Today I want to do something which I have not done in a long while: interview somebody by email and give that person the space to fully answer. For those interested, in the past I did that with Mizgin (Kurdistan), Roger Tucker (One Democratic State), Taimur (Indian Kashmir), Gilad Atzmon (Palestine), Joel Bainerman (Israel), Uri Avnery (Israel), Jonathan Cook (Palestine), Joel S. Hirschhorn (USA), Anticapitalista (Greece) and Scott Horton (USA). I think that I like this format and I will come back to it again.
[BTW – my dream would be to make such an “email interview” with a Hezbollah official or party member but, alas, all my attempts to obtain such an interview have, so far, failed. If anybody could help me get such an interview I would be eternally thankful to him/her!!]
Just a few days after seeing him interviewed by Peter Lavelle on RT about Crimea, I got an email from Nebojsa Malic who blogs at Gray Falcon and who is currently President of the R. Archibald Reiss Institute for Serbian Studies in Washington, DC. I immediately seized the opportunity to ask him a question which had been nagging at me for many years already.
I understand that the topic of war in Bosnia might reopen old wounds for some readers and I also understand that some might categorically disagree with Nebojsa Malic’s point of view. To those readers I would say two things: the war in Bosnia left everybody wounded, not just one group. As for what lessons can be learned from this war, they might be painful, but they are also important because of the undeniable fact that what happened in Bosnia was the blueprint which was subsequently applied to Kosovo, Chechnia, Libya, Syria and the Ukraine.
I would very much welcome another point of view on this topic, especially one from a supporter of Alija Izetbegovic. If somebody is willing to share such a point of view here, I would be delighted to publish it.
Finally, and especially because this is a painful topic, I will be far stricter than usual in my comments moderation policy. While everybody will be free to express disagreements or criticisms, any comment which will be rude or include any ad hominems will be deleted. Likewise, I will tolerate no insults towards any of the Bosnian ethnic and religious groups involved in this war. We all probably think that this or that party was in the right, and that’s fine, but at the end all parties are first and foremost victims of this war. Thus they ideally all deserve respect and, if that is impossible, then at least basic courtesy. This restriction does not apply to any of the external parties to this conflict whom you may insult to your heart’s content (if you feel that this adds something useful to the conversation).
A big “thank you!” to Nebojsa Malic for his time and very interesting answer.
The Saker
——-
Question from The Saker:
Ever since the war in Bosnia began, I have been convinced that the Bosnian-Muslims have been conned by the USA into the wrong alliance and that they would have been infinitely better off if they had sided with the Serbs against the Croats. Do you agree with that? If not – why not? As far as I know, Radovan Karadzic made several offers to make a deal, but they were all rejected. Is that true? Can you be specific and outline what the Bosnian-Serbs offered as a basis for negotiations? I also know that some Bosnian-Muslims were favorable to a dialog with the Bosnian-Serbs – why did that never happen? There is the mostly overlooked example of Fikret Abdic in Bihac. Why was his “model” not emulated by other Bosnian-Muslim leaders? Why has a “Bosnian Akhmad Kadyrov” not appeared during this war? Lastly, what are your hopes for a future national reconciliation between all Bosnians?
Answer from Nebojsa Malic:
My experience in Bosnia is enough to sell me on the idea of powerful personalities as forces of history. Because a lot of what happened in Bosnia cannot be explained other than through the man who emerged as the leader of the Bosnian Muslims, Alija Izetbegovic.
The rift between Bosnia’s communities is religious, but also historical. The Serbs are natives who remained loyal to the Orthodox Church. Bosnia’s Muslims are mainly local converts to Islam over the four centuries of Ottoman rule (1461-1878). And then you have the locals who converted to Catholicism, as well as settlers who arrived from all over the Austro-Hungarian Empire during the 1878-1918 occupation; these two groups were later shoehorned into the catch-all category of “Croats.”
A century ago, there were both Serb, Croat and Muslim members of “Young Bosnia,” the organization behind the 1914 assassination of the Hapsburg heir in Sarajevo that was later used as a pretext for WW1. When Austria-Hungary fell apart at the end of the war, the unified state of South Slavs (in 1929 renamed “Yugoslavia”) got mired in a bitter conflict between the Orthodox Serb majority and the Catholic Croats. When Hitler invaded in 1941, Croats sided with the Axis and established their own state, which immediately began the mass murder of Serbs. Many Muslims, sadly, joined the Croats in this endeavor, perhaps seeing the German Reich as the return of Austria-Hungary (within which most of their Ottoman privileges were preserved). Others backed the Germans directly, unhappy that the Ustasha regime saw them as nothing more than “Islamic Croats.”
One of those people was the young Alija Izetbegovic – too young to join the two Muslim Waffen-SS divisions, but old enough to be an activist. Briefly imprisoned by the Communist regime after the war, he was released and later went to law school.
Originally intent on dismembering Yugoslavia, Tito’s Communists rethought the idea when they came into power in 1945. So they partitioned the country into “socialist republics.” One of these republics reunited the two Ottoman provinces of Bosnia and Herzegovina into a single polity, which was supposed to hold Yugoslavia together as a place belonging to Serbs, Muslims and Croats alike. A system of ethnic quotas was put into place to encourage parity, and in the 1960s the Muslims were recognized not just as a religious group, but as a proper nation (narod, as opposed tonarodnost).
In 1971, young Izetbegovic wrote a treatise called “The Islamic Declaration,” calling for a return of secularized Muslim societies to political Islam – eight years before the revolution in Iran did precisely that. But his samizdat wasn’t noticed until the early 1980s, when Albanian separatism began manifesting as terrorist attacks, and the Communists jailed Izetbegovic – with a dozen associates – on charges of “inciting ethnic hatred”. Agitating the loudest for his release was a group of Serbian writers and political activists.
The Yugoslav Communist Party started to come apart in 1989, and by 1990, individual republics were holding their own elections. Izetbegovic met with a prominent Muslim who had been living in exile in Switzerland – Adil Zulfikarpasic – and together with him and historian Muhamed Filipovic established the “Party of Democratic Action” (SDA). This was prior to the abolition of a law banning ethnic political parties, hence the neutral name. Zulfikarpasic invested his money, Filipovic his idea of a Muslim-dominated “Bosniak” nation, and Izetbegovic his zeal. They scored another success by talking Fikret Abdic into headlining the SDA’s election ticket. Abdic was a successful Muslim businessman from western Bosnia, who late in the 1980s crossed a powerful political clan and was railroaded on charges of embezzlement; this garnered him much sympathy among all Bosnians, in addition to his regional popularity.
