.

“I see that some people are asking for a Sandzak army on Facebook, imagine those lunatics, imagine the kind of damage these children are causing to this whole region. The whole of Serbia is now buzzing about something that does not exist and never will. What army? Who wants more clashes, wars and divisions?” he asked.

The ‘Army of Sandzak’ page was not online for long, after activists from the Serbian branch of hacker group Anonymous intervened and the Facebook profiles of its administrators, ‘Dz.A.’ and ‘S.H.’, were deleted.

“Members of Anonymous located some fundamentalist pages on the popular social network and then asked the Facebook administrator to remove them because of the dissemination of hatred, which is exactly what they did,” said Serbian daily newspaper Danas.

Branko Stamenkovic, a Serbian prosecutor for high technology crime, last week ordered the Interior Ministry to collect information about the ‘Army of Sandzak’, but it remains unclear whether the police have managed to trace the creators of the Facebook page.

Sandzak lies on Serbia’s borders with Bosnia, Montenegro and Kosovo, and is mostly populated by Serbs and Bosniaks, while the municipalities of Novi Pazar, Sjenica and Tutin are Bosniak-dominated.

There were inter-ethnic tensions in the region during the Bosnian war but these have subsided in subsequent years, although analysts have warned that recent events could reignite them.

“Of course things like this should be taken seriously because, unfortunately, what is happening here in Sandzak is a specially orchestrated campaign to influence young people,” Sead Biberovic, of the NGO Urban-In, told BIRN.

Darko Trifunovic of the Faculty of Security Studies said he thought that the situation was getting out of control because children in Sandzak were being subjected to religious indoctrination and Islamic radicalisation.

“We should bear in mind here that these pages and fundamentalist views are addressed to Muslims themselves, not to other Serbian citizens. The extremists want to indoctrinate children in Islamic religion from their earliest childhood,” said Trifunovic.

“Most Muslims in Sandzak are afraid of them, especially in light of the fact that there has been no reaction from Serbian state institutions,” he added.

The mayor of Novi Pazar, Meho Mahmutovic, argued however that extremists would never succeed in gaining influence in the town.

“Pazar really doesn’t need this and everyone knows that it’ll never happen. Those who want to create a bad impression of the town, who want to radicalise it, will not succeed,” Mahmutovic told BIRN.

He also urged the state authorities to take action to root out the extremists.

“Finding the creators of these pages is easy nowadays, cyber-crime departments should deal with this,” he said.

Biberovic meanwhile blamed Sandzak mufti Muamer Zukorlic, of the Islamic Community in Serbia, accusing him of manipulating religious and ethnic feelings.

Zukorlic however insisted that the media was just spreading panic and lies, and that the uniformed parade was a “cultural and commemorative manifestation” which had been held in previous years but had never before attracted such criticism.

“It is a fact that this is being used as an attack against me,” the mufti told Serbian media.

Resad Plojovic, the deputy head of the Meshihatof the Islamic Community in Serbia, meanwhile denied any involvement in the call for an ‘Army of Sandzak’.

“As to who is behind this call, that is something that the competent state bodies, whose competence we have no reason to doubt, should give an answer to,” Plojovic told BIRN.

He argued that the Facebook pages were set up in a bid to denigrate Muslims.

“We suspect that those behind these calls and abuse are the ones who have lately been trying to put forward as many heinous lies about the Islamic community and its leadership as possible in the Serbian media,” he said.

The leader of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action of Sandzak, Sulejman Ugljanin, who recently relaunched an initiative for more autonomy for the region, also believes that the Facebook pages were a staged provocation.

“Those who want use armed repression and terror against the Bosniaks write such things in order to do evil things,” said Ugljanin.

“Bosniaks live in fear because the state has done noting to protect their rights,” he added, listing a series of grievances dating back to the 1945 killings.

But political scientist Andrijana Maksimovic said that when young men from the religious school run by the Islamic Community in Serbia paraded through Novi Pazar in uniforms, it helped to create unease and possibly foster prejudice among their Serb peers.

“If you teach children at that age to think in a particular way, to not be aware of the other, of what is different, how can one expect peace and solidarity?” she asked.

Maksimovic said that the authorities couldn’t ban the uniformed march because it would be seen as an attack on civil rights, but they should have made a statement against extremism.

“Freedom of assembly is a prerequisite to the existence of a modern democratic society. This is why state bodies could not interrupt a gathering of people in uniforms, which triggered a whole series of negative events, but they should have immediately taken a stand on an event that can potentially trigger conflicts,” she explained.

She warned that if extremism was allowed to thrive, the number of people putting on uniforms – both Bosniaks and Serbs – could only increase.