Farah on the Balkan connection

US Journalist Doug Farah has this to say on the Balkan connection to the London bombings:

While Western forces continue to scale back their activities in the Balkans and slash their intelligence-gathering capabilities there in the mistaken belief that things are returning to normal, radical Islamists are steadily preparing for renewed activity and are already engaged in acts of violence. The gun that killed Dutch film maker Theo Van Gough came from the Bosnia. The huge, unsecured stockpiles of weapons and explosives make obtaining these items easy. And there are still militant Islamists in positions of power. The foremost is Hasan Cengic, now in the Bosnia parliament, was a former deputy defense minister in charge of arming Bosnian Muslims during the Bosnian war. He set up, with the help of a very reluctant U.S. intelligence community, a weapons pipeline that ran primarily through Iran. He was also a director of the Third World Relief Agency, (TWRA), the fake Islamic charity that funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to radical Islamists during that conflict. Much of the money remains unaccounted for. TWRA officially went out of business in 1996, but more than $300 million in assets were not accounted for. It is interesting to note that Viktor Bout, happily flying for the U.S. military and KBR in Iraq and Afghanistan, dealt with Cengic often and provided him with at least one aircraft during the Bosnia war. (Counterterrorism Blog)