Meanwhile, the Bosnian Serbs split their support between the “nationalist” Serb Democratic Party (SDS) and the more “Yugoslav”-oriented Social-Democrats and the Reformist Alliance. SDS leader Radovan Karadzic, a poet and psychiatrist, kept trying to negotiate a “historic agreement” with the Muslims. But a deal he made with Zulfikarpasic and Filipovic was rejected by Izetbegovic, and the two were driven out of the SDA. After Abdic had won most of the votes in the presidential poll, he was pressured to cede the chair of the seven-member body to Izetbegovic, who thus became “President of Bosnia”.
Meanwhile, at Izetbegovic’s instructions, the SDA made a pact with the Croats (the local branch of the ruling Croatian party, HDZ, aiming to resurrect the 1940s independent Croatia). Even then, the Serbs offered Izetbegovic a deal: he could be the president of Yugoslavia, composed of Bosnia, Serbia, Montenegro and possibly Macedonia. He said no. In February 1991 he famously declared: “I would sacrifice peace for a sovereign Bosnia-Herzegovina… but for that peace in Bosnia-Herzegovina I would not sacrifice sovereignty.” In October 1991, SDA and HDZ legislators illegally called an independence referendum.
The last-ditch effort by the Europeans to salvage peace in Bosnia resulted in the “Cutilheiro plan” proposed by the top Portuguese diplomat. Under it, Bosnia would be partitioned into three ethnic provinces, but in return the Serbs and Croats would recognize its independence and integrity. Izetbegovic signed it at first – then, in mid-March 1992, following the visit by U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmerman, reneged on the deal. The Croats were already raiding the border areas, seeking to continue Croatia’s war (officially ended by the January 1992 armistice) by proxy in Bosnia. Faced with the complete collapse of political dialogue, the Serbs took to arms as well.
Izetbegovic’s entire strategy was to get the U.S. military involved on his behalf. Meanwhile, he entrusted the head of the ulema, Mustafa Ceric, to “Islamize” the Muslims in line with Izetbegovic’s 1971 declaration, even to the point of importing Wahhabis and “Afghans” to serve as missionaries.
Fikret Abdic tried to make peace even then. He had left Sarajevo in March 1992, going back to western Bosnia. In 1993, he proclaimed the “Autonomous Region of Western Bosnia” (Autonomna Oblast Zapadna Bosna). At the time, Izetbegovic’s alliance with the Croats had fallen apart, and Muslims and Croats were fighting viciously in central Bosnia and Herzegovina. Both the Serbs and the Croats had made separate peace with Abdic.
While Izetbegovic thought he was using the Americans, they were using him. Washington continued to sink several European peace initiatives in 1992 and 1993, while gradually dragging NATO into the Bosnian War at the expense of the UN. In 1994, Washington arranged a truce between Izetbegovic’s Muslims and the Croats and forced them into a military alliance, as well as the political one (“Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina”). The Croatian Army was armed and trained by American “contractors” and in August 1995 – backed by NATO – launched an all-out assault on the Serb-inhabited territories claimed by Croatia. This was the cue for Izetbegovic’s Fifth Corps to attack Abdic. Outnumbered, outgunned and unable to get support from the hard-pressed Serbs, Abdic’s followers surrendered. They have been persecuted ever since.
But Washington had its own agenda: by ending the war in Bosnia, America could posture as a white knight coming to the aid of oppressed Muslims (thus scoring propaganda points in the Muslim world) while reasserting dominance over Europe. In the minds of American leaders, by the time the Dayton peace talks began, Izetbegovic and the Bosnian War had served their purpose.
According to Richard Holbrooke, chief US negotiator at the Dayton talks in November 1995, Izetbegovic tried to sabotage the talks several times. Holbrooke’s memoirs relate the Americans’ frustration with Izetbegovic at that point, describing how he drove even the normally sanguine Warren Christopher into a paroxysm of rage. In the end, Izetbegovic gave in – the Americans had secured the backing of the Serbs, the Croats, and the rest of his delegation, and he could not refuse the peace plan without being obviously responsible. The Bosnian War ended with a partition. It was essentially the same plan the Americans urged Izetbegovic to reject in 1992, only now a 100,000 people were dead and the country destroyed by war.
Izetbegovic claimed, echoed by his hagiographers, that he “saved” the Bosnian Muslims from “Serb aggression and genocide.” In reality, he almost destroyedthem – by pushing them into a suicidal war against their friends, neighbors and relatives, by letting the West use them as propaganda pawns, and in the end by stealing from the billions of dollars in foreign aid that came to Bosnia after the war. Bosnia’s economy never recovered, but the bank accounts of SDA officials benefited handsomely.
With his wartime propaganda poisoning the well of Muslim relations with Serbs and Croats, it has been impossible to glue Bosnia together even 18 years after Dayton. Not only did he destroy the inter-ethnic trust by reneging on agreements with Serbs and Croats, Izetbegovic also deceived and discarded every Muslimassociate of his. He double-crossed Zulfikarpasic, Filipovic before the war, Abdic during, and his wartime lieutenants Ganic and Silajdzic afterwards. The warlords he personally commanded during the war (such as Jusuf “Juka” Prazina or Musan “Caco” Topalovic) ended up dead on Belgian roads, or “shot while attempting to escape” police custody, or victims of mysterious suicides and “car accidents.”
None of this absolves the West from responsibility for the Bosnian tragedy, by the way. Their attempts to use Izetbegovic may have been the deciding factor in plunging Bosnia into war. And their behavior after Dayton – making Bosnia into a de factoprotectorate and trying to impose their vision of what the country should be (which was often conflicted, and always confused) – created a powerful disincentive for any sort of internal dialogue. This is why the legacy of hatred and distrust has persisted to the present day, even though Izetbegovic himself died in 2003.
What motivated his hatred of the Serbs is difficult to divine – some say it was his family history, as they left Serbia in 1867 and settled in Bosnia, ever resentful of the Serb “infidels” – but ultimately doesn’t matter. The damage has been done. A generation of Muslims has grown up learning to hate the Serbs and Croats, and believe themselves the victims to whom the West owes a living. The real question is who among the Bosnian Muslims will have the courage to challenge Izetbegovic’s political dogma, and the vision to transcend it. Right now, there is no one that comes to mind.
Though Sulejman Tihic, who succeeded Izetbegovic as the head of the SDA in 2001, has made many attempts to mend fences with the Serbs over the years, the “old guard” within the party – led by Izetbegovic’s son Bakir – successfully undermined all his efforts. To make matters worse, Tihic has cancer, and his prognosis is terminal.
I hope the same is not true of the future of Bosnia. But nothing gives me reason to be optimistic.
Nebojsa Malic was born in Sarajevo (today the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina) and lived through the Bosnian War. He was a translator for the Sarajevo City Hall in 1995, as well as a freelance interpreter to the Anglosphere media. After leaving Bosnia in 1996, he got a BA in History and International Studies from Graceland University in Iowa. He started writing on Balkans issues in 1999, blogs at Gray Falcon since 2004, and is currently President of the R. Archibald Reiss Institute for Serbian Studies in Washington, DC.
thanks saker and nebojsa for an interesting exchange.
@saker: nebojsa describes the history of the yugoslav wars mostly as a series of attempts by the europeans to broker piece, with the americans attempting to sabotage these attempts so as to be seen as the ones to have brokered the final piece, as well as to gain the upper hand over the europeans.
if i recall correctly, this seems at odds with your retelling of these wars. in my recollection (and i realize i may be wrong, as I’ve been reading comments around here for a long time and thus may be attributing opinions to you that actually belong to a commenter) your explanation is twofold:
1) NATO used the yugoslav wars to show Russia what it would do to Russia if it didn’t co-operate;
1) kohl projected newfound, unified german powerto assert dominance in yugoslavia.
not sure you said 2).
anyhow, they’re not necessarily at odds with nebojsa’s recounting of the wars, but i thought it was an interesting shift in perspective.
thanks again, saker and nebojsa.
@Marco: nebojsa describes the history of the yugoslav wars mostly as a series of attempts by the europeans to broker piece, with the americans attempting to sabotage these attempts so as to be seen as the ones to have brokered the final piece, as well as to gain the upper hand over the europeans.(…) NATO used the yugoslav wars to show Russia what it would do to Russia if it didn’t co-operate;
The Europeans were the first to stir up the wars in Yugoslavia, at least Germany and the Vatican were very active. Others in Europe tried to achieve some kind of deal. So you could say that Europeans had very different positions. The Americans then came in initially rather cautiously, especially under George Bush who was not at all willing to get involved. Alas, when Clinton got elected – and his was the first administration chock full of hyterically russophobic NeoCons – the USA became very aggressive and the mission was simple: to beat up and defeat the Serbs as a message to Russia. At that point the Europeans simply rolled over and they let Uncle Sam run the show, even though some Europeans – such as Chiarc – decided to out-American the Americans with some crazy plans to intervene in Bosnia. So the West intervened in many different manners and for different agendas. Does that make sense?
Cheers,
The Saker
If your readers really want to know about this conflict this link http://www.swans.com/library/subjects/yugoslav.html will take you to some 100 articles and you can read until cows come home.
Below are very important sources on the U.S./EU agenda in instigating the Yugoslavia wars:
BOSNIA AND THE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY AGENDA
http://www.srpska-mreza.com/nwo/Hatchett-1996.html
The Twisted Road to Kosovo: The Political Origins of the NATO Attack on Yugoslavia
http://labourfocus.gn.apc.org/LF62.html
‘The Euro-Atlantic Origins of NATO’s attack on Yugoslavia’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Gowan#Chapters_in_books
The Twilight of the European Project
http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/06/15/the-twilight-of-the-european-project/
http://socialistregister.com/index.php/srv/article/view/5745/2640#.U0JLsaJj-EV
http://marxsite.com/global.pdf
At the time some theories emerged which put the dismanteling of Yugoslavia in a larger perspective.
One was that of the creation of a Muslim enclave for the re-settling of the Palestinians.
Another one was the securing the ground of a future pipe-line which would bring the oil and gas from the Caspian through Turkey to Albania and Israel (the Baku-Tbilissi-Ceyhan, where from a derivation should have ended to Haifa which was to become the Rotterdam of the East). Kosovo was a key in transportation. This project was directly sabotaging another project, a pipe-line from Novorosiisk to Constanta (under the sea, or tankers), then on the Danube through Serbia to Trieste. That was the most direct, most economic one. That would have profited Romania, Bulgaria and Serbia immensely. But already then the idea that the “West” should find alternative sources of oil and gas to “break the Russian stranglehold” was gaining momentum.
WizOz
The US policy in Yugoslavia was typically evil. They set out to destroy Yugoslavia in order to isolate the Soviet Union, then Russia. The attack began with those organs of the Washington Consensus, the apparatus of US economic stand-over thuggery, the IMF and World Bank. Not long after Tito’s death they began to insist on dealing with individual Yugoslav Republics, beginning the fissiparous process. And the Serbs, being closest to Russia, and not wartime allies of Germany, like Bosnia, Croatia and Slovenia, who were rewarded for their loyalty to the Reich by the Nazi-successor regime in West Germany, plus aid from Wojtyla in the Vatican for those good Catholics in Croatia, were chosen as the ‘bad guys’. Brainwashing the staggeringly dumb US public requires black hats and white hats, and the Serbs were set up, with the usual filthy MSM complicity. The inconvenient facts like the use by the USA of al Qaeda in Bosnia (Osama bin Laden even visited to confer with his US allies)as later in Kosovo, were, naturally, ignored by the reptiles of the Free Press. A recent hopeful sign was the widespread rioting in Bosnia lately, against neo-liberal economic sadism, perhaps a sign that the different ethnicities and sectarian groups might be woken to the fact that the parasite elite just love ‘divide and rule’ tactics. Why did the USA set out to destroy a country living peacefully with its various groups happily inter-marrying and living together? The drive to dominate the entire planet, the love of imposing destruction and death on others (based on a psychopathology itself deriving from personal psychoses and group beliefs based on Old Testament injunctions to murder and genocide, still having a decided effect on susceptible individuals) and geo-political prerogatives, I would say. Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, one of the key bases in the encirclement of Russia is reward enough.
Believe me, the scum that calls itself the United States Government has no regard whatever for Old Testament history. Think of Bush, Bill and Hillary, Obama, and Cheney. This autocratic elitist power mad trash is uniformly atheist and materialist, any gestures to the contrary purely for momentary political purposes.
It also irritates me greatly that Europeans talk of the USA as if we the people of the formerly United States, now a central government, approve of these international atrocities or can do anything at all about them. Our elections are meaningless, the politicians are mere puppets, the orders for the US military come from elsewhere than elected bureaucrats in Washington DC.
We the people are more or less enslaved in a police state funded by paper lent at interest to the “US government”. The Federal Reserve System pretends paper can be money and Congress goes along with the scam. Meanwhile, every financial transaction of we the people is monitored and controlled by the IRS. There is no “due process”: If you try to resist or get the IRS to follow the Constitution or ThingsThinThingsgsSupreme Court precedent, an IRS agent simply picks up the phone, calls “your” bank, and whatever “money” you have on deposit is transferred to the IRS and there is nothing you can do about it in the IRS’ “tax courts”. All opposition is instantly impoverished, without using a “social security number” it is impossible that enforces to get a job or form a corporation or conduct a business and with a SSN every financial transaction is monitored and every dollar that involves a bank is diverted into the IRS account. Everyone who tries to resist is soon so impoverished that his next meal and bath and place to sleep is the Thingsmajor consideration for survival.
Even the Mexicans don’t cross the border as much anymore. The welfare used to be good but getting plugged into the system these days too much resembles being a heat generator in The Matrix. Life is more free and hopeful in Mexico.
Only what makes sense
the West[ NATO/EU ] intervened in many different manners and for different agendas and at different times had different ambitions.
Dara Saker
…..and Russia has got nothing to do with it.
During SFRY – she was far more so called pro-western than pro-Russian.
Dear Saker
If the so called West allowed Milosevic to get the territories with which he wanted to create the new state ” Serbia ” it is clear to everybody – today Serbia would be great friend, ally of UKUSA countries but you.
We people from ex Yugoslavia
say
-Milosevic had done good work for NATO/EU.
Greetings
From Croatia.
.
marco @ 07 April, 2014 01:04
It was I who rightly put blame on the Germans (Kohl, Genscher) in my previous comment, and not The Saker.
SADLY THE GERMAN INVOLMENT IS COMMONLY OVERLOOKED BY EVERYBODY.
I repeat, all that happened in Yugoslavia in the 90s and all that is happening in Ukraine is GERMANY’s WRONGDOING! All the Americans/Brits are doing is front-running the show in
order not to loose relevance.
Even some (i cant definately say all), but some of American world-wide actions are caused by having to deal with a resurgent Germany (this was a hot potato given to the USA & Britain & France by the collapsing Soviet Union).
How is it Germany’s wrongdoing you ask?
Well, just look at maps showing how the Balkans were carved up during WW2 and look at todays maps.
SAME!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Axis_occupation_of_Yugoslavia_1941-43.png
or in Ukraine:
http://tarpley.net/metaphysical-doubts-concerning-the-existence-of-modern-ukraine-a-1918-creation-of-the-german-general-staff/
In this interview with Nebojsa, The Saker talks about Bosniaks and Croats and Serbs.
But there are no Bosniaks. That are just simply Serbs following the muslim religion. And half of the Croats are Serbs following Catholicism. If you want to go in deeper, find the Vatican edict from the beginning of the 20century (190x – i don’t remember the exact year) which says all those of Catholic denomination are to be called Croats. (i’m sorry i don’t have the time to find it for you)
ALL THESE NATIONS ARE IS A CREATION BY GERMANY AND VATICAN.
Just like UKRAINE. There are no Ukrainians, only Russians living in the Ukraine (border land).
Linguistic scholars say that if two ‘languages’ are 70% the same, it’s the SAME LANGUAGE! but only different dialects.
Same with Serbian, ‘Croat’ and ‘Bosniak’ language.
Same with Russian and ‘Ukrainian’ language.
Recently Germany invented the ‘Montenegrin’ language and alphabet. The added ONE! new letter to the
Serbian alphabet (which the Montenegrins used for 1000s of years) and pronounced it Montenegrin!
The Montenegrins got a new Church too. The Montenegrin Orthodox Church. Heh, somehow different than the Serbian Orthodox Church they followed for 1000s of Years.
Divide et impera! All that there is.
Now i want to explain the origins of the hate the Croats & Bosniaks have towards Serbs.
This requires a psycho-analysis. As i explained above, Bosnians and half of the Croats are Serbs.
But in the olden days they switched their religion to other faith dominations. This they did either willingly (for better treatment under the Ottoman/Austrian rule) or under pressure & duress.
But this also showed that they are weak in character, while the other ‘non-converted’ Serbs stood tall. This of course causes an internal uneasiness and struggle in the ‘converts’, which in turn they try to shake off by HATING AND PUSHING AWAY the ‘non-converted’ Serbs, in a futile attempt to FORGET the (‘converts’) TREACHERY OF THEIR OWN IDENTITY. Hence, the hate.
hope this explains things.
—–
but no worries. the good always wins. and there is hope.
Saker asked if their is a ‘Bosnian Akhmad Kadyrov’. YES THERE IS!
He is the famous film director Emir Kusturica. He was born a Serbian muslim only to recognize
the truth and convert back to Serbian Orthodoxy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emir_Kusturica#Ethnic_and_religious_identity
“My father was an atheist and he always described himself as a Serb. OK, maybe we were Muslim for 250 years, but we were Orthodox before that and deep down we were always Serbs, religion cannot change that.”
God Bless.
For your interview with Hezbollah get in touch with Thierry Meyssan
http://www.voltairenet.org/article183137.html
What role do people like Angelina Jolie have then? She actively promotes the feeling of the permanently aggrieved muslim in her movies and has “enshrined” their victimhood in her mission for women’s rights.
Why is she promoting this agenda? Is it intentional or is it ignorance?
As my 80 year old Serbian mother-in-law spent the war in a shelled high rise in Sarajevo – whilst we were living in Paris – my vision of the events was coloured by following them in the pages of Le Monde and Liberation.
Does anyone have any facts about Mitterand’s policies and actions in relation to the seige and to Izetbegovic? Some reliable historical facts on French policy during these events?
One thing that I know is that the French UMPROFOR was usually based in Serbian controlled areas as they were perceived as more friendly to the Serbian cause. French generals serving with the Un were more neutral and tended to investigate the false flags more thoroughly.
On a recent trip to the region I met a group of UMPROFOR soldiers at dinned in a small town they were scouting a roadway to see if heavy trucks could be used from the coast to Kosovo. This was just before the bombing of ISIS. The staging area was probably Camp Bondsteed in Kosovo. This is the largest US base outside of Continental US and is used by US as the headquarters of the Southern European commend. As most people know the breakup of YU facilitated NATO movement from Northern Europe to the Balkans.
I said to my wife I am going to have some fun with them. My wife, common sense, said don’t you dare. Well I did not do what I intended to do so I found one that spoke English and asked him how the people treated them? He said great. Afterwards I asked a local resident how he felt about them and he said they are just working for a living, not their fault. In fact I had a very amiable conversation with a man from Turkey and one from Canada. . . .
You might find this book interview about the book “Cellist of Sarajevo” interesting.
http://www.swans.com/library/art15/wtrkla03.html
Saker,
thank you and Nebojsha for this eyeopener, as not many people know what was actually going on in Bosnia because of the usual ‘fog of propaganda war’.
There’s a pretty good documentary called “The Weight of Chains” that tries to somewhat explain events on the territory of ex-Yugoslavia, and which I warmly recommend to all of your readers.
LXV
@APOL:Does anyone have any facts about Mitterand’s policies and actions in relation to the seige and to Izetbegovic? Some reliable historical facts on French policy during these events?
The topic of the French policy towards Bosnia would deserve a full PhD thesis. I will just say today that the French policy was extremely incoherent because there were very different trends inside France proper. Here are a few:
1) Mitterrand was generally cautious, but he was under a lot of pressure from Jewish intellectuals inside France and pro-US circles to act. Foreign Minister Dumas seemed to understand what the USA was up to, but the pressure was too strong.
2) Jewish intellectuals like Mark Halter, Alain Finkelkraut, Bernard Henri Levi, Bernard Kouchner, Andre Glucksman and many others launched a massive campaign to demonize Serbs and they basically did together what Bernard Henri Levi would do to Libya many years later.
3) The French military was mostly well aware of what was really going on, but they were under *very* strict orders. Still, most French UNPROFOR officers were disgusted with the anti-Serbian propaganda campaign of the US and Germany and some even tried to covertly and even illegally to help the Serbs the best they could.
4) Chirac was a total Atlanticist and as soon as he came to power he cooked up a totally crazy idea. He wanted to repeat the Dien Bien Phu disaster but this time in Gorazde: insert paratroopers in by air in the “bowl” surrounded by mountains. Luckily, the French did not have the helicopters needed for that and so Chirac ask the Americans to provide the French with airlift. The Americans, for all their other faults in Bosnia, were not insane and they told him to forget about that stupid idea.
As for Izetbegovic – he was designated the “official western darling” (OWD) so he could not be criticized and he had to be adulated as the “Good Innocent Guy”. Some intellectuals did try to warm not only about his political Islamism (which I don’t necessarily see at all as bad) and about the fact that this guy was clearly a fanatic and a ruthless ideologue (which I see as a real problem). To no avail. The Zionists and pro-Americans in Europe basically had an ideological monopoly.
I have to add here that even though French Zionists come originally form Trotskism, they have now made a 180 and our *insanely* pro-American to the point that Bernard Henri Levi even said recently “l’anti-americanisme est une metaphore de l’anti-semitisme” (anti-Americanism is a metaphor for anti-Semitism) thereby essentially declaring the consubstantiability of the USA and Jewry!
Again, Bosnia was the Great Rehearsal for what later happened in places like Libya, Syria or the Ukraine. Same folks doing the same stuff.
Sickening and very very sad.
Kind regards,
The Saker
Saker:
You just keep getting better and better! I’ve been reading Nebojsa Malic at Antiwar.com for nearly a decade (perhaps longer) and it is wonderful to see a wider audience being exposed to him. In terms of the Yugoslavian tragedy, I am probably somewhat partial to the Serbs, but like you I would be interested in seeing a response from the Bosniak/Izetbegovician side.
Saker:
Somewhat off topic, but Steve Sailer had a post linking to the following NY Timesarticle.
The ghost of Bogdan Khmelnistky is spinning in his grave.
It appeared to me to be another case of divide and conquer. The islamic extremist Izetbegovic was the vehicle for it, the wedge whereby the country could be broken up. It’s doubtful anyone in Washington actually cared for the Muslims much beyond them serving as a tool, regardless of the blizzard of propaganda that ensued as a cover. Human tragedy, human life mean absolutely nothing to the puppet masters. The US-NATO foreign policy towards the former Yugoslavia looks a lot like Hitler’s did. The propaganda demonization that took place at the time in the US media was shockingly low and filthy. It was a real eye-opener to see how the US has become an environment of non-stop, 24 hour a day lying.
Interesting and informative. Thanks.
вот так
@anonymous:For your interview with Hezbollah get in touch with Thierry Meyssan
Good idea. Thanks. I will try.
Cheers,
The Saker
To me, the crucial sentence in Malics text is the following:
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“After Abdic had won most of the votes in the presidential poll, he was pressured to cede the chair of the seven-member body to Izetbegovic, who thus became “President of Bosnia”.”
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So, the fact is that elected president of Bosnia was ABDIC not Izetbegovic !!! Muslim people voted for Abdic, not Izetbegovic.
So, the KEY question here is :
WHO pressured Abdic to cede ???
Nebojsa Malic DOES NOT EXPLAIN this !!!
Those who pressed Abdic to cede to Izetbegovic are responsible for the war. We expect some kind of answer to this question. How can we discus the Bosnian war without having this key answer ?
@ The Wend:
Here’s how it happened. There was no procedure for electing the chair of the Presidency; everything was new. Abdic won the most votes, so he could have claimed it. Instead, he deferred to Izetbegovic, his party boss. The one who talked him into it is obviously Izetbegovic himself.
@Steve Sailer had a post linking to the following NY Timesarticle…
“DNIPROPETROVSK, Ukraine — Two months ago, Hennadiy Korban, a millionaire businessman, fled to Israel to escape retribution for siding with opponents of Ukraine’s president, Viktor F. Yanukovych”.
Was that so? The same NYT was reporting on Feb.5, 2014:
“Fearing arrest, Mr. Korban and Mr. Filatov fled Ukraine for Israel last week. A Dnepropetrovsk judge ordered on Jan. 29 that Mr. Korban be detained and interrogated as a witness in connection with a previously dormant investigation of a 2012 murder”.
The murder in question is likely the murder of Hennadiy Axelrod:
“Two weeks before the blasts, Dnipropetrovsk was shocked by the assassination of businessman Hennadiy Akselrod, known for numerous construction projects and close ties with a local group that is alleged to improperly raid other businesses. Akselrod was shot near his house in downtown Dnipropetrovsk on April 14. Soon after, Akselrod’s friend and partner, Hennadiy Korban, who together with Akselrod survived an assassination attempt two years ago, said he is “much harder to get to” as he drives around in armored cars and avoids public places”.
http://dablogfodder.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/dnipropetrovsk-bombing-update.html
Any relation with David Axelrod, former Senior Advisor to President Obama, Director of a “bipartisan Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago”, Senior political analyst at NBC News and MSNBC?
Or Robert Axelrod Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of Michigan, member of the Council on Foreign Relations?
Or should we go a bit further back in time and evoke Pavel Axelrod and Lybov Axelrod, noted Marxist revolutionaries?
WizOz
@Marco/Saker: Nebojsa’s commentary is describing the Bosnian war, not the Croat and Slovenian secession which occurred earlier. Germany and Austria were central in those events, but events in Bosnia don’t seem to clearly and directly derive from a coherent consistent policy of theirs, it’s plausible they didn’t have a fixed plan for it… Which is substantiated by the “Bosniak”/Croat conflict in Bosnia which comprised much of the fighting, the Bosniak-Croat alliance only being cemented by American pressure in later stages of the war.
There is an interesting – and so far insufficiently examined – relationship between Germany and the Atlantic Empire. On one hand, the Germans drove the initial anti-Serb policy on Yugoslavia, but after Croatia’s secession they turned the show over to Washington.
Germany’s BND was involved in the early stages of organizing the KLA, but again, in 1998 they stepped back and let the US run the show. I just can’t decide whether the Germans have been using the Americans, or the other way around. Or they are using each other, to the point where it makes no difference either way.
Annonymous I must admit that I don’t know much about the Bosnia war but I did have the opportunity to assist two Muslim families who were refugees from that war and they told me about the horrors and the Serbian cousin who saved their lives at great risk to her own and that of her family.
Thanks Saker and Nebojsa, what a fantastic bit of history that I was totally unaware of. What pathetic news media we have in Amerika. This article and blogs like this one, and a few others, are the only avenues to the truth. (Pravda?)
My family originally hailed from Slovenija and I still was unaware of this bit of Bosnian history.
Prof. David Lomshek
When Western Media writes about Bosnia and Yugoslavia it never mentions Joe Bissett, Canada’s former ambassador to Yugoslavia. Most journalist, who supported the NATO policies in former Yugoslavia were publish in the West, while those who opposed NATO were marginalized and never interviewed. There were those who were in bed with NATO, warm and cuddly, like Christiane Amanpour the wife of James Rubin the former US assistant secretary of state under Clinton. Do I need to say any more as one can see that in her journalism, she is in bed with NATO, close and personal.
When NATO started the illegal war against Yugoslavia, Bissett was fired by Canadian government when he objected to this, what he called, international terrorism. Bissett wrote “This is a shameful record of duplicity, double standards and cowardice on the part of the US led NATO forces.” How can a journalist avoid exposing this and in the process make this war legally defensible.
Western Media has repeated a litany of lies, which NATO, Tudjman, and the Izetbegovic side used US media firm Ruder Finn Global Public Affairs to convince the West that NATO’s cause was just. When western journalists write about Yugoslavia the sources that trey use give us only the NATO line. These writers never quote the likes of Michael Parenti, Dr. Diana Johnstone, James Bissett, Scott Taylor, David Orchard, Professor Mundell, Edward S. Herman, General Rose, Nambiar , Phillipe Morillon and reports of the Spanish UN representatives from the region. They ignore evidence that false flags were used to make Serbs the Balkan Nazis, and why not, since the Serbs were the only ones that wanted to preserve a united Yugoslavia, and that was not in the agenda of NATO that wants to hide the real reality of Bosnia and Yugoslavia.
People like, ambassador Bissett, did not have a client or anything to gain by telling the truth, they just decided for their own moral reasons to tell the truth even when it cost them their livelihood. NATO journalists attack people like General Lewis Mackenzie the UN commander in Bosnia, who dared to expose the NATO agenda which was to break up Yugoslavia. For Western Media Milosevic is the villain because he wanted to save a united Yugoslavia that NATO wanted to break up into client statelets.
Journalists in the West write that Serbs “shoot unarmed men, women and children” when it is documented that the Muslim-Croat side killed their own people including men women and children for propaganda purposes. Many of you have seen pictures from Syria of ISIS jihadists cutting heads of prisoners, which was common practice done by Nasar Oric’s jihadists in Bosnia. They played soccer with severed heads of Serbian peasants captured in surrounding villages near Srebrenica. Nasar Oric’s atrocities in and arround Srebrenica are well documented. In 1995 Bill Schiller of the Toronto Star filmed Oric bragging about killing Serbs and dragging their bodies through the street. http://www.juliagorin.com/wordpress/?p=2665
The Muslim and Croat side killed soldiers who were given passage to leave their barracks, they killed at the Markale and Bread Line, and the Western “presstitutes” ignores all this. Western journalists do not ask the UN generals that I have named to tell us who did the killing in these places. It is not convenient to quote them since it goes counter to Izetbegovic (former Nazi and Muslim fanatic) and his daughter’s version that Western Media mothers across the pages of unsupported material.
David Morrison the UK Labour & Trade Union Review, August 2005 writes, “The Serbs resisted the breakup of Yugoslavia, and suffered the fate of all who resist the will of the “international community” – they were demonised. The mainstream story of what happened at Srebrenica on 11 July 1995 is an episode in this demonization of the Serbs. That Bosnian Muslims got massacred in large numbers is not in doubt, but the mainstream story omits entirely the context in which this occurred” with which I will deal with later.
In many towns under control of different groups people of the other ethnicity were held in camps some beaten and others forced to dig trenches, and others were used as human shields or forced to walk over mine fields. Journalists in the West only attributes this barbarity to the Serbs. They do not tell us that the main victims of this barbarism were the Serbs.
Thousands of those who intermarried were forced to leave and they left for Canada and Serbia where they were housed and looked after. Very few writers ask the question; why did the Serbs go outside of Serbia to cleanse non Serbs when they never harmed any minority in Serbia or why did the Muslims and Croats flee to Serbia from the war zones if they were persecuted in that country?
Mainstream Media is not telling the reader that in Croatia and Bosnia, Muslims and Serbs were persecuted and targeted by Croat nationalists. They write about the Serb occupied Krajina, a region in Croatia, but do not tell the reader that the ethnic majority that lived there were the Serbs protecting their homes from Croatian fascists so that history of WWII is not repeated.
More sick journalism from NATO journalist family includes omitting to mention the fact that in Gospic, a city in Krajina, Croats killed all the Serbian doctors, teachers, lawyers and other professionals prior to Croatia declaring separation. A Croatian policeman who exposed this was killed by Croat nationalists. What were Serbs in Krajina to conclude from this example other than that they were next.
Some Croatian writers like Drakulic were not surprised that Serbs in Krajina took up arms to defend themselves against Tudjman’s stated policy to eliminate them as a minority in Croatia. Is it wonder that Serbs would be concerned knowing their contemporary history. Journalists who write about event of this war need to visit any cemetery in this part of Croatia and they will see hundreds of graves from WWII with the same death date on them. The graves mark names of Serbs that were killed in groups by the Fascist German backed Croat Ustase. Journalists forget these events and Jasenovac with its 700, 000 dead, but not Srebrenica which they whitewash with the word “genocide”.
Media articles do not tell us that Srebrenica was surrounded by Serb villages and that Naser Orich, the Muslim Warlord in Srebrenica used it as a base from which his forces, under NATO protection, attacked these villages, killing women children and burning the countryside. His army and 5000 Mujahidin from the Middle East burned over 100 villages and killed some 3000 Serbs. Clinton suggested to Izetbegovic that if he could sacrifice some 5000 civilians in Srebrenica
Captain (British Army) Thornton’s letter to Time magazine 1996 I think the letter was from Vitez Bosnia from where he writes about this.
“As a British soldier who has served widely in Bosnia for seven months now, I feel I must take issue with the nature of the reporting from this region [May 17]. In the case of the Muslim town of Sre¬brenica, your articles have been scath¬ing in denouncing the Bosnian Serbs and their shelling of the town. However, you have failed to address the question of where the Serbian population of Sre¬brenica was. The Serbs made up 30% of its prewar population. Early on in the conflict, they were forced out of their homes with whatever belongings they could carry and ordered to leave. As the Bosnian Serbs fled, Muslims fired wildly on men, women and children on the road. This story was told to British sol¬diers in Srebrenica by Muslims them¬selves and later by Bosnian Serbs. Earli¬er this year, Bosnian Muslims launched their offensive in eastern Bosnia, bomb¬ing Bosnian Serb villages, raping wom¬en and destroying livestock. I realize that this makes me sound like an apologist for the Bosnian Serbs. I know that what they are doing is terrible. But the press has a moral duty to report objectively. The media are creating a “Let’s do something’, let’s bomb the Serbs; let’s arm the Muslims” rhetoric that is very dangerous. We in Europe un-derstand the Balkan chicanery and cun¬ning far better than Americans do. We do not want to see ourselves further em¬broiled in a morass when there is no one side that is uniquely culpable. A British soldier sees the bodies of three Croat children who have had their throats cut by Muslim soldiers. Does he want to see those Muslims with bigger and better weapons? Please be more objective.”
JR.Thornton. Interpreter
Sergeant. British Army
Vitez. Bosnia
When Srebrenica fell many soldiers from this Bosnian Muslim army fled through the forest and some were captured, and some killed in fighting, some fled to Serbia and were then returned to Tuzla their home base, but conveniently journalists do not mention any of this.
Many Canadian journalists prostitute the legal system in their own country as they defend the creation of tribunals for the enemies of NATO. These journalists live in a nation where the justice system is based on the rule of law and innocent until proven guilty, but they never ask why this principle does not apply to the tribunals. Journalists know that we hold trials where the rule of law exists; we have an independent judiciary and due process not an ad hoc tribunal that served as a NATO tool, so why not ask why this is normal in the Hague. Those that created the tribunal refuse to submit to its rules for their own nationals. Why not ask if this is OK for the Yugoslavs why is it not OK for NATO members?
Greenspan, Canada’s top criminal lawyers, recently deceased called this tribunal a lynching. This court sees Mladic and Karadjic as guilty which says a lot about this court’s standard of justice and I might add that comes clear in the Media full of yellow journalism.
Journalists do not discuss international laws and treaties when considering how many were violated in the breakup of Yugoslavia by NATO. For these journalists this is not convenient for their thesis and they get away with it. Why? Even journalism in the West is treated with exceptionalism. They have engrained the idea that Americans are the main truth tellers when in reality they are the biggest liars. US Media shields the truth using a Nazi theory that “people will believe a big lie sooner than a little one; and if you repeat it frequently enough people will sooner or later believe it.”
International law, as Canada’s former ambassador Bissett states was “designed as a guarantee that all nations small as well as large need not fear aggression by a more powerful state. They are meant to have universal application and cannot be set aside because of special circumstances or when they prove to be an obstacle to the policy aims of powerful nations. Their message is simple and clear–borders cannot be changed without the consent of the affected state.” This is why, we signed the Yalta Agreement, and the Helsinki Accord on Borders.
Journalists skirt this issue and never attach blame for German, British and American violation of international law. For NATO Milosevic had to go since he refused to privatize his economy and since he wanted to save a united Yugoslavia.
Media made silly comments about the Croatian leader Tudjman and the Muslim leader Izetbegovic saying how cooperative they were with NATO. When NATO accomplished their breakup of the country media never ask why, nor do they ask why Tudjman and Izetbegovic disappeared, Tudjman as a result of cancer treatment in US, while its claimed Izetbegovic fell down some stairs. They disappeared quickly as they were no longer needed, the task was accomplished and now if they testify they become a liability. By putting the two criminals on trial their testimony would have exposed NATO complicity in the breakup of the nation.
Journalists do not look at the letter written to Gerhard Schroeder the German Chancellor by one of his political advisors who attended a conference in Bratislava Slovakia. The conference dealt with NATO expansion.
This letter is important since Germany was the first to recognize Slovenian unilateral break with Yugoslavia. Germany did this with their recognition of Croatian unilateral declaration of independence. Some might say this was payback to these countries for their alliance with Germany and Nazism during WWII. The Hague Tribunal fails to address the fact that Yugoslavia was dissolved from the outside just like she was put together at Versailles. The only difference is the interest that is served. Here is the content of that letter.
“The conference [in Bratislava] was attended by very high level political officials, as witnessed by the presence of a large number of prime ministers, as well as foreign ministers and defense ministers from the region. Among the numerous important points of discussion, certain themes deserve special mention:
You can find the content of that letter here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/correspondence-between-german-politicians-reveals-the-hidden-agenda-behind-kosovo-s-independence/8304
Mainstream Media ignores the fact that international law cannot have double standards, or else it cannot be called law and the civilized world cannot be ruled by the law of the jungle, which is what Washington, London, and Berlin as well as Canada’s Louise Arbour who was rewarded with a seat on the Supreme Court of Canada put into motion in Yugoslavia.
When William Walker, the US fixer declared Racak in Kosovo a massacre Arbour did not do her own investigation nor ask about Walker’s credibility, but instantly declared it a “massacre” and journalists sing her praises while they vilify Mackenzie who dared ask the question. Mackenzie was dismissed as UN general in Bosnia when he placed responsibility for the conflict on the Muslim-Croat side.
Of course many who read this will see my sources as dubious and choose to believe other sources. Most journalists who depend on earning their daily bread from “presstitution” know well what happened in Yugoslavia, but they like most of those who choose to believe the NATO version refuse to go “beyond the sycophant and continue saying the same thing, promoting the same values and advocating the same political line.” I can very well say that your sources are “convenient monopolist manufacturers of propaganda, the ultimate thieves of the free press and the truth, totally reprehensible individuals who gave us a sanitized version of events in Bosnia which they sell as history”.
Unfortunately people were killed in Srebrenica, and in other parts of Yugoslavia but journalists neglects to ask whose interest was served by this war and Srebrenica in particular, and when she answers this question that will tell you who is ultimately responsible for this war.
Many journalists writes nonsense about the JNA as a Serbian Army when in fact all three sides were former JNA members. Bosnian Serb JNA as well as militia elements from Serbia served in the JNA. The Muslims forces were JNA from Bosnia and Sandjak, The Croat JNA were Bosnian Croats and militia elements from Croatia.
Ratko Mladich is a Bosnian Serb and a former JNA officer as were most of the officers in the three armies. One army was on a hill surrounding Sarajevo (Serb) and another in the city (Muslim) and (Croat) doesn’t make them anymore or any less culpable for the atrocities that took place. I am sure every journalist knows what happened in Mostar when the Croats bombed the Muslim side into oblivion but they ignore this, for these lackeys it is more convenient to have a villain the Serbs that we can hate or hang our hat on and say our cause is just because that side is guilty.
Few if any Western journalists wrote that Serbian side helped pressure the warring parties to sign five peace agreements in Bosnia and Croatia but in each case the other side violated these agreements with American encouragement and pressure. At the same time these journalists conveniently calls Izetbegovic an honest broker when in fact he was nothing more than a tool used by NATO.
Western Journalists fail to tell us that Izetbegovic was a liar, that he stole the Bosnian presidential election from Fikret Abdich who polled higher for leadership then Izetbegovic, a moderate Muslim who wanted unity with Serbia. Holbrook, American diplomat, prolonged the conflict with his double dealing, however, Mainstream Media placed the responsibility on the Serbs for continuing the war and conveniently forget that Serbs brokered five peace agreements and provided sanctuary in Serbia for all ethnic groups in former Yugoslavia who were fleeing the war zones. Analysis by omission is as repugnant as writing by manipulation, and we know that there was plenty of that and most of it in the service of NATO.
The question how many people died in NATO’s break-up of Yugoslavia needs to be answered because it speaks to the heart of media manipulation in the service of NATO. NATO representatives reported that two hundred and fifty thousand or five hundred thousand died in Bosnia, and CNN as well as other Media outlets including the New York Times as well as those who quote Roy Gutman’s injflated figures without verification. We now know that approximately 17% of the dead were Croats, 34% Serb and 45% Muslim.
Tokača, a Bosnian Muslim researcher states that as of 15 December 2005, “our list contained 93,837 names of [dead] civilians and soldiers, [which] comprised of 63,687 Muslims, 24,216 Serbs, 5,057 Croats and 877 others.” When one extrapolates the military casualties it can be concluded that most of those who died were members of the military factions. Furthermore, these percentages reflect the population proportions of Bosnia where most of these people died. Whose interest did these inflated figures serve other than those of NATO that wanted to use their smart weapons in the break-up of Yugoslavia?
One can continue to believe what they want but if one really want to be honest in their work they should have also quoted “Diana Johnstone, FOOLS’ CRUSADE Yugoslavia, NATO and Western Delusions, Monthly Review Press, New York, N.Y, 2002;” or John Schindlers “Unholy Terror”.
John R. Schlinder served for nearly a decade with the US National Security Agency—work which took him to many countries in support of U.S. and allied forces operating in the Balkans—and was NSA’s top Balkans expert. Western Journalists have chosen to fish in the single pond such as interviews with Izetbegovic’s daughter and the fish that they catch, I might add, is a sucker. Oh yes they also dismiss Joseph Bissett, Generals Louis Mackenzie, Nambiar, Morillon and Academics Parenti, Harman, Chomsky, Professor Maundel from Osgoode Hall law school and many others who did not write in order to make a dollar from NATO. Much of what I have read from pro NATO journalists is academic prostitution.
I saw the results of the breakup of Yugoslavia on a recent trip into the region. I saw where Croats expelled Serbs and Muslims from the territory where Croats were the majority, and where Muslims cleansed Serbs and Croats from areas where Muslims were the majority and where Serbs cleansed Muslims and Croats from where Serbs were the majority. I have spoken to persons who spent month in camps that were under the control of the three factions. Serbs and Croats were held by Muslims in railway tunnels, Croats held Muslims in forty degree heat in oil tanks buried in the ground while Serbs held Muslims and Croats in barbed wire enclosures. Some half million Serbs who live today as refugees in Serbia have not been allowed to return to their homes in Croatia or Kosovo while the majority of Muslims and Croats and Serbs in Bosnia have returned. Of course many have no homes to return to since their homes have been burned or vandalized in their absence. This was the plan from the outset. Today everything of value in former Yugoslavia is owned by multinationals. Recently a Croatian friend went back home and on his return his said to me that things in his former hometown are verse now than they were when he came to Canada in 1970.
Western journalists have also been fooled on Rwanda. These journalists need to read Christopher Black’s writing and work on the Rwandan Tribunals and they will see that, like in Yugoslavia they have been duped as to who were the victims. In the Yugoslav situation we need to expose Louis Arbour she was an instrument of NATO policy and she took her reward like a ‘dog that eats its vomit’ with a UN appointment. When we reward injustice like this with such important positions what hope is there for justice?
Very good text but with two mistakes that I want to emphisize.
First, Croats are not catholics, they are Roman-catholics. Serbs are catholics as well but orthodox, like Russians, Greeks etc…they are not grouped around old Roma (Vatican). It is important to use word with its real meaning.
Second. It is meaningless say something like “Albanian separatism” Albania is a region settled today mostly by Shqip people. Albania is serbian word understandible only in serbian language used even before George Maniac bring Shqips there in 11 century as supporting troops against Romea (Constantinople state). We do not say Pirinei separatism, or eastern turkey separatism etc. so name that correctly “Shqips separatism” and suddenly everything became easier to understand.
Thank you for this
The people is the victim and the people is the wrongdoer.When will people in BiH stop listening to those in power-whether the religious or political “führer” – who have been trading their souls and lifes for power,money,paradise? ?
Open your eyes.The jesus I want to believe in would not kill a Mustafa.Muslims don’t want to believe in a Mohammed who would approve killing as well.
Or maybe Marx was right when he said religion was opium of the people and idiots.
Yea.Considering history he may be darn right.
Islam is founded on physical violence. Mohammed kept his army together with the promise of rape and pillage. It hasn’t improved since and I have to laugh when people proclaim that Islam is a religion of peace. The peace of death is what they are proclaiming.
Christianity is the exact opposite, salvation by grace alone and ministry to the physical needs of all, however imperfectly implemented by the Christians. a religion
erland – Adil Zulfikarpasic – and together with him and historian Muhamed Filipovic established the “Party of Democratic Action” (SDA). This was prior to the abolition of a law banning ethnic political parties, hence the neutral name. Zulfikarpasic invested his money, Filipovic h
I once read an article detailing why the alleged 8,000 murders committed by the Serbian army were logistically impossible for the Serban impossible featians to have committed due to the positions of the Serbs, Moslem artillery, the battle lines, the terrain, the lack of trucks, etc.
I thought Nebojsa Malic had written it, but looking through his articles at antiwar.com, I do not find it. Any help is appreciated